Republicans have been trying to lure Latinos to identify with the party:
Governor-elect Greg Abbott won with 44 percent of the Latino vote, and Sen. John Cornyn won 48 percent, both improvements over the 38 percent Gov. Rick Perry earned when he was elected in 2011 for his third term.
Republican strategists in the state point out tha Abbott made 17 visits to the heavily Hispanic Rio Grande Valley during his campaign and ran months' worth of ads featuring his Latina wife and mother-in-law. His campaign ran his first Spanish-language spot during the World Cup game between Mexico and Brazil.
"The Latino voters cannot be taken for granted. The right candidate with the right message can make a difference," says Jorge Lima, the policy director for the LIBRE Institute, a nonprofit that promotes free-market principles in the Hispanic Community.
Another factor, Republicans say, that helped Abbott win Latino voters and undermined Democratic efforts in the state, was the candidate Abbott was running against. His Democratic opponent, Wendy Davis, had burst onto the national scene as a fierce defender of abortion rights. Latino voters, however, tend to be much more socially conservative than other Democratic constituencies. While reproductive rights might motivate millennials and single women voters, it's not an issue that drives Latinos to the polls for Democrats in droves.
"The results were partly a backlash against that blatant liberalism from the Davis campaign and from Battleground Texas," Texas-based Republican strategist Ray Sullivan says. "The message she delivered did not play with Hispanic Texans."
