Ken Paxton (Republican) is the Attorney General of Texas, and has won three statewide races for that office. He knocked out four-term incumbent John Cornyn in a run-off earlier this year to win the party nomination for the General Election.
James Talarico (Democrat) is the Texas state representative who defeated Jasmine Crockett in the Democrat primary earlier this year to earn the party’s Senate nomination. If elected, he will be the first Democrat since 1994 to win a statewide race.
The overwhelming theme of all 2026 analysis of Texas should be the same - if all of that red votes, then Texas will be red. The struggle with all of the work put into that endeavor so far ties directly to the fact that Texas has open primaries and does not register voters by party, whereas Florida closes primaries and does have party registration. We can watch it live as every vote comes in and know definitively in which direction the electorate is headed.
Texas’s presidential baseline is perhaps more imposing to Democrats’ long-term hopes than any before it, even those elections George W. Bush won by more than Trump’s +13.7% margin in 2024. The bedrock of that victory was a historic performance with Latino voters - 55% of them backed Trump:
While some of its urban counties, especially Dallas and Travis, have gone the way of their counterparts in the past 20 years (mega-blue), Harris (which contains Houston) and Bexar (San Antonio) have large working-class populations which have kept the county margins from getting out of control against Republicans. The rural areas of Texas are overwhelmingly Republican, and even more so now that rural South Texas has lurched in the same direction.
Democrats must have low Republican turnout, large swings in a small handful of counties, and overwhelming turnout in four blue bubbles (Harris, Bexar, Travis, Dallas Counties) to win a statewide election in Texas - something they haven’t done since 1994.
2026, thanks to its place on the calendar and in the electoral cycles, gives them their best shot in years to do just that, and they mostly have their eyes set on the Senate race between James Talarico and Ken Paxton, which I will profile after the end of in-person early voting.
Presidential Margins
2016 Trump +9.0%
2020 Trump +5.6%
2024 Trump +13.7%
Key Statistics
40.2% Hispanic, 39.3% White, 11.6% Black, 5.1% Asian
III. Market Assessment
Despite most of the bets being on Paxton, whales are betting on Talarico and creating an illusion that has little basis in a historical concept, given no Democrat wins statewide in 32 years.
IV. History
Democrats last had a United States Senator representing Texas in 1993, when Bob Krueger lost a special election to Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison. Krueger had replaced Lloyd Bentsen, Michael Dukakis’s choice for vice president in 1988, who had become Secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton earlier that year.
Hutchison then proceeded to be elected for a full term in 1994, then reelected by massive margins in 2000 and 2006. She had expected to turn the seat over to David Dewhurst, but Ted Cruz got in the way, won the nomination, and has sat in that seat ever since first elected in 2012 and seated in 2013. As a side note, Cruz is perhaps the most annoying senator in the Republican universe, and I hope to see him appointed to the Supreme Court so we can avoid having to listen to him doom on and on about Texas:
Cruz and practically every other shaky Republican appearing on cable news is spooked about this year’s race because of this result from 2018:
The seat Paxton and Talarico are vying for has been in Republican hands since John Tower was elected in 1961 to finish the term begun by none other than Lyndon B. Johnson, who vacated it to become John F. Kennedy’s vice president. Tower made the handoff to Phil Gramm in 1984, and in 2002, John Cornyn was elected to take over. While I’m on the topic of Cornyn, if for some reason Talarico defies the odds and wins this seat, you can blame Cornyn and his endless millions spent on attack ads against Paxton when he should have just retired after giving us this garbage:
Yes, Cornyn had his worst years of voting in the four years of the Trump 45 administration, yet he sits online like a scorned teen wondering why the GOP primary voters rejected him - all while praying Paxton loses.
V. Analysis of 2026 Primary Results
Both sides had damaging primaries, the Republicans more so.
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