Abbott Concedes to Hinojosa. Democrats Led All 15 Texas Statewide Races in Tuesday Night’s Count

Greg Abbott ran Texas for 12 years and asked voters on Tuesday to make him the first Texas governor ever elected four times. A little after 10 p.m., he told supporters he had called Democrat Gina Hinojosa to congratulate her.

“Leading this state has been the greatest honor I’ve ever had,” Abbott said. “Thank you for your support. Thank you for your love. Thank you for making Texas Texas.”

CBS News, ABC News, the Fox News Decision Desk and the Associated Press all called the race for Hinojosa within about 20 minutes of his concession. James Talarico had already beaten Attorney General Ken Paxton for the U.S. Senate seat.

Those were the two headline races. The state’s own count shows something bigger. In the Texas Secretary of State’s unofficial results late Tuesday, with 42% of polling locations reporting, Democrats led all 15 statewide races on the ballot. That includes Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s seat, attorney general, four seats on the Texas Supreme Court and three on the Court of Criminal Appeals.

Texas Democrats had not won a single statewide race since 1994.

The numbers

In that count Hinojosa had 3,969,726 votes, or 51.9%, to Abbott’s 3,581,848, or 46.8%. That’s a lead of 387,878 votes. Talarico led Paxton 53.9% to 44.4%.

Down the ballot the margins got thinner, but they all pointed the same way. Democrat Vikki Goodwin led Patrick 50.8% to 46.8% for lieutenant governor, the office that runs the Texas Senate. Nathan Johnson led Mayes Middleton 51.4% to 47.1% for attorney general. Democrats led the comptroller’s race, land commissioner, agriculture commissioner and railroad commissioner by 2.4 to 4.9 points.

The courts may matter most over time. Democrat Maggie Ellis led Chief Justice Jimmy Blacklock 51.4% to 48.6%, and Democrats led the other three Supreme Court seats on the ballot too. The closest race in the state was Place 3 on the Court of Criminal Appeals, Texas’ highest criminal court, where Democrat Okey Anyiam led Republican Thomas Smith by about 33,000 votes in that count and by about 8,400 out of more than 7.5 million a few minutes later.

Only the Senate and governor’s races had been called. The rest are leads in a partial count, and leads like these can shrink as more polling places report.

What Abbott built

Abbott leaves with a record conservatives will defend for a long time. He ran Operation Lone Star when the Biden administration wouldn’t secure the border, and in September he said Washington would pay Texas back. “Texas will receive $7.5 BILLION as part of the federal funding to reimburse our border security costs,” he posted. “Texas held the line when Washington would not.”

He also signed school choice into law, along with some of the strictest abortion limits in the country and expanded gun rights. Hinojosa ran against the voucher program, along with teacher pay, school funding and a moratorium on new data centers, Fox News reported. She called her campaign a fight “against the billionaires and the corporations.”

Hinojosa, an Austin state representative and former president of the Austin school board, will be the first Latina governor of Texas and the first Democrat in the office since Ann Richards, who lost to George W. Bush in 1994.

“Everything is bigger in Texas, including the shock of this win,” she told supporters, according to Fox News. “We shocked the world tonight.”

What happens next

Counties keep counting and then certify their results, and the statewide results become official after that. The Legislature convenes on Jan. 12, 2027. Under the Texas Constitution, the new governor is sworn in on the first Tuesday after it organizes, which makes Hinojosa’s inauguration Jan. 19.

Republicans went into Tuesday holding both chambers of the Legislature, and dozens of state House and Senate races were still being counted Tuesday night. Whether Hinojosa faces a Republican Legislature, and whether Patrick keeps his gavel, will decide how much of Abbott’s Texas she can undo.

Abbott opened his speech with the line Texas Republicans will be repeating for the next four years. “Texas was built by the bold,” he said. “We believe in freedom over fear, God over government, and the bona fide greatness of this great place, Texas. And that will never change.”