Tangled up in Blue

If you are surprised and shocked by the blue tsunami, then you haven’t been paying attention. If you’ve been sharing those ridiculous memes that claim millions of Democrats mysteriously showed up to vote, then you haven’t been paying attention.

I’ve been watching both sides of the political aisle. I’ve been analyzing people’s reactions to various issues and events. Since Trump was elected to his second term, I’ve been observing a fascinating shift in society’s political spectrum. Not so much a trend toward the left, as a growing movement away from Trump.

Some of the earliest departures from MAGA I saw was amongst the Hispanics. They and/or their friends, family and coworkers were harassed and attacked by ICE. American citizens, including Native Americans, were targeted because of their skin color. Hispanics who had voted for Trump soured on him because of this.

Then the tariffs went into effect. These badly hurt small businesses and farmers. Many of those who had voted for Trump grew very angry with him. Some of them said they would never vote again.

Next came the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). It’s being enacted in phases; the first of those went into effect in July, 2025. The farmers got hurt some more, and the working poor, disabled and elderly lost many of their benefits, increasing their struggle to survive. More people turned against Trump.

I could give many more examples of factors which have contributed to the growing anti-Trump sentiments, but I’ll stop with those examples.

As the midterms began coming closer, I saw an increasing number of Republicans declare they would be voting for Democrats (some of them for the first time ever), or they had decided they just simply wouldn’t vote because they refused to vote for either party.

It’s impossible to know the real percentage, but if only 10% of Republicans voted Democrat or didn’t vote at all, it was enough for the blue tsunami.

Yeah, those of us who were paying attention saw that coming.

Voting Stats

Following are some voting stats of interest. These are mostly for Texas, both because that’s where I am, and because more eyes were on Texas for the midterms than for any other one state.

Entire country, number of votes cast (rounded)

2026 Midterms: 124 million people voted

2024 Presidential election: 154 million people voted

2022 Midterms: 112 million people voted

Those “mysterious” new Democratic voters aren’t a thing.

Pay attention.

According to the 2024 Election Administration and Voting Survey, Texas processed about 5.1 million voter registration transactions between the 2022 and 2024 elections.

Of those, about 2.9 million were classified as “new valid registrations.” But that doesn’t necessarily mean that many people registered to vote for the first time. The figure can also include people who moved to Texas from another state or between counties within Texas.

Notably, during that same period, Texas removed nearly 1.8 million voter registration records from its rolls. Such removals can occur when voters move, die or become ineligible to vote.

The report also shows Texas processed more than 2.1 million updates to existing registrations.

Overall, state data shows that Texas had about 17.7 million total registered voters in 2022, with 18.6 million in 2024 — a net increase of roughly 952,000.

Links of Interest

These are the sites where I found the bulk of the stats I looked up.

The Office of the Texas Secretary of State

Election Lab

Ballotpedia

Census (search the archives)

Texas Tribune