Texas Election Results Reveal Just How Badly James Talarico Beat Ken Paxton—And We Love To See It

While election results in Texas have still not been fully tallied, the unofficial results have revealed that the election between Democrat James Talarico and Republican Ken Paxton in the race for the U.S. Senate was over before Election Day even hit because Talarico received more early votes than Paxton received in total.

The scale of Talarico’s victory was evident in the early-voting figures. He received 5,444,982 votes overall, including 4,397,474 cast before Election Day. Paxton, by comparison, finished with 4,249,373 votes, of which 3,232,667 were early ballots. In other words, Talarico secured nearly 150,000 more votes during early voting alone than Paxton received across the entire election.

You can see the results below.

@BeshearStan/X

More than 7.7 million ballots were cast across Texas during the early voting period, a midterm election record that surpassed the previous midterm early voting record set in 2018.

Ahead of the early voting deadline in the state, news outlets reported the findings of the latest poll by Quantus Insights showing that Paxton held a razor thin lead over Talarico. 48.7% of respondents backed Paxton, while 47.6% backed Talarico. Other polls showed Talarico ahead.

The results that we have so far show that it was a crushing defeat for Paxton, whom President Donald Trump stumped for in the state several times to no avail.

While Democrats are of course thrilled that Texas has turned blue, Talarico told voters before the election that "I've said before I think the best color for Texas is purple." He added that "when you have a purple state, when you have competitive elections, it forces every politician in both parties at all levels to stay on their toes."

Talarico stressed "my hope in this race is that we can finally end 30 years of one-party rule and get some competitive elections back in Texas so that all politicians are staying on their toes and trying to represent all 31 million Texans."