For around three decades, West Texas has been a bedrock of Republican voters. The Plains and Panhandle regions have often been considered a given for the GOP, and those assumptions have been repeatedly confirmed.
President Donald Trump saw more than 66% of the vote in Lubbock County in 2016, and almost 70% in 2024. Even in a midterm that favored Texas Democrats in 2018, Republicans saw around 70% support from Lubbock County voters across the board.
On Tuesday, President Trump made his first-ever public visit to Lubbock to campaign for Republican Senate candidate Attorney General Ken Paxton.
According to Drew Landry, a government professor from South Plains College, this late push into deep red West Texas indicates Paxton’s statewide success may be more uncertain, even among the GOP, as many polls show statistical ties and conflicting results between Paxton and Democratic opponent James Talarico.
“What that tells me is that even they think this is going to be a very close election,” Landry said. “That Paxton is in trouble of being one of the first Republicans to lose statewide since 1994, and the President is coming to a place where his base is large, to gin up support.”
And people in Lubbock were not going to give up even the slightest chance to see the first presidential visit in Lubbock since George H. W. Bush campaigned in 1992.
Estimates from inside the Lubbock Memorial Civic Center, where the Republican rally was held, said around 3,500 people filled out the room, but even as speakers began to take the stage, thousands more people were still lined up outside the building.
At its peak, the line of people trying to get into the rally wrapped around the building and back for almost a mile.
John Barbosa said he’d been standing in line for about six hours, but that’s still not as long as others who he heard were there before 5 a.m.
Barbosa said he’s always been a Republican voter, and this year is no different. Like many others going into the rally, Barbosa said he’s already cast his ballot and he’s pushing friends and coworkers to do the same.
“This is an important election. Support Ken Paxton, and making sure that we keep Texas the way we need to keep it. You know, and just keep it going forward,” he said.
With Paxton’s Senate candidacy after a runoff win against sitting Senator John Cornyn, a renewed call for party unity began from fellow Texas Republicans, including statewide touring by House Speaker and West Texas Representative Dustin Burrows.
Landry described Burrows’ touring as a “bottoms-up” approach: building support for lower-ballot candidates in regions where higher-ballot candidates might be able to pick up extra single-party voters, which could put them over the edge to win the state overall.
“It's about how they need [Paxton's] party label, need his seat to maintain control, and that's been a great credit to Burrows' tour this entire time,” Landry said.
Democrats appear to be trying similar strategies through the 2026 midterm campaign, touring events like James Talarico’s Lubbock rally with a full slate of West Texas Democratic candidates for the Texas House, State Senate, and U.S. Congress, many of whom are running in their first political races for Republican-held seats that have historically gone unchallenged.
“They're trying to also do some ‘coattails’ here to get some support for them too,” Landry added. “Which, as we know, will bubble up to the top.”
Landry said he expected attendance at both rallies to largely consist of those who have already made up their minds, but he added the real target for both campaigns is those who are connected at the fringes: undecided new residents of West Texas, and the older native Republicans who have not yet settled on whether they can support Paxton.
“The president's trying to get his people who've already voted motivated to get more people to vote,” he explained. “Whereas Talarico is trying to get a different demographic excited to vote, people who have already voted for him, who might be interested in getting more people to vote for that.”
Outside of the Republican rally, Gayle Walker said she’s never been political before. This year she said she felt motivated, but not necessarily by Republican candidates.
“It wasn't really the Republicans. It was the socialism, the DSA [Democratic Socialists of America] that I am against. I don't want Islam to take over America. They don't belong here. They are not part of our foundation,” Walker said.
While President Trump said he would not “allow Sharia Law” and several speakers questioned Talarico’s Christianity, religion was not a primary topic of the Republican rally. Financial relief, border security, and oil and gas were mainstays.
In discussing energy industries, President Trump maintained his previous support for data center development, a subject that has seen bipartisan pushback in West Texas.
Lubbock’s city council, many of whom were in the audience for Trump’s event, recently voted to begin moratorium procedures for the city after a petition from citizens, holding off any large-scale data center project considerations until regulations are in place to protect Lubbock’s natural resources, like water and energy.
President Trump said that data center companies could bring money to West Texas communities.
“They'll pay you a fortune. They'll pay the people. Let them pay the government, the people, lower your taxes. Do all those things. Do whatever the hell you want, but don't turn them down because somebody else is going to take them, and you'll be very unhappy in the long run,” he said.
While Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s candidacy for the U.S. Senate was the reason for the rally, he only spoke for about three minutes. Instead of his own policy, he spoke about his admiration for the president and pushed for Republican Party unity in the state.
“The election may depend on West Texas,” Paxton said. “You are the most Republican area of our state, and so I'm going to ask you for the next seven days, get every Republican out to vote, and we will win Texas.”
Grasping for those margins of citizens who don’t vote consistently is what Landry believes has brought political figures to make their atypical appearances in West Texas this year, both Republican and Democrat.
Since the last midterms, the number of registered voters in Lubbock County has ballooned from around 183,000 in 2022 to more than 204,000 in 2026, and Democrats are just as eager to find out where those voters will land.
Paxton’s democratic opponent James Talarico was also in Lubbock Tuesday night for his own campaign rally – at the Fiesta Center. According to Talarico’s team, 4,000 people registered to attend. Folks were lined up for blocks through the neighborhood around the venue.
Mike Montanez is a lifelong Lubbock resident, and while he is not a Republican or a Democrat, he said he wanted to come out and support Talarico coming to Lubbock – and to East Lubbock specifically.
“The area of this facility is in an underserved community, and so for us to have this many people gathered and come out here to this specific neighborhood, I think it really shows the humanity behind Talarico's campaign,” he said.
Zarea Bocanegra and Bryson Owens are both Texas Tech students who grew up in East Lubbock. They said they're glad that candidates are coming out to West Texas.
“We just have a really rich history and really good resources, and I think that in the right hands, those can be used for good and be used positively,” Bocanegra said. “And it really just means a lot that the hub city is getting so much light because, quite frankly, we need it.”
“I'm excited that we're seen for more than just football and Texas Tech,” Owens added. “I'm glad that these candidates are actually seeing the people and the residents, the people that are affected by – I mean, West Texas, we're like data centers left and right, and I'm really excited to see people that are willing to help change that and to help us as Lubbock citizens.”
The desire for change was a shared talking point across Democratic speakers. Topics like affordability, education, the war in the Middle East and campaign financiers appeared throughout the evening.
Riley Rodriquez is the Democratic candidate for Texas Senate District 28. Speaking at the rally, he said that the current systems work for politicians, not people.
“It's because of their policies,” Rodriquez said, “that we have data centers in our communities ripping up our land, that we have Flock [cameras] on our highways and in our city streets, and why we have a system that protects the greedy and punishes the needy. They don't work for us; they work for them, and they always have. And we have to change that.”
Despite jabs at Paxton and others within the Republican Party for their associations with billionaires – Talarico continued to stress his message of reaching across party lines: praising his former Republican colleagues in the state legislature who voted to impeach Paxton, and calling for bipartisan efforts to strengthen public education and health access in Texas.
“We're done with the politics of division, and we are ready for something new. We are welcoming everybody, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike, into this movement to take back power for working people,” Talarico said.
While he doesn’t expect any red West Texas seats to flip this year, government professor Drew Landry said he’s expecting closer races than many West Texas Democrats have ever seen, and they may have Ken Paxton to thank for it.
“I think a lot of that stems from the weak Republican candidacy of Ken Paxton,” Landry explained. “I think that's going to be a big motivating factor for these people to vote for Democrats, as opposed to liking what Democrats are saying, liking what they actually want to do; it's more like anti-Paxton.”
Early voting for the midterm elections runs through Friday, Oct. 30. Election Day is November 3.
You can find more coverage from Lubbock and across the state here.