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Biden Could Become The First Democratic Presidential Candidate To Win Tarrant County Since 1964

Paul Sancya
/
Associated Press

Tarrant County is still counting mail-in votes, but in the current count, Joe Biden has a few hundred more votes than President Donald Trump. It's a leftward shift for a county that has been reliably Republican for decades.

Tarrant County is known the largest urban, conservative county in Texas, but the 2020 presidential race could change that, at least at the top of the ticket.

The elections office is still counting ballots, but in the current count, Joe Biden has 427 more votes than President Donald Trump.

In 2016, Trump won Tarrant County by more than 57,000 votes.

On Twitter Wednesday, Tarrant County Elections said it was still going through more than 15,000 mail-in ballots, which it planned to finish counting by Friday evening.

University of Texas at Arlington political science professor Tom Marshall said Democrats in Tarrant County have benefited from a younger population and a polarizing president. But he said not to expect the area to turn completely blue for at least a few years.

"I think that the way we would see that change is if Democrats can prove they can win in Tarrant County in races which are countywide or statewide races, beyond an unpopular Republican," he said.

A Democratic presidential candidate hasn't carried Tarrant County since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.

No matter what the final count is in Tarrant County, it won’t affect where Texas’s electoral college votes go. According to NPR’s latest count, Trump won Texas with 52.2% of the vote.

Miranda Suarez is an award-winning reporter who started at KERA News in 2020. Before joining “NTX Now,” she covered Tarrant County government, with a focus on deaths in the local jail. Her work drives discussion at local government meetings and has led to real-world change — like the closure of a West Texas private prison that violated the state’s safety standards. A Massachusetts native, Miranda got her start in journalism at WTBU, Boston University’s student radio station. She later worked at WBUR as a business desk fellow, and while reporting for Boston 25 News, she received a New England Emmy nomination for her investigation into mental‑health counseling services at Massachusetts colleges and universities.