Turnout was dismal in the May 3 local elections in Texas — which comes as no surprise to anyone who has ever watched local results trickle in.

Around 10% of voters (give or take) turned out in various localities, although not every Texas voter had a contested election on their local ballot this month. It has only been six months since the 2024 presidential election, in which over 60% of registered voters hit the polls — leaving many in the political trenches to wonder where a large portion of that 50 percent ran off to.

Conservatives, hoping emboldened Donald Trump and MAGA voters would catapult their candidates and positions on local referenda to victory, suffered numerous defeats across the Lone Star State. Leftist strategists were quick to label this as a referendum on Trump’s first 100 days in office as well as a stern rebuke to the Texas Legislature passing school choice following years of budgetary standoffs.

It has become clear the Democrats were the more hotly motivated sellers this time, focusing much energy and money on local races that have historically been “non-partisan” but have increasingly become red versus blue affairs. By contrast, have Republican voters become too ‘Trumpfortable” with so many wins coming from the White House over the past half-year?

Let’s take a look around Texas from Saturday night’s unofficial results.

DFW: The Texas Tribune considered Fort Worth to be the epicenter of numerous school board battles across Texas, where “mama bears” and deep-pocketed interests have weighed in numbers not seen in decades. Yet overall losses were suffered by them in nearby suburbs including Arlington, Grapevine-Colleyville, Keller, and Mansfield Independent School Districts (ISDs), where liberal interest groups and local Democratic parties and clubs made endorsements. Former Tarrant County Democratic Party Chairman Deborah Peoples won outright among a field of six candidates for a seat on Fort Worth’s City Council. Back to Mansfield, Julie Short was unable to unseat Mansfield Mayor Michael Evans despite a well-funded campaign from conservative PACs.

AUSTIN: The Travis County GOP sounded the alarm about the Democratic National Committee being involved in a race in Lake Travis ISD, just west of Austin. Nonetheless, three conservative challengers suffered defeats, but only by around 2 or 3 percentage points. In Leander, just northwest of Austin, the City Council saw two of three conservative candidates win, returning the council to a mix of conservatives and liberals. The margin of victory there was less than 100 votes. The one solid conservative left on the Cedar Park City Council was unseated, also northwest of Austin. And one moderate remains on the Pflugerville ISD board, just north of Austin, where a board member of nearly three decades was taken out.

HOUSTON: Katy ISD board president Victor Perez was ousted by a liberal opponent critical of the board’s actions on removing pornographic content in campus libraries and sexualized titles in classroom reading lists. The board also required bathrooms be used according to biological gender, as assigned at birth. Fort Bend ISD, the Texas Tribune also noted, also saw defeats for the coalition opposed to age-inappropriate texts.

SAN ANTONIO: The San Antonio Mayoral race entered runoff mode after 27 candidates came down to two — former Air Force Undersecretary Gina Ortiz Jones and former Texas Secretary of State Rolando Pablos. Districts 1, 8 and 9 all feature liberal versus conservative matchups, and two progressives will duke it out in District 6. Stay tuned there, but be ready for an even more dismal turnout in June.

“A strange sensation crept across all of progressive Texas on Sunday, and that was the unfamiliar sensation of victory,” liberal advocacy group Progress Texas messaged this week, referencing three decades of GOP dominance of statewide posts and conservative voting trends in the suburbs.

As for conservatives? We spoke Gerry Ward, a supporter for Jessica Howard, a conservative challenging the socially moderate board chairman of the Lake Travis ISD:

I did a fair share of block walking for Jessica Howard. When I would speak to my precinct’s Republican voters, who had a good record of voting in past elections, all they wanted to talk about was on the national level, what DOGE was doing, and if Trump’s agenda for the country had a chance? When I tried to redirect back to local politics and why a conservative school board mattered (even if they didn’t have school aged kids) it went back to deer in the headlights look and almost dead silence. Even those that said they would (vote) didn’t.

People were friendly enough and only one person encountered was rude and refused to speak on the subject. By coincidence I met her in public later and asked why she felt the way she did? She said that all politicians at all levels are entering a race for the wrong reasons these days and none are worth voting for… so, why bother.

That mindset is revealing and troublesome at the same time. Apathy is rampant in our society right now. No idea how to turn it around.

From the Hip

Mid-term elections are usually difficult for the incumbent president’s party to win in down-ballot races; 2025 may be a precursor to that.

Local conservative voters are largely comfortable with Trump’s efforts to reform the nation and are optimistic those are having an effect. But they have little interest in local issues which are dwarfed by such major headlines coming at them on a daily basis. Add this to the hurdles Republicans will face in 2026 and liberals may be looking to pick up some more seats. As Team Trump pushes harder with the time 47 has left, we can expect more motivation among the Left where they can win, especially in our “urban suburbs.”