Houston · the strongest Democratic and Republican presidential performances recorded here, measured three ways.
1912–2024 · 29 presidential cycles
Highest vote share
Largest share of the presidential candidate vote cast here.
Democratic
Franklin D. Roosevelt1936
87.7%
98,954 votes · D+75.7
Runner-up · Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932 · 86.5%
Republican
Richard Nixon1972
63.1%
495,167 votes · R+26.8
Runner-up · Ronald Reagan, 1984 · 62.3%
Most votes
Largest number of votes cast for the party’s presidential nominee here.
Democratic
Joe Biden2020
1,368,169votes
48.5% of the vote · R+1.6
Runner-up · Kamala Harris, 2024 · 1,248,751 votes
Republican
Donald Trump2024
1,509,908votes
53.9% of the vote · R+9.3
Runner-up · Donald Trump, 2020 · 1,414,630 votes
Best relative to the U.S.
This Place’s margin against the national margin in the same election — positive when it leaned toward the party more than the country did.
Democratic
John W. Davis1924
+71.4pts D vs U.S.
Place D+46.3 · U.S. R+25.2
Runner-up · Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932 · +55.9 pts
Republican
George W. Bush2000
+18.6pts R vs U.S.
Place R+18.1 · U.S. D+0.5
Runner-up · Mitt Romney, 2012 · +17.4 pts
presidential primaries
Nominating contests
Houston · how this place’s counties split between candidates in each party’s presidential nominating contest, cycle by cycle. A primary is a contest inside one party, so it has no Democratic–Republican margin and is not part of the general-election record above.
Akashic reports votes cast, not delegates awarded. The two can disagree: Clinton led the 2008 national primary popular vote by less than half a point and did not win the nomination.
Primary returns are published at county grain and there is no roll-up above it. Each cell counts how many of this place’s counties a candidate led — a count of records, not a vote total. Who led the place as a whole is not knowable from these returns, because county rows carry a leader and a lead but no per-candidate votes.
Presidential nominating contests in Houston, by party and cycle.
○no contest record — Akashic holds no result for that party and cycle here. It is not a claim that no contest was held. Telling apart a contest that was cancelled, one that went uncontested, and one simply not yet ingested needs a nominating-contest calendar, which is a separate ingest from results and does not exist yet.
Republican presidential primaries are not yet ingested — the Republican series runs from 1856 and is in scope. The row is kept so its absence is visible: a Democratic-only panel would otherwise read as though no one else held a contest.
Akashic carries 10 states for 2012 and 3 states for 2024. Cycles in which an incumbent president seeks renomination are thin by nature — few states run a contested primary — so a sparse column is politics, not a hole in the record.
County returns carry a leader and a lead over the runner-up, and nothing more. The full candidate field with vote shares is published at state grain — follow a cycle above to the state contest for it.
voter registration
Registered voters
Total registered voters, over time
Registered voters
Voter registration in Houston
Year
Total registered
2016
3,672,668
2018
3,780,508
2020
4,150,516
2022
4,349,408
2024
4,605,530
domestic migration
Who moves in and out
Net domestic migration over time
+9,069 net domestic migration · 2025
20112025
Net +423,890 over 2011–2025 · gain loss
Domestic migration in Houston in Houston: net domestic migration by year
Year
Net domestic migration
2011
+23,534
2012
+38,487
2013
+55,682
2014
+67,695
2015
+64,927
2016
+29,438
2017
−6,958
2018
−8,022
2019
+8,944
2021
+31,236
2022
+41,890
2023
+45,974
2024
+21,994
2025
+9,069
The Houston media market anchors the country's most ethnically diverse major metro, where Latino, Asian-American, and Black voters together outnumber non-Hispanic white voters — a demographic tilt that has steadily compressed Republican margins in Harris County since 2016.
Across the recorded series it reached a Democratic high of 75.7 points in 1936 and a Republican high of 26.8 points in 1972. Between 2020 and 2024 the market moved 7.7 points toward the Republican candidate; the 2024 margin was 9.3 points.
A population of 7,791,979, a 34% non-Hispanic-white share, and a median household income of $82,767 describe the market. The market's voting pattern over the last decade is most similar to that of Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio.
Akashic
Political twins — media markets
The media markets whose fingerprint — 2000–2024 trajectory, demographics, ancestry, religion — sits closest to this one, and why.
Twin score (0–100) = weighted cosine between tier-standardized fingerprints: presidential margins 2000–2024 with 12-yr trend and elasticity, ACS income, age, education, population and race, top reported ancestries, and religious adherence — chips name the closest-shared dimensions and the widest gap. Re-weight the groups in the twins explorer.
Compare two places, side by side
Twelve curated comparisons line up election history, demographics, and the divergence story for two places at a glance. Browse all comparisons →
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Houston, Texas. Akashic. https://akashic.app/dma/618/. Accessed May 20, 2026. License: CC BY 4.0.
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In 2024, Houston, Texas voted Republican by 9.3 points (R+9.3), carried by the Republican candidate. Out of 2,803,366 votes cast, 1,248,751 went Democratic and 1,509,908 went Republican.
When did Houston, Texas last vote Democratic?
The most recent presidential election in which Houston, Texas voted Democratic was 1964.
How many people live in Houston, Texas?
Houston, Texas has a population of 7,791,979 according to the 2024 American Community Survey 5-year estimates from the US Census Bureau.
What is the median household income in Houston, Texas?
Median household income in Houston, Texas is $82,767 — above the national median of $80,734. The Texas state median is $78,476.
What is the political history of Houston, Texas?
Akashic tracks 34 presidential elections in Houston, Texas from 1892 to 2024. Of those, 11 went Democratic and 18 went Republican.
