Donald Trump is haphazardly plowing ahead with his proposal to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, but among the many obstacles he faces is this one: the areas of Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas that actually abut our southern neighbor strongly opposed the president in 2016. Daily Kos Elections has calculated the results of last year’s presidential election for the nation’s congressional districts, and now The Washington Post’s Philip Bump has smartly put that data to use to show that eight of the nine districts along the border voted against Trump. (Click through to see the WaPo’s excellent interactive map of the region.)
What’s more, three of those seats also elected Republicans last year: Arizona’s 2nd, located in Tucson and its suburbs; New Mexico’s sprawling 2nd; and Texas’s 23rd, which stretches from El Paso to San Antonio. All three are home to substantial Latino populations, and the two districts in Arizona and Texas both voted for Hillary Clinton after having narrowly supported Mitt Romney in 2016. It’s very possible Trump’s border proposals were responsible for that switch.
Texas Rep. Will Hurd, who represents the 23rd, has been vocal in expressing his opposition to the wall, an issue Democrats hammered him over during his re-election campaign last year—a race Hurd won by just 1 percent. Should some form of Trump’s border wall actually come to fruition, that would make Hurd, along with Arizona 2nd District Rep. Martha McSally, obvious targets for Democrats once again.