Politics of Texas

For approximately 100 years, from the end of Reconstruction until the 1990s, the Democratic Party was dominant in Texas politics. After renewed competition from the Populist Party in the late 19th century and loss of a Congressional seat in 1896 and 1898 to a Republican elected by a plurality, the Democratic Party ensured its control by disfranchising most blacks, and many poor whites and Latinos, through imposition of the poll tax and white primaries in the early 20th century, as did other former Confederate states. These exclusions lasted until after passage of civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s. In a reversal of alignments, since the late 1960s the Republican Party has grown more prominent within the state. By the mid-1990s, it became the state's dominant political party. This trend mirrors a national political realignment that has seen the once solidly Democratic South, initially dependent on disfranchisement of minorities, become increasingly dominated by Republicans. But growth among the Hispanic or Latino population in Texas, which favors the Democratic Party, may shift party alignments in the long term.