Anna's home county has not backed a Democrat in a federal race since 1970, when Lloyd Bentsen beat George H.W. Bush for a U.S. Senate seat. A Texas Tribune report published Tuesday says Democrat James Talarico may need to break that streak to defeat Republican Ken Paxton for the same office next week.
Collin County is Paxton's home base. He started his political career there as a state representative in 2003 before becoming attorney general. The Tribune describes it as the most populous county in the country that no statewide Democratic candidate has carried this century.
Both campaigns have treated it that way. Talarico began his final statewide tour in Plano the night before early voting, the report says, and Paxton spent the first day of early voting at a restaurant in Allen, a city he also visited in February, May and August.
Growth behind the shift
The Tribune ties the county's changing politics to how fast it is growing. Collin's population has more than doubled since 2000 to close to 1.3 million, and four of the five fastest-growing cities in the nation are in the county: Celina, Princeton, Melissa and Anna.
The county's $121,600 median household income ranks second in Texas, and its population is about 45% white, 23% Asian, 17% Hispanic and 12% Black, according to the report.
The margins have narrowed. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz won Collin by about 6 percentage points in 2018, when he carried Texas by less than 3. In 2024 he won the state by 8 points but the county by only 5.
What each side says
Shelby Williams, a former Collin County Republican chair and Plano council member who is running for county commissioner, told the Tribune the county has been "getting a little purpler" for a decade. He noted that Republicans once flipped the county from blue to red themselves. "If we can take it from them, they can take it right back from us," he said.
Ross Hunt, a Republican operative in Dallas, called Collin "a dark horse county for the Democrats" and said many recent arrivals came for jobs rather than politics.
Jeremy Sutka, who chairs the county Democratic Party, said the population growth had already been moving the county toward his party. "What's happening in 2026 is really a matter of whether or not we can accelerate that path," he told the Tribune.
Republicans have gained ground with Asian American voters in Texas. Polling this year by Asian Texans for Justice, a nonpartisan group, found 40% of Asian Texans identify as Republicans and 31% as Democrats, roughly the reverse of 2022. Democrats hope to make gains with the county's Indian and Muslim American communities, the Tribune reports, after anti-Indian rhetoric among some GOP candidates became a campaign flashpoint.
Split tickets could blunt any shift further down the ballot. Anne Bramlett of Lavon, a self-described lifelong Republican, told the Tribune she plans to vote for Talarico and Democratic governor nominee Gina Hinojosa but also for her Republican state representative, Candy Noble.
Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3.
Sources
The Texas Tribune
