More than 11 million people voted in Texas in the 2020 election -- a number Democrats hoped would lead to either Joe Biden claiming the state or at least wins in down ballot races.
Instead, Republicans held their majority in the Texas House, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn (R) won re-election comfortably and President Donald Trump carried the state by nearly 700,000 votes, or 6 percentage points.
North Texas' four largest counties saw massive voter turnout, and statewide, over 2 million more people voted in 2020 than in 2016.
Biden came closer to winning the Lone Star State than Clinton did four years ago when Trump's margin of victory was 9 points but underperformed what late polls in the state projected.
The last poll of the cycle, released by NBC 5's media partner The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler showed the former vice president with a 3-point lead over Trump among likely voters. The poll's margin of error was 3.08%.
Biden won Dallas County by 32 points (65-33) -- a larger margin than Hilary Clinton won it by in 2016 (61-35) -- but Trump easily won Collin and Denton counties, and hung on to win Tarrant County by less than 1 percentage point.
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The Democratic nominee did improve on Clinton's margins in the North Texas counties he lost. Trump won Denton County 20 points in 2016, but only 8 points this year; Collin County by 17 points versus 5 Tuesday night; and Tarrant county by 8.5, instead of less than 1 in 2020.
Biden, in fact, improved by 1 point on Democratic Senate nominee Beto O'Rourke's losing margin in Collin County, but could not replicate the former congressman's tight victory in Tarrant County.
In another race for which Democrats had lofty hopes, Cornyn won re-election over Democratic nominee MJ Hegar by a 54-44 margin. The result was in the DMN/UT-Tyler poll's margin of error.
The race was the tighest of Cornyn's Senate career, but was still one called for the Republican early in the night.
Cornyn carried Collin County by 12 points, Denton County by 15 points and Tarrant County by 5 points.
Hegar won Dallas County 61% to 36%.
In North Texas races for the U.S. House of Representatives, every incumbent held onto their seat: Rep. Van Taylor (R-Plano), Rep. Ron Wright (R-Arlington), Rep. Kay Granger (R-Fort Worth), Rep. Roger Williams (R-Austin), Rep. Michael Burgess (D-Denton), Rep. Colin Allred (D-Dallas), Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Dallas) and Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Fort Worth).
The lone outstanding result among area House races was the result for Texas' 24th Congressional District, which is an open seat vacated by the retiring Kenny Marchant (R). The district covers parts of Dallas, Denton and Tarrant counties.
Republican nominee and former Irving Mayor Beth Van Duyne declared victory late Tuesday, but her Democratic opponent, former Carrollton ISD school board member Candace Valenzuela, said it was "premature" to concede as of 11 a.m. Wednesday.
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Source: AP
