The Texas Tribune newsroom has reporters across the state tracking the election results. They’ll be posting their observations and analysis below all night.
Here’s are the top things you need to know:
- Gov. Greg Abbott conceded to Gina Hinojosa, in a stunning upset. Hinojosa, a state representative from Austin, will be the first Democratic governor since Ann Richards lost her reelection bid in 1994. She will become Texas’ first Latina governor.
- James Talarico won Texas’ U.S. Senate seat. The Democrat defeated Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican.
- You can see vote totals for all statewide and legislative races here.
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On CBS News, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett declared that the GOP will not pick up the five seats they hoped to pick up from redistricting.
Talarico has 40% of the early vote in Potter County, the other half of Amarillo in the very conservative Texas Panhandle. That's an extraordinarily strong number. Beto got 30% in 2018.
Here's a wild result: In early returns, every statewide Democratic candidate is leading the Republican by double digits in Tarrant County, the top bellwether county we're keeping an eye on.
No results from the Rio Grande Valley — yet, where the Democrats, especially Talarico, spent a lot of time. We’re also watching three congressional races down there that Republicans hoped to sweep. We’ll learn soon whether their efforts to redistrict the state paid off.
Early returns in the closely watched State Board of Education District 2 race, representing the Rio Grande Valley, have Democrat Thomas Ray Garcia leading Republican Victoria Hinojosa 54% to 46%, with roughly 14% of votes counted.
The seat is currently occupied by Republican LJ Francis, who narrowly won in 2022 but lost in the March GOP primary.
Early voting in Collin County has Talarico with an edge. Collin County is a really big bellwether suburb. It's never gone blue, and it's the home county of Ken Paxton.
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An eye-opening early vote total: James Talarico with a nearly 10-point lead in traditionally conservative Brazos County, home of Texas A&M University. These early voting results are showing some real surprises, and Republicans are going to need a very strong showing on Election Day to erase these deficits.
Like in 2018, Talarico's performance atop the ticket could pull Democrats across the finish line in down-ballot races, including for the Texas House. Talarico's eye-popping leads in the suburbs are looking especially problematic for the GOP: state Rep. Caroline Harris Davila is trailing significantly in Williamson County's House District 52, and state Rep. Gary Gates is narrowly behind his Democratic opponent in Fort Bend County. Democrats currently hold 62 seats in the 150-seat Texas House, meaning they need to net 14 to claim the majority.
Early voting results so far show Jon Rosenthal outperforming his opponent, Bo French, in counties the GOP commanded in the primary runoff, including Denton and Tarrant in North Texas, and industrial Corpus Christi and Fort Bend counties.
To be at James Talarico’s election night HQ in deep-blue Austin is to be engulfed in cheers every time Steve Kornacki on the big screen shows us a Democratic lead across the country, even though the night is still young. The mood here is festive, with a band playing in the background and kids slurping down Amy’s ice cream cones.
An interesting early data point from the Panhandle: Talarico so far has 29% of the vote in Randall County, which includes Amarillo. Beto O'Rourke got just 20 percent in 2018.
A couple notes as we flood this blog. It is still early. We are still waiting to see early returns from some key counties, like Montgomery, which has long been a reliable Republican stronghold for decades.
In deep-blue Dallas county, Talarico leads the early vote drop, 73% to 25% (+48.) By comparison, Colin Allred won the EV drop here in 2024 (his home county) by 28 percent.
In a highly watched race for Texas Senate District 9, which Democrat Taylor Rehmet flipped in a January special election, Leigh Wambsganss is down but by a tinier margin than other Republicans in the early returns from Tarrant County. The district is partially in the county. President Trump won SD-9 two years ago by 17.4 points. Wambsganss has vastly outspent Rehmet.
In early voting totals out of Tarrant County, County Judge Tim O’Hare is down as are two Republican allies running for commissioners court. O’Hare has authored a playbook to implement far right policies through local government.
Early vote returns from Tarrant County show Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate James Talarico leading Republican AG Ken Paxton by 21 points.
State Rep. Gina Hinojosa, Democrat candidate for governor, leads incumbent Republican Gov. Greg Abbott by 16.6 points.
President Donald Trump won Tarrant County by 5 points in 2024.
Talarico is strongly overperforming Kamala Harris and Colin Allred's 2024 margins in the suburban early vote. He won the early vote drop in Tarrant County (Fort Worth + suburbs) by 21 percentage points, Denton (north of Tarrant) by 9 percentage points and Williamson (outside Austin) by 24%.
We have an early vote drop of 293k ballots in Denton County. This is a bellwether — it voted a hair to the left of the state in 2024; Trump won it by 13%. Talarico leads this drop 53.6% to Paxton's 44.8%. Gina Hinojosa is running about 6 points behind Talarico here, leading the drop 51-48.
