Black voters gave Talarico 90% of their votes. He says they should be treated as swing voters.

Black voters gave James Talarico about 90% of their votes on Nov. 3, and Texas elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate. Now Talarico says what his own campaign learned the hard way: “We have to start treating Black voters as swing voters,” as the Houston Defender reported Friday.

Black Texans were 12% of the state’s electorate, according to the figures the Defender cited. Among them, 93% of Black women and 86% of Black men voted for Talarico, and a New York Times estimate put Black support at 91%, a 16-point jump from 2024. Statewide he beat Republican Ken Paxton, 55% to 43%. In Harris County’s plurality-Black precincts, he took 86%, a 74-point margin.

That is a different picture from the one Democrats feared in the spring. Reuters reported in April that Talarico faced a “tough test” with Black voters, many of whom had backed Rep. Jasmine Crockett in a bruising primary. The coalition held.

The turnout behind the margin is large. Harris County, which includes Houston, counted 1,392,280 ballots, about half of its 2.76 million registered voters, according to the Defender. ABC13 reported the count was a quarter higher than in 2022. More than 1 million of those ballots were cast before Election Day, 26% above the early vote in 2018 and 44% above 2022.

The polls missed it. ABC13 found the final average had Talarico ahead by about 3 points. He won by 12. Gina Hinojosa, the Democrat who beat Gov. Greg Abbott, was projected to trail by 3.5 points and won by 7.

The numbers make a plain argument. Black voters were 12% of the electorate and gave the Democratic ticket close to nine in 10 of their votes, in a turnout the polls did not see coming. They did not wait to be asked twice.

The Defender framed what comes next as reciprocity: a historic sweep, and now a bill due. Democrats who owe their statewide wins to these precincts should read it that way, and Talarico’s own words set the standard. Swing voters get courted between elections, not only before them. What he does with this mandate in his first months will show whether he meant it.