In 2024, a poll had the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas winning Hispanic voters by 4 points. This year, a poll has the Democratic candidate winning them by 27. If that shift is even partly real, it goes a long way toward explaining what’s happening in Texas right now.
It could help explain why, at the time of writing, Manifold traders give Democrats a 60% chance of winning a Senate seat in a state where they haven’t won statewide since 1994. Why Republicans’ new House map, drawn to take five seats from Democrats, looks likely to net them only two. And why Greg Abbott, the longest-serving governor in the country, is heading into what looks like the closest race of his career.
You can see how all of these races are moving on Manifold’s 2026 midterms map.
The Senate: Talarico vs. Paxton
Texas Senate on Manifold’s midterms map, as of October 16. Party and candidate markets are trading within a point of each other.
Democratic nominee James Talarico’s odds are the highest they’ve been all race. He was trading around 30 to 40% in the months after the primary and has been climbing ever since.
Democrats thought they had a great chance with candidate Beto O’Rourke in 2018, but it’s lining up to be even better for Talarico in 2026. He currently leads in the polls, something O’Rourke never achieved.
At this point in the election in 2018, O’Rourke was down in the RealClearPolitics polling average by 7%. Now, Talarico leads by about 2.8%.
O’Rourke went on to lose narrowly to Republican Ted Cruz, 48.33% to 50.89%.
Polls from RealClearPolitics
But the polling average isn’t always right in Texas. In both 2020 and 2024, the RealClearPolitics polling average underestimated Donald Trump’s margin by about 4.5%. In 2018’s Cruz-O’Rourke race, the polling average actually overestimated Cruz by 4.2%. A miss of that size in either direction would wipe out Talarico’s lead, or double it.
Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in Texas since 1988, part of the longest statewide losing streak in the country. And just two years ago, Trump carried the state by nearly 14 points.
Right now, traders give Talarico an 83% chance of outperforming O’Rourke, who ended up losing his race by less than 3%.
Ken Paxton
Paxton is a weak candidate: in 2018 and 2022, he had the lowest percentage of the vote total among all Republican statewide candidates.
*Average of six other Republican statewide candidates: Governor, Lt. Governor, Comptroller, Land, Agriculture and Railroad Commissioner. Source: Texas SOS.
Paxton has also faced many scandals, including cheating on his wife, State Senator Angela Paxton, who filed for divorce in July 2025 on biblical grounds. Despite this, she recently recorded an ad for a Super PAC in support of his campaign, urging people to vote for the “Republican ticket,” while notably avoiding mentioning him by name.
Other transgressions include a 2015 indictment for securities fraud, allegedly stealing a $1,000 pen, and allegedly abusing his AG office to help a friend target business rivals. Paxton added a new scandal to the list this week when the Wall Street Journal reported on a video of him celebrating New Year’s Eve 2024 in Dubai with his girlfriend and two men who were then federal fugitives, one of whom had made a sizeable donation to his campaign.
It seems unlikely Paxton will debate Talarico; traders give it a 21% chance. Talarico has been pushing for one for months, even challenging Paxton to a debate live on Republican-friendly Fox News. Paxton still hasn’t agreed, even after Trump posted on Truth Social last week, calling Talarico “Talafreako” and calling Paxton “ready, willing and able.”
It was announced this week that the Stark Freedom PAC plans to spend up to $2.5m to boost third-party candidates in 8 races nationwide, including the Texas Senate race. Among these candidates is Libertarian Ted Brown, who traders currently say has a 52% chance of getting 2% or more of the vote.
The gerrymander that backfired
Texas House odds by district. The blue in South Texas is where the GOP’s redraw targeted Democratic seats.
For US House races, Texas is using a new map that state Republicans drew to flip five Democratic-held seats: the 9th, 28th, 32nd, 34th and 35th.
However, Democrats are favored to hold 3 of these 5 seats: the 28th (92%), the 34th (83%), and the 35th (61%).
Democrats have two things working in their favor: good candidates, and a map that may have been drawn on bad assumptions.
For example, in 2024, Trump would have won the new Texas 28th district by 10.4%, while he won the old 28th by 7%. However, despite growing more Republican at the presidential level, the district has become more Democratic down-ballot: under the new lines, it would have voted 53.9% Democratic in 2024’s House races, up from 52.7% in the old district.
Republicans have assumed that the gains Trump made in 2024 with Hispanic voters will transfer over to other Republicans, but it’s not working out that way.
All five targeted districts are majority Hispanic, and a big reason the redistricting isn’t working is the shift in the vote toward Democrats among Hispanic voters. The polling in the Texas Senate race shows this. In 2024, YouGov and the Rose Institute had a poll showing Colin Allred, the 2024 Democratic nominee for Senate, winning over Hispanic voters by 4%; in 2026, the most recent YouGov poll shows Talarico winning Hispanics by 27%.
Democrats who specialize in Hispanic voter outreach say economic issues drove Hispanics away from Democrats in 2024, and that the same issues are driving them away from Republicans now. These voters are a swing group and shouldn’t be expected to vote the same way every election or follow a party line.
Trump was seen as running on a populist economic message, but that doesn’t guarantee another Republican has the same appeal. You can see this in how Ted Cruz ran behind Trump in some of these districts, like the new Texas 28th, where Cruz would have only won by 0.2% compared to Trump’s 10.4%.
District by district
TX-28 (Democrats 92%). Incumbent Henry Cuellar is a strong candidate for the area despite corruption scandals and being pardoned by Trump (who called him ungrateful when he didn’t switch parties). In 2024, he won his House race by nearly 6% despite Kamala Harris losing the district by 7%. He ran double digits ahead of Biden in 2020 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. Republicans have basically given up on defeating him this time, with the House Republican Super PAC pulling millions of dollars in advertising and sending the money elsewhere.
TX-34 (Democrats 83%). Incumbent Vicente Gonzalez is another overperformer, winning by 3% in 2024 as Harris lost his district by 5%. He is a conservative Democrat, one of only 7 in the party who voted to fund DHS 2 weeks after the shooting of Renee Good. The redrawn district is 77% Hispanic and would have voted for Trump by 10%.
TX-35 (Democrats 61%). This district would have voted for Trump by 10.4% in 2024.
TX-9 (Democrats 18%). There is no incumbent here. A recent poll shows the Republican candidate leading 48% to 42%; however, this is a district Trump would have won by 20%.
TX-32 (Democrats 12%). This district would have voted for Trump by 17.7% in 2024.
Keep an eye on these two celebrity races
There are two interesting and competitive races that aren’t in districts Republicans targeted for redistricting, but each has a candidate with a big following outside of politics.
TX-15 (Democrats 82%). This district voted for Trump by 18% in 2024, but Democrats have a star candidate in Latin Grammy Award-winning Tejano music artist Bobby Pulido. He has 10.4 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and a recent poll has him up 50% to 45% over incumbent Republican Monica De La Cruz.
TX-23 (Democrats 32%). Republicans have their own celebrity here: Brandon Herrera, also known as “The AK Guy.” Herrera’s YouTube channel focuses on a variety of content about firearms and has 4.3 million subscribers. Traders favor him, and Trump won the district by 15%, but this is another majority-Hispanic district where the swing away from Republicans could hurt his chances. Herrera also has a history of making vulgar comments about women, which House Speaker Mike Johnson says he has apologized for.
Even Abbott looks nervous
In the Texas governor’s election, it’s incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott against Democratic State Representative Gina Hinojosa. Traders give Abbott a 76% chance.
Abbott, first elected in 2014, is looking at his closest race yet, and he’s showing signs of being at least a little bit concerned. In November last year, he stood with the CEO of Google and said Texas is the epicenter of AI development; now he’s paused new permits for data centers.
He won his first term by 20 points, his second by 13, and his third, against O’Rourke in 2022, by 11. Currently, he leads the RealClearPolitics polling average by 2.2%.
What to watch on election night
Keep an eye on the majority-Hispanic districts: the 28th, 34th, 35th, 15th, and 23rd. If Democrats hold or flip them, the Hispanic swing in the polls is real, and Talarico’s 60% probably isn’t too high.
Manifold’s election page tracks every Senate, House, and governor race in real time, and you can trade on how you think Texas will go.
-Jack
The classic example of a party being too greedy is the Georgia Democrats in the 1990 redistricting. They were 9D-1R and picked up a seat in redistricting, but wanted to make it 11-0 in order to eliminate that one Republican (Newt Gingrich). The margins were drawn too thin, and Republicans ended up winning 4 seats in 1992. Gingrich's district was butchered by the state house Democrats, so he moved to a neighboring district, won, and became Speaker 2 years later.