At 27, Javon Daniels will vote for the first time on November 3 in the U.S. midterm elections. He will be the first member of his family to cast a ballot. He also believes he will be one of the few in his neighborhood to do so — Third Ward, a predominantly Black community southeast of Houston where nearly 43% of residents live below the poverty line.
“I come from a community that doesn’t know much about voting. We really don’t care,” Daniels tells EL PAÍS from the Wheeler Baptist Church he attends, where Democratic Senate candidate for Texas James Talarico campaigned in September. “A lot of Black people in my community don’t take voting seriously because we feel it doesn’t make a difference in our lives.”
His parents, siblings, and close relatives think voting is “stupid.” Daniels says gang violence, gun crime, and drugs have pulled in young Black people in his neighborhood — even inside schools — and that no politician is interested in finding a solution.
Third Ward, where Daniels grew up, had a violent crime rate in 2016 three times higher than the Houston average (1,026 per 100,000 residents). And between 2024 and 2025, while homicides fell across much of the city, they rose in that neighborhood.
“It’s been really hard for me to have opportunities. People in my community have to fight very hard, dealing with what we live through plus a very poor education,” he says.
Daniels, who is pursuing a master’s degree in cybersecurity, says he has been studying his choice on the Texas Senate ballot. He says the problems in Third Ward — known as the cradle of Black civil rights in Houston — are a challenge candidates must address if they want to win Black communities’ votes.
And in Texas, where Democrats have not won a statewide race since 1994, that electorate can affect the outcome. Estimates from the Pew Research Center in 2024 put the state’s number of eligible Black voters at 2.7 million people.
Michael Adams, director of the Master of Public Administration program at the University of the South of Texas, says that figure may not translate into votes if Black voters’ loyalty to a party is not met with reciprocal attention to their needs.
A Democratic or Republican vote?
Aware of the electoral weight Black Texans can hold, the campaigns of Talarico and Republican candidate Ken Paxton have visited churches, convention centers and communities in attempts to court those voters. Analysts say it would help the Democrat to have the support in the campaign of his opponent in the primaries: state representative Jasmine Crockett, who is Black.
The University of the South of Texas surveyed 500 Black voters in the state between July 27 and August 2. Among the findings: 77% agreed that the Democratic Party takes this community’s vote for granted. Still, 71% viewed Talarico favorably, a level of support not shared by his Republican opponent, Attorney General Paxton: only 11% had a favorable view of him.
Kathy Evans Jackson, a 64-year-old former teacher who did not take part in the survey, agrees with that view of Republican politicians in the race, and includes Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and Paxton. “They don’t care about us. They only want control, and while we suffer, they get richer,” she says.
“Everything related to them involves racism,” she adds.
Evans, who has voted Democratic in every election for the past 27 years — like most Black women in the United States — is worried about the county’s influence on changes to public school curricula, which places greater pressure on students and their teachers to meet performance targets. She is also concerned about rising costs for utilities, rent, and gasoline: “I see how my community is doing and I’m not happy with the direction we’re going.”
For her, Republicans “have simply stopped standing up for people; they’ve conceded to whatever Trump says.”
In Texas, voters have also focused on a candidate’s moral fitness, especially in the Senate race. Brian Gathright, an independent voter in his sixties, says he could not vote for someone who has been investigated for corruption, like Paxton. Talarico was not his first choice, but he has moved toward him because he believes the candidate can “potentially” influence improvements on some community priorities, including greater access to affordable health insurance, Medicaid. “Healthcare should be a right, not a privilege,” he says.
Under Abbott’s administration, Texas became one of the few states that decided not to expand affordable health coverage to include more low-income Texans. This has contributed to the state having the highest rate of uninsured people in the country: in 2022, the Census Bureau put that rate at over 16%, while the national rate was 8%.
Gathright says he does not identify with the Republican Party because its politicians have focused on issues “that have nothing to do with me”: “Housing costs, health insurance — those are the real issues.” His distance from the Democratic Party has grown because, he says, “they make a lot of promises, but I’ve seen few results.”
Despite that, Gathright feels Democrats would care more about the problems of Black Americans.
Professor Adams explains that Black Americans’ historical support for political parties has been linked to politicians’ responses defending their civil rights and causes — from the abolition of slavery and recognition of Black people as citizens to voting rights and representation of their communities in government posts.
“Black voters have been closely tied to the Democratic Party; we have been loyal,” he says. A Pew survey of more than 5,000 U.S. adults between January 30 and June 18, 2026, showed that 73% of Black respondents align with the Democratic Party.
“But what has that loyalty meant for Black voters in practical terms?” the professor asks. For Adams, the answer will become clear in November, when we find out how many of those voters actually turn out to vote.
Javon Daniels, Brian Gathright, and Kathy Evans Jackson will vote for Talarico for the Senate seat.
Unlike the rest of his family, Daniels does feel his vote matters. He wants to fully understand the impact that exercising this right can have so he can educate his community. He still doesn’t believe voting will solve all his neighborhood’s problems: “It will take a lot of work,” he says, “but we have to keep fighting to make sure our voice is heard. Voting gives us a voice.”
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