Democrats Swept Texas, and the Author of Red, White & Royal Blue Says “It Was All in the Binder”
by Sari Moon · Thought CatalogBy Sari Moon
Updated 34 seconds ago, November 9, 2026
On Nov. 3, Democrats swept every statewide Texas contest. James Talarico beat Ken Paxton 55.1% to 43%, Gina Hinojosa beat Greg Abbott 52.8% to 45.7%, and the Associated Press called the state House for Democrats too.
In “Red, White & Royal Blue,” a 2023 gay romcom, that exact move, flipping Texas, is Alex Claremont-Diaz’s whole plan to get his mother a second term. The fictional Texas Binder turns the state blue and wins a presidential election, and the film is suddenly getting a rewatch bump right after Texas actually went blue.
Author Casey McQuiston noticed. Under a Taylor Zakhar Perez post captioned “History, huh?” they replied, “It was all in the binder.”
After Abbott conceded, McQuiston posted, “Blexas not so silly now, is it,” and added, “I didn’t pull blexas out of my ass 10 years ago i simply looked around and saw it.”
They conceived the book during the 2016 election, and St. Martin’s Griffin published it in May 2019. The film hit Prime Video in August 2023 with Zakhar Perez as Alex and Nicholas Galitzine as Prince Henry, and Amazon called it the No. 1 movie worldwide that opening weekend.
Whether it’s genuinely surging now is murkier. A fan screenshot claimed it was “currently trending,” but FlixPatrol’s worldwide Prime top 10 for Nov. 6 didn’t list it, and JustWatch had it 666th on its U.S. daily chart.
The result isn’t a clean sweep either. Republicans were expected to keep the Texas Senate, so what Texas got is a divided state government rather than the storybook blue wave.
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