Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) won his home state of Texas on Super Tuesday, but it was GOP frontrunner Donald Trump that did the best along the border.
The Guardian reports.:
A candidate who has described Mexicans as rapists and criminals and whose core immigration plan is to make Mexico pay for a giant wall ought not to prosper on the southern border. Yet Donald Trump was embraced on Tuesday by voters in America’s most Hispanic city. Trump won almost 35% of the Republican primary vote in Webb County, where Laredo is the county seat, comfortably ahead of Marco Rubio (28.4%) and Ted Cruz (28.2%), the Hispanic senator from Texas who finished first in the state overall.
The area is known to be largely Democrat and mostly Hispanic, but “[despite] the limited GOP voter pool, it is notable – and jarring – that Trump should not only triumph here but generally perform better in border counties than in the Texas interior, where Cruz was in command.”
The Guardian reports the election results suggest Trump’s tough position and rhetoric on illegal immigration hasn’t hurt him with the Hispanic voters, as Trump won more votes in Webb County, Texas than were cast in the 2012 primary election.
However, the president of the Webb County Young Republicans, Jon Melendez, told The Guardian he thinks Democrat voters turned out for Trump because they think he will be easier to beat in the general election.
“In the fall, the Democrats will be absolutely energized to vote against him,” Melendez speculated.