Texas Election Results 2026: Governor, U.S. Senate and Every Statewide Race

By Kimi · November 3, 2026 · 12 min read

Key takeaways

As of 1:41 p.m. ET (18:41 UTC) on Tuesday, Nov. 3, no votes had been reported anywhere in Texas. The Secretary of State’s results feed showed 0 of 254 counties reporting, and the Associated Press (AP) had called no Texas race.
Polls close at 7 p.m. local time. That is 8 p.m. ET for most of Texas and 9 p.m. ET in El Paso and Hudspeth counties. Anyone in line at 7 p.m. can still vote.
U.S. Senate: Ken Paxton (R), James Talarico (D) and Ted Brown (Libertarian) are running for the seat John Cornyn holds. Governor: Greg Abbott (R, incumbent), Gina Hinojosa (D) and Pat Dixon (Libertarian).
Fifteen statewide races are on every Texas ballot, and every one of them has both a Republican and a Democratic nominee. There are no statewide propositions this year.
7,711,462 Texans voted early, in person or by mail. That is 40.5% of the 19,041,684 registered voters, per our sum of the SOS county-level early-voting file as revised on Nov. 3 (checked 2:35 p.m. ET).
⚠️ Early-vote totals are posted first, and the shares can shift as Election Day votes come in. We name a winner only when AP calls a race. Results become official only after the canvass.

Polls are open across Texas on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. As of 1:41 p.m. ET (18:41 UTC), no votes had been reported and the Associated Press (AP) had called no Texas race. Polls close at 7 p.m. local time, and anyone already in line can still vote. In most of the state that is 7 p.m. CST, which is 8 p.m. ET or 01:00 UTC on Wednesday. El Paso and Hudspeth counties are on Mountain Time and close at 7 p.m. MST, which is 9 p.m. ET. The two headline races are for U.S. Senate and for governor. The Senate seat is the one John Cornyn holds, and the candidates are Ken Paxton (R), James Talarico (D) and Ted Brown (Libertarian). The governor’s race is between Greg Abbott (R, incumbent), Gina Hinojosa (D) and Pat Dixon (Libertarian). Once counting begins, we will update this page with the state’s returns and AP race calls.

When do polls close in Texas, and when will the first results appear?

Texas polls close at 7 p.m. local time, which is 8 p.m. ET for most of the state and 9 p.m. ET in El Paso and Hudspeth counties. The polls opened at 7 a.m. State law requires that every voter in line at 7 p.m. be allowed to vote, so some polling places close after the official time.

US clocks went back on Sunday, Nov. 1. Texas is now on Central Standard Time (UTC-6) and, in the far west, Mountain Standard Time (UTC-7). The table gives each closing time in local time, then in Eastern Time and UTC.

Area	Local	ET / UTC
Most of Texas	7 p.m. CST	8 p.m. / 01:00 Wed
El Paso, Hudspeth	7 p.m. MST	9 p.m. / 02:00 Wed

According to the Texas Tribune, the first results start appearing after polls close at 7 p.m. They are mostly early votes, cast in person Oct. 19–30 or by mail. Election Day ballots follow, polling place by polling place, through the night and into Wednesday.

Who is running for U.S. Senate in Texas?

Three candidates are on the Senate ballot: Ken Paxton (R), James Talarico (D) and Ted Brown (Libertarian). The SOS has also registered four write-in candidates. Republican John Cornyn holds the seat. He lost the nomination to Paxton.

Candidate	Party
Ken Paxton	Republican
James Talarico	Democrat
Ted Brown	Libertarian

Once counting starts, we will add each candidate’s vote total and share from the SOS returns. Each update will show its time and the number of counties reporting.

According to the official SOS returns, these contests chose the nominees:

Republican primary, March 3: Cornyn finished first with 910,382 votes and Paxton second with 878,564. Neither passed 50%, so the race went to a runoff.
Republican runoff, May 26: Paxton beat Cornyn 888,196 to 503,438, or 63.8% to 36.2%.
Democratic primary, March 3: Talarico won outright with 1,216,412 votes (52.4%) to Jasmine Crockett’s 1,071,900 (46.2%).

For background on the race before Election Day, see our Paxton vs. Talarico explainer .

Who is running for governor of Texas?

Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is seeking a fourth term against Gina Hinojosa (D) and Pat Dixon (Libertarian). Four write-in candidates are also registered.

Candidate	Party
Greg Abbott	Republican
Gina Hinojosa	Democrat
Pat Dixon	Libertarian

Abbott won the March 3 Republican primary with 1,764,924 votes (81.8%). Hinojosa won the Democratic primary outright with 1,289,576 votes (58.5%). After polls close, we will add vote totals here from the SOS returns.

What are all the statewide races on the Texas ballot?

Fifteen races appear on every Texas ballot: U.S. Senate and 14 state offices, and each one has both a Republican and a Democratic nominee. The table below lists every contest with its nominees as certified by the Secretary of State. In the nominee column, R stands for Republican, D for Democrat, L for Libertarian and G for Green, and “inc.” marks an incumbent. Write-in candidates are not listed.

Race	Nominees
U.S. Senate	Ken Paxton (R), James Talarico (D), Ted Brown (L)
Governor	Greg Abbott (R, inc.), Gina Hinojosa (D), Pat Dixon (L)
Lt. Governor	Dan Patrick (R, inc.), Vikki Goodwin (D), Anthony Cristo (L), Kevin McCormick (G)
Attorney Gen.	Mayes Middleton (R), Nathan Johnson (D), Tom Oxford (L)
Comptroller	Don Huffines (R), Sarah Eckhardt (D), V. Alonzo Echavarria-Garza (L), Shehla Faizi (G)
Land Comm.	Dawn Buckingham (R, inc.), Benjamin Flores (D), Neill Snider (L)
Agriculture	Nate Sheets (R), Clayton Tucker (D), Austin R. Kelly (L)
Railroad Comm.	Bo French (R), Jon Rosenthal (D), Arthur DiBianca (L)
Sup. Ct. Chief	Jimmy Blacklock (R, inc.), Maggie Ellis (D)
Sup. Ct. Pl. 2	James P. Sullivan (R, inc.), Chari Kelly (D)
Sup. Ct. Pl. 7	Kyle Hawkins (R, inc.), Kristen Hawkins (D)
Sup. Ct. Pl. 8	Brett Busby (R, inc.), Gisela D. Triana (D)
CCA Place 3	Thomas Smith (R), Okey Anyiam (D), Mark Ash (L)
CCA Place 4	Kevin Patrick Yeary (R, inc.), Audra Riley (D)
CCA Place 9	John Messinger (R), Holly Taylor (D)

“Sup. Ct.” is the Texas Supreme Court. The Place 2 race fills the remainder of an unexpired term. “CCA” is the Court of Criminal Appeals, Texas’s highest court for criminal cases. The Railroad Commission seat carries a term that ends in 2032. We will add vote totals for each race once the SOS posts returns.

According to the SOS returns, several nominations were settled in runoffs or against sitting officeholders. Among them:

Lieutenant governor: Vikki Goodwin won the May 26 Democratic runoff against Marcos Isaias Velez, 376,757 to 179,238 (67.8% to 32.2%).
Attorney general: the office is open because Paxton is running for Senate. Mayes Middleton beat Rep. Chip Roy in the May 26 Republican runoff, 757,625 to 614,009 (55.2% to 44.8%). On the same day, Nathan Johnson won the Democratic runoff against Joe Jaworski, 334,199 to 218,224 (60.5% to 39.5%).
Agriculture commissioner: Nate Sheets beat incumbent Sid Miller in the March 3 Republican primary, 1,044,698 to 938,857 (52.7% to 47.3%).
Railroad commissioner: Bo French beat incumbent Jim Wright in the May 26 Republican runoff, 665,409 to 651,061 (50.5% to 49.5%).

Ballots across the state also carry three races for the 15th Court of Appeals, which hears cases involving the state. The SOS files them as district races, not statewide ones. All three Republican nominees are incumbents:

Chief Justice: Scott Brister (R) vs. Jerry Zimmerer (D)
Place 2: Scott K. Field (R) vs. Tom Baker (D)
Place 3: April Farris (R) vs. Marc M. Meyer (D)

Are there any propositions on the Texas ballot this year?

No. The November 2026 ballot has no statewide propositions or constitutional amendments. Texans voted on 17 proposed amendments in November 2025, and the SOS sample ballot and results feed list no statewide questions for 2026. Local ballots may include city, county or school measures.

The SOS also lists special elections on the same day for state Senate District 22 and state House District 93. Their returns appear on separate SOS results pages, not with the general election.

Which Texas U.S. House seats have no sitting member on the ballot?

Texas elects 38 U.S. House members under the 2025 map, and in each district listed below, that district’s incumbent is not on the ballot. The Legislature redrew the map in 2025 (HB 4, signed Aug. 29, 2025). A three-judge federal court blocked it on Nov. 18, 2025. The U.S. Supreme Court put that ruling on hold on Dec. 4, 2025, and reversed it on April 27, 2026, in Abbott v. LULAC. A trial over the 2025 map is still pending.

The districts and their major nominees, per the SOS candidate list:

TX-2: Steve Toth (R) vs. Shaun Finnie (D). Rep. Dan Crenshaw lost the March primary to Toth.
TX-8: Jessica Hart Steinmann (R) vs. Laura Jones (D). Rep. Morgan Luttrell did not seek re-election.
TX-9: Alex Mealer (R) vs. Leticia Gutierrez (D). Rep. Al Green ran in TX-18 instead.
TX-10: Chris Gober (R) vs. Caitlin Rourk (D). Rep. Michael McCaul did not seek re-election.
TX-19: Tom Sell (R) vs. Kyle Rable (D). Rep. Jodey Arrington did not seek re-election.
TX-21: Mark Teixeira (R) vs. Kristin Hook (D). Rep. Chip Roy ran for attorney general.
TX-22: Trever Nehls (R) vs. Marquette Greene-Scott (D). Rep. Troy Nehls did not seek re-election.
TX-23: Brandon Herrera (R) vs. Katy Padilla Stout (D) vs. Ben Mendoza (Ind.). Rep. Tony Gonzales resigned on April 14, 2026, according to the House Clerk, and the seat is vacant. The SOS list for Nov. 3 shows no special election for the rest of his term.
TX-30: Everett Jackson (R) vs. Frederick D. Haynes III (D). Rep. Jasmine Crockett ran for Senate.
TX-32: Jace Yarbrough (R) vs. Dan Barrios (D). Rep. Julie Johnson ran in TX-33.
TX-33: Patrick David Gillespie (R) vs. Colin Allred (D). Rep. Marc Veasey did not seek re-election. Allred beat Johnson in the May 26 Democratic runoff.
TX-35: Carlos De La Cruz (R) vs. Johnny C. Garcia (D). Rep. Greg Casar is running in TX-37.
TX-38: Jon Bonck (R) vs. Melissa McDonough (D) vs. Alex McMenemy (G). Rep. Wesley Hunt ran for Senate.

Two other districts have a sitting member on the ballot after redistricting reshuffled nominations. In TX-37, Rep. Lloyd Doggett is retiring, and Casar faces Lauren B. Peña (R). In TX-18, two sitting members met in the May 26 Democratic runoff, where Rep. Christian Menefee beat Green. Menefee now faces Ronald Dwayne Whitfield (R). For House and Senate results across the country, see our national midterm results page .

How many Texans have already voted?

7,711,462 Texans voted before Election Day, 40.5% of the state’s 19,041,684 registered voters. That total is our sum of the SOS county-level early-voting file, which covers voting through Oct. 30 and was last revised on Nov. 3 (checked at 2:35 p.m. ET):

In person, Oct. 19–30: 7,448,667
By mail, received so far: 262,795

The Texas Tribune reported “more than 7.7 million” early votes, also based on SOS data. The SOS figures are preliminary and were revised during Election Day, so they can still change, and more mail ballots are expected to arrive. The SOS publishes Election Day turnout county by county in a separate file, which fills in during and after the day.

Some ballots can still arrive after Election Day. The SOS election-law calendar sets these deadlines:

Domestic mail ballots postmarked by 7 p.m. on Nov. 3 count if they arrive by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 4.
Most overseas and military ballots are due Monday, Nov. 9.
Provisional ballots: officials must finish reviewing them by Nov. 13.

Where do Texas election results come from, and why can the early numbers change?

Unofficial returns come from the Texas Secretary of State’s election-night results site, and AP race calls tell you when a winner has been declared. The SOS site posts unofficial returns as counties report them. Each update shows a time stamp and the number of counties and polling places reporting. When we checked at 1:41 p.m. ET, its candidate pages listed zero votes in every race.

Keep these points in mind as the numbers arrive:

Early votes come first. Counties with more than 100,000 people may start counting mail ballots once early voting ends. Per the Texas Tribune, results start appearing only after polls close at 7 p.m., so the first batch posted is mostly early votes.
Election Day votes come later. Ballots cast on Nov. 3 can be counted only after the polls close. Counties must send their Election Day totals to the state within 24 hours.
Early numbers can shift. A candidate’s share of the first early-vote batch is not a result. It can move either way as Election Day ballots are added.
AP calls a race only when the trailing candidates have no path to victory. It does not call a race because a candidate declares victory or concedes. An AP call is a news declaration, not the official result. Many outlets carry AP calls, including NPR’s election results pages.

When AP calls a race, we will add the call with its time. Until then, we will mark each uncalled race “not yet called by AP” with the time we checked. We will not call any race ourselves.

When will the Texas results be final?

Election-night numbers are unofficial. Most official results come by Dec. 7, and the governor and lieutenant governor races are certified on Jan. 12, 2027. The steps, per the SOS election-law calendar and the Texas Tribune:

Nov. 6–17: counties hold their official local canvass.
Nov. 19: the statewide risk-limiting audit.
Nov. 21 to Dec. 7: the Governor’s state canvass for state offices, per the SOS calendar. According to the Texas Tribune, Secretary of State Robert Howden tabulates and verifies the state and congressional results, and the governor then issues certificates of election.
Jan. 12, 2027: House Speaker Dustin Burrows certifies the governor and lieutenant governor races on the first day of the 2027 legislative session, per the Texas Tribune.

Texas has no automatic recount except for an exact tie. A losing candidate may request a recount if the margin is 10% or less of the votes cast in the race, and must pay for it unless the recount changes the outcome.

When will exit-poll findings on Texas voters be out?

We expect survey findings about Texas voters no earlier than the last Texas poll closing at 9 p.m. ET. Those findings describe who voted and why. They do not count votes or decide races. Our Voter Poll guide explains what the national survey of voters measures. For the wider election calendar, see our 2026 midterm elections guide .

Sources

How we verified this

No results existed when this page was written. We checked the Texas Secretary of State’s election-night results feed for the Nov. 3, 2026 general election at 18:41 UTC (1:41 p.m. ET, 12:41 p.m. CST) on Tuesday, Nov. 3. It showed 0 of 254 counties and 0 of 5,302 polling places reporting, zero votes in every race, and a last-updated stamp of Oct. 29. At the same time, NPR’s AP-fed Texas data listed all 43 Texas races as “Awaiting Poll Close” and “Too Early to Call”, with no winner marked. Nothing on this page says or suggests who is ahead or who will win.

The nominee names come from the SOS. We checked them against the SOS 2026 sample ballot, the ballot certification report and the candidate list in the SOS results feed. The feed prints names in capitals, and we wrote them in normal case. The primary and runoff figures are the official SOS returns for the March 3 primaries and the May 26 runoffs, including the Democratic runoffs for lieutenant governor and attorney general. We recomputed the percentages from the raw vote counts.

The early-vote total is our own sum. The SOS publishes early-vote turnout county by county, not as one statewide figure. We added up the 254 county rows of its early-voting file, which covers voting through Oct. 30 and was updated Nov. 3. The result matches the Texas Tribune’s “more than 7.7 million”. Mail ballots are still arriving, so the mail count will rise. We used only the aggregate county counts and no voter-level data.

Poll-closing times come from the SOS election-law calendar and the Texas Tribune. We converted them using the federal time-zone boundary rule (49 CFR 71.7), which puts El Paso and Hudspeth counties in Mountain Time, and the end of daylight saving time on Nov. 1. The ballot deadlines, the local canvass, the audit and the Governor’s state canvass dates are from the SOS calendar. The roles of Secretary of State Robert Howden and the governor in tabulating and certifying results, and the Jan. 12 legislative canvass of the governor and lieutenant governor races, are as reported by the Texas Tribune; the Jan. 12 date is single-source. AP’s calling standard is as described in NPR’s Nov. 3 explainer. An AP call is a news declaration, not legal certification.

The redistricting timeline comes from the Loyola Law School redistricting case page for LULAC v. Abbott. The reasons why House incumbents are absent from the ballot come from the SOS primary and runoff returns where those returns show it, and otherwise from news coverage. The TX-23 vacancy rests on news reports from April through August 2026 and on the fact that the SOS list of Nov. 3 special elections has no CD-23 race. The House Clerk’s vacancies page gives his resignation date as April 14, 2026. The timing of survey findings on Texas voters is our expectation, not a published schedule.

This page contains no polls, ratings, forecasts, betting odds or prediction-market odds, and it will contain none after the refresh either. The only numbers we will add are the state’s unofficial returns and AP race calls, each with its time.