After a long wait, the 2026 midterms season wewill be kicked off by two riveting races in one of the most interesting – and, to a certain extent, puzzling – states in the nation when voters in Texas will head to the polls on March 3rd.
Both Democrats and Republicans in the Lone Star State will be called to an arduous but consequential decision over who to send to square it off in the November general election in a race that does have the potential of becoming a bell-weather as to which party will hold control of Congress’ upper chamber in the last two years of the Trump Presidency.
If that wasn’t good enough, both US Senate primaries are bound to highlight ideological fault lines inside the parties, potentially offering clues over the broader direction the GOP and Democrats will take in the near future.
Republican Candidates
- Incumbent Senator John Cornyn: John Cornyn is, under many aspects, the epitome of the traditional, establishment, pre-MAGA Republican who has gone out of his way to make himself palatable to the current GOP boss: President Donald Trump. Despite him recently positioning closely to the President’s positions, for instance voting for every Cabinet nominee of his second administration as well as the One, Big Beautiful Bills, his past actions have often ruffled Trump’s feathers. His refusal to embrace the President’s narrative after the 2020 election and his vote for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act after the 2022 Uvalde school shooting has and will cost fierce criticism from the GOP right over his conservative bona fides.
- Incumbent Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton: Cornyn’s main rival, Paxton is as much the poster child of MAGA conservatism as it can get. Rising through the ranks of the Tea Party, his tenure in the state’s government was tarnished after he was impeached by the state House, and later acquitted by the Texas Senate, over bribery and abuse of office charges – Trump’s Department of Justice closed a federal probe into Paxton earlier last year – and a scathing public divorce. Paxton’s voice represents the most conservative, Christian wing of the GOP, and his main line of attack over Cornyn will be casting the incumbent senator as a RINO (“Republican In Name Only”) and out of step with the MAGA world and Trump’s priorities. Still, his staunch conservatism and susceptibility to scandals probably make him the least electable candidate, meaning that should Paxton clinch the GOP nomination, Democrats shots in the Lone Star State would suddenly spike, particularly if the national environment will be as negative as it is seems it will for the GOP.
- US Representative Wesley Hunt (TX-38): Much to the chagrin of the GOP Senate Leadership, which hoped to consolidate anti-Paxton sentiment around support for the incumbent Cornyn, the race was scrambled by the entrance of wild card US Representative Wesley Hunt: a fierce Trump-supporter and Cornyn critic who touts his record support for the president’s agenda and past as a veteran. While his candidacy seems a long shot at the moment, as Hunt is consistently trailing behind Paxton and Cornyn, he may well end up being a spoiler for the GOP primary, since Texas law mandates a runoff if no one reaches 50% of the votes share in the March primary, possibly siphoning off enough votes to require a second round between the incumbent Senator and Attorney General. Hunt’s and Paxton’s aversion against Cornyn seems poised to frame the race as a struggle between the MAGA and the establishment wing of the Republican Party, even though, for now, President Trump has restrained from endorsing any of the candidates despite their campaigns’ jockeying for the President’s support.
Democratic Candidates
- US Representative Jasmine Crockett (TX-30): The progressive firebrand has rose to national prominence through her flashy style as well as major clashes with Trump and the GOP, from a live falling out with former MAGA idol Marjorie Taylor Greene during an Oversight Committee hearing to a eyebrows-raising comment on Texas Governor Greg Abott calling him “Governor Hot Wheels” – Governor Abott uses a wheelchair. She speaks directly to the left wing of the party and those voters who demand Democrats meet fire with fire and stand up fighting tooth and nail against President Trump’s actions, even if this means giving up the infamous “high ground”. Still, her progressive records does raise concerns among Democrats that she might not be in the best position to claim a statewide position the GOP has held since 1993, with some worrying the party may waste a rare opportunity by nominating her if the unpopular Paxton comes on top of the Republican field.
- Texas State Representative James Talarico: Crockett is so prominent inside the party that her decision to chase the nomination almost cleared the field, leading outstanding former candidates like 2022 Senate nominee Collin Allred to drop out of the race and endorse her. Her remaining opponent is popular Texas Representative and Pastor James Talarico. His main stump line – “it’s not left vs. right, it’s top vs. bottom” coupled with his background shows how he may position himself as a palatable option for moderates looking for a unifier as well as voters yearning for someone to take on the issues of inflation and affordability. His economic populism provides all the ingredients for an ideological clash within the Democratic Party, which may be a omen for future races bound to set the course for a highly divided party.
An Ever-Evolving State
Texas’s profound demographic changes have widely shaped its political dynamics. Once a white-majority state with a wide rural population and well-off suburbs, the Lone Star State has remained a GOP stronghold for much of the last 50 years, nurturing traditional Republican stars like former Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush – both hailing from the Houston metro area.
Still, Texas’ racial and social makeup underwent a monumental change compared to the beginning of the 21st Century, transitioning from a White-majority to a Hispanic-plurality state, with Hispanics making up more than 40% of its population in the latest US Census surveys. On top of that, the overall population boomed, as Texas gained 10 million residents in less than 25 years, a 50% increase that far outpaces the 17% spike in US residents over the same span of time – and is reflected in the Lone Star State gaining 6 electoral votes after the 2020 Census compared to the 2000 election, with another increase in its electoral weight in sight ahead of 2030.
Texas’ diversification and fast growing population means Democrats were able to close to gap to the GOP in recent years, setting their sights on eventually flipping a red bastion worth 40 EVs. While the state only narrowly trails the US as a whole in terms of Median House Income and share of population that attained a college degree – two parameters that have increasingly been associated with Democratic leaning – it was Texas’s growing Hispanic population and growing suburbs – coupled with the progressive extinction of the traditional GOP brand – that propelled a remarkable leftwards swing in the latter part of the 2010s. Former President Joe Biden came just 6 points short of flipping a state that last voted for a Democratic presidential nominee in 1976, when Jimmy Carter defeated incumbent Republican Gerald Ford.
But while Trump’s struggle with highly-educated suburban voters was not significantly reversed in 2024, he was able to make significant gains among the Hispanic population, in particular with working-class Hispanic men. All of a sudden, as Democrats keep making inroads into well-off, White voters, Texas’s high diversity turned from a source of hope into a vulnerability, as Trump carried the state by a whopping 14.7-point margin, marking a 8% rightward swing compared to 4 years later.
Still, it’s uncertain whether Republican gains amongst Latinos will stick into future contests, particularly when Trump’s penchant for mobilizing low-propensity voters will be affected by his absence on the ballots. While the Hispanic community seems to think positively of Trump’s operation against former Venezuela dictator Nicolas Maduro, the persisting issues of inflation and the cost of living as well as the administration’s unyielding focus on deportation threaten to disrupt Trump’s gains among a community particularly affected by both the cost of living and the ongoing immigration enforcement operation.
It’s unclear how much a more traditional Republican like Cornyn or a conservative firebrand the likes of Paxton may move the Hispanic community, while both Crocket, with a record of representing a highly diverse district, and Talarico, who may appeal to rural, deeply religious Hispanic communities concerned with the cost of living, have a chance at walking back the Democrats slippage with such a crucial chunk of the electorate, even though the extent of the 2020 to 2024 movement was historic.
Texas is still right of the nation
On top of that, we ought to think about the rightward shift the Lone Star State registered a little more than one year ago in the broader context of the 2024 election. Compared to 2020, the US as a whole shifted 6 points to the right: as a consequence, Texas voting 13 points to the right of the nation was just a 3% increase compared to 2020, and still a far cry from the 20-point difference registered between the late 2000s and the early 2010s.
Under this light, Texas’s 8-point lean should be for a good part ascribed to a positive national environment for the GOP, rather than just to isolated dynamics among the Hispanic community. In fact, while the Latino electorate provided Trump with a sizable boost, the President did struggle with another key group: high-income, college-educated suburban voters.
From Dallas to Houston through the Texas corridor between Austin and San Antonio, the higher the income and the higher the share of White population, the lower the President’s improvement over his 2020 was. Most worryingly for the GOP, the Dallas and Houston metro areas registered an original trend in 2024: Democrats fared better in high-income, low-educational attainment communities, while top high-income, high-educational attainment counties swung more to the right. The behavior observed in these areas differs from what has been witnessed in other areas of the country, where Trump did retain some strength among the very rich but struggled with the top 1% of college-educated voters – as shown by U-shaped trend lines when plotting – and is an omen for the GOP as it shows leakage even among upper-middle class voters with medium level of educational attainment.
Whether a progressive, divisive figure such as Crocket can maintain or expand Democrats’ inroad in suburbia remains to be seen, even though it stand to reason to think that high-income voters would be equally put off by a scandal-ridden candidate like Attorney General Paxton. Talarico’s economic populism may as well not be the best recipe to capitalize on a group that has been shifting hard to the left during Trump’s era, but his moderate persona could tamp down the potential effect of his “Top vs. Bottom” rhetoric.
Can Cornyn hold the suburbs?
On the other hand, John Cornyn is the epitome of a suburban powerhouse. While he may struggle in rural, White areas, where Trump himself did not extract major gains in 2024, particularly against Talarico, and among Hispanic voters, he would be all but certain to at least limit the GOP bleeding in major suburbs. The latest time he was re-elected in 2020, when he ran four points ahead of Trump, his overperformance came entirely from urban and exurban counties. In particular, Cornyn trounced Trump in the high-income and high-education communities around Dallas, Houston, Austin and San Antonio.
This makes sense: the progressive leftward swing of America’s upper middle first involved the highly-educated, as seen in 2020, and, subsequently, also included well-to-do voters with slightly lower level of educational attainment. If Cornyn wins the GOP nomination, he has a chance at not only winning back – or reducing the loss with – portions of the highly-educated electorate, but also high-income voters, exploiting the latter’s group growing aversion to MAGA Republicans against Paxton, who will probably find his base in rural communities.
Finally, while Cornyn outperformed Trump in inner cities back in 2020, and will in all likelihood outrun his rivals there in the primary, he may find a remarkable adversary in Crockett should they square off in the general election. The US Representative is highly attached to her downtown community, and is expected to have the edge against Talarico with minority, urban vote.
Shifting Politics
Republican Primary
- Polls: According to the DDHQ latest polling average, Attorney General Ken Paxton holds a narrow advantage, leading the field at 32% ahead of incumbent Senator John Cornyn at 28%. Representative Wesley Hunt trails behind at around 19%, still enough to prevent the front runner from winning an outright majority and therefore raising the prospect of a May runoff between the top two candidates.
- Odds: Despite a fundraising advantage for the incumbent Senator – and the full weight of the National Republican Senatorial Committee behind him – Paxton’s narrow edge against Cornyn is converted into an 8-in-10 chance of clinching the GOP nomination in Kalshi’s prediction market. Cornyn’s odds of defeating the AG currently stand at a little less than 20%, and aren’t likely to rise significantly after the President punted on endorsing any candidate, while Hunt’s chances remains below the double-digits threshold.
Democratic Primary
- Polls: Polling for the Democratic Primary is all over the place, with polls showing no clear leader.The situation is fluid: Talarico currently enjoys a fundraising advantage – spiked in part by his viral interview with CBS anchor Stephen Colbert – and clinched the endorsement of the influential Houston Chronicle and a host of state representatives, while Crockett can count on her resume and backing from former candidate Colin Allred – after revelations surfaced about an unflattering comment from Talarico panning his “mediocre” campaign – and progressive US Representative Ro Khanna.
- Odds: Despite Crockett’s prominence inside the party, the enthusiasm and curiosity raised by Talarico’s social media platform coupled with him leading in early polls and fundraising translates into the prediction market giving slightly more that a 3-in-4 chance of winning the nomination, and leaves Crockett with a race against time to turn the tables after an eleventh-hour plunge into the campaign. A high Democratic turnout in the first days of early voting may bode well for the party looking ahead to November, but doesn’t point to a specific candidate being ahead in the primary:
The Polls and the Odds
For what concerns the general election, even in midterm years and considering down-ballot races, Texas has a solid track record of voting to the right of the nation. Still, the gap has narrowed in the latest years, going from R+11 in 2018, when Ted Cruz eked out a narrow re-election to the Senate despite Democrats winning the House popular vote by almost 9 points, to R+8 in 2022 and R+7 in 2024, as Cruz won comfortably while Trump carried the national popular vote by 1.5%.
As a result, while Republicans couldn’t be but the favorite to retain the seat, Democrats can in fact see a path forward, in particular if certain conditions are met. With today’s political polarization, it is unlikely we will witness a 2018-level popular vote margin, but even a D+5 victory, as suggested by DDHQ Congressional Generic Ballot Polling Average may do the trick. Should Democrats gain an edge in terms of candidate quality, for instance in case of Paxton winning the nomination, Democrats may indeed have a real chance of coming on top.
While Cornyn has been on average a solid candidate, outperforming generic Republicans in 3 out of the 4 times he ran for the Senate, a controversial candidate like Paxton may end up trailing the national GOP by a few points, giving Democrats a clear opportunity to eke out a 1-2% victory come November, even as Kalshi give them a roughly 1-in-4 chance of flipping the seat, which may give Democrats control of the Senate in the 120th Congress.
