Primary Results and Turnout
Texas Democrats turned out in unexpectedly high numbers in this year’s primaries on March 3, casting more votes than Republicans, a rare shift in a state long dominated by GOP turnout, signaling potential turbulence ahead of the 2026 midterms. Tuesday night, officials called the race between the two Republican nominees, Senator John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a runoff. A runoff happens when neither candidate wins the majority vote, which is 50 percent-plus-one. Early this morning, James Talarico was announced as the Democratic nominee for November, beating Jasmine Crockett by a small margin.
Incumbent Greg Abbott won the Republican primary for governor, running for his fourth term in the position. Abbott won the primary by a large margin with 81.1 percent of the vote. The democratic primary had a more spread-out distribution of votes. The winner, Gina Hinojosa, had a majority with 58.5 percent of the vote. However, where the republican race only had two candidates other than Abbott who got more than 2 percent of the vote, eight of the democratic candidates other than Hinojosa won more than 2 percent of the vote.
For Lieutenant Gov., incumbent Dan Patrick won the republican primaries as he prepared to run for his fourth term in the role. For the Democratic primaries, a win did not come as easily. Vikki Goodwin failed to reach a majority with only 48 percent of the votes and will be heading into a runoff with Marcos Velez, who got 31.5 percent of the votes.
Elections for Attorney General are also heading into a run-off for the Republican candidates as Mayes Middleton and Chip Roy both secured votes in the 30’s. Previous Attorney General, Ken Paxton, is not rerunning for the role, which has led to a tense race in the republican party. The democratic winner was Nathan Johnson.
Paxton hasn’t retired from politics, though, and is instead running for a U.S. Senate seat against Cornyn.
For the U.S. House of Representatives, Texas has 38 seats, 25 of them currently held by Republicans.
The next voting day is May 26 for runoffs, the general Election Day is Nov. 3.
The GOP runoff–Cornyn v. Paxton
Cal Jillson, a political science professor at SMU and Texas politics phenom, said that the Republican runoff will likely end in a Paxton win due to his MAGA base, although “many of the more business-friendly traditional Bush Republicans, including all the leadership of the Republican Party in the Senate and Washington, want Cornyn to win.”
Jillson also noted that Trump’s lack of endorsement is due to his political calculations. He explained that many MAGA voters question whether Cornyn is fully loyal to Trump and his agenda, making Paxton the more natural choice for those supporters. However, formally backing Paxton could create tension with Senate Republican leadership who view Cornyn as the stronger general election candidate. Runoff voting begins on May 26.
This year’s voter experience
In Dallas County, many voters were met with a surprise when they were turned away from their local voting centers. This year, voting centers were assigned based on home precincts after the Dallas County Republican Party requested a separate election.
Due to mass confusion and being redirected to incorrect locations, a Dallas County judge extended poll hours from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. for Democratic voters. The Texas Supreme Court later temporarily blocked the extension and ordered that ballots received after 7 p.m. be separated. Voting in Williamson County near Austin was also extended and blocked by the Supreme Court. These ballots are seemingly lost in limbo as legal discussions continue to see if they’ll be counted.
Senior Tami Olujobi wasn’t aware of the voting center assignments and initially visited the Hughes-Trigg Student Center to vote. Upon checking the list of voting centers, she saw Hughes-Trigg was not listed this year. Fortunately, her assigned voting center was Highland Park Middle School, about a six-minute drive from campus.
“I had an appointment in McKinney that I was going to, and because it was six minutes, I was able to get to it,” Olujobi said. “If it was like 20, 30 minutes out the way, I don’t know if I would’ve done it, which is unfortunate.”
Olujobi’s experience was smooth and lasted only 10 to 15 minutes.
“There were three people on either side, like Democratic and Republican,” Olujobi said. “I was able to just register, didn’t have to wait for a polling booth, just voted.”
Olujobi says voting on campus is accessible, especially for students who don’t have transportation to travel to further voting locations.
“I registered to vote on-campus,” Olujobi said. “I feel like that’s made it more accessible and digestible to vote as a new voter. My parents aren’t American, so I’m the first person in my family to be American and vote, aside from my brother, vote in presidential elections and vote in America.”
The election this year was marked by a surge in early voting as 2.8 million people cast their ballots in the ten days leading up to election day. Jazmin Darjean, an SMU student from Grand Prairie, Texas, followed this trend and voted at a library in Dallas two weekends ago. The voting process was complicated for Darjean by the lack of a polling location on campus, leading her to vote ahead of time to avoid the chaos on the day of the election.
“I knew that there wasn’t going to be a polling location day of on campus,” Darjean said. “I didn’t want to have to try to find a place on the day of in the time that I already know is hard to come by on a weekday…I just figured, well, let’s just get it out of the way and I won’t have to worry about it.”
Darjean’s experience voting early was similar to her experiences in past elections— other than the fact that the polling location was packed with other voters casting their ballots early as well. She described the experience as “straightforward,” noting minimal differences between her past experiences voting early.
For Darjean, her motivation to vote in this midterm came from the political identity she’s formed over her time at SMU.
“In high school at least, I never was the type to really pay attention to all the political things going on,” Darjean said. “But since coming to college, I feel like my political views have somewhat changed or just developed…and I understand where I lie more since coming to college and having conversations with different people.”
What does this mean for the general election in November?
Trump’s record-low approval ratings, particularly on the economy and immigration, could set the stage for a shift in congressional control. Historically, that wouldn’t be surprising. According to EBSCO research, the sitting president’s party almost always loses seats in Congress during midterm elections, sometimes by significant margins.
Jillson believes 2026 is shaping up to follow that pattern. He said Democrats appear positioned for a strong year and are likely to retake the U.S. House, as they’ll only need three seats to flip. The Senate, however, is far less certain. North Carolina, Maine and Ohio are key battlegrounds, Jillson adding that Texas could also become competitive “if Paxton wins.”
But, there is another huge roadblock standing in the way of the Democratic majority: Louisiana v. Callais, a landmark case that could further weaken Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, or VRA. Section 2 is the key federal protection against racial gerrymandering, preventing states from drawing congressional maps that dilute the voting power of minority communities.
If the Supreme Court of the United States strikes the VRA down or even weakens it, several Republican-led states could move quickly to redraw their district lines in ways that favor GOP candidates ahead of the 2026 midterms. The best-case scenario for Democrats is a SCOTUS ruling in June. By then, many states will have already had midterm elections.
Could Texas actually flip?
No Democrat has won a statewide election in Texas above the judge races in a quarter of a century. While Jillson thinks that Paxton will win the primary and general elections, the current political atmosphere feels familiar to anyone who followed the 2018 Senate race between Beto O’Rourke and Ted Cruz. According to the New York Times, the warning signs are ones Republicans have seen before: a polarizing GOP candidate, softening support for Trump within parts of the party’s base and a well-funded Democratic campaign driven by viral social media momentum—something Talarico is very good at. In the end, O’Rourke fell just short, losing by fewer than 220,000 votes.
“You don’t win a state like Texas overnight—it takes years and many elections and many campaigns to get there,” O’Rourke said in an interview with the New York Times. “We have been building toward something that will be realized at some point, and I think that point will be Nov. 3, 2026.”
How can college-aged voters can stay engaged until November?
Jenna Young, a senior and a democracy fellow with Campus Votes Project, said this is an election young people should pay attention to.
“This is a very contested election on both sides of the aisle, something we haven’t really seen too much in recent years,” Young said. “That in and of itself is more than enough reason to pay attention to these candidates’ primaries before we go into the races in November.”
Voter mobilization among college-aged voters is an initiative on the rise, according to Young.
“What I’m seeing is there’s a trend on getting young people motivated to vote,” Young said. “I think it has to do with issue relevance. Finding those salient things that people really care about and how they can engage with the world around them to see those changes that they care about.”
Heading into the general midterm elections in November, Young suggests college students “look for the facts” in the midst of increased digital misinformation and political polarization.
“At the core of it, it all comes down to making your voice heard and playing your part as a member of the United States,” Young said. “We are deciding who it’s going to come down to for November, so it’s a big deal.”
For voters who skipped out on the primary election, Young has a message of encouragement.
“The fact of the matter is, these races often come down to very marginal votes, and everyone’s voice matters in this because these are decisions that are going to be affecting our everyday lives,” Young said. “I hope people realize the agency, the power, but also the responsibility to take part in such elections.”
