Incumbent John Cornyn has won the race for Senate in Texas against Democrat Mary Jennings Hegar, as well as Green Party candidate David Collins and Libertarian Kerry McKennon. This historically Republican state has had close Senate races before, but Cornyn led by a significant enough amount to be the projected winner, according to Decision Desk.
Heading into Election Day, most polls gave Cornyn the odds of winning, though there was still some room for maneuvering.
A Texas poll by Morning Consult for October 22-31 gave Cornyn a lead over Hegar at 47% to 43%, according to 538. And an October 29-31 poll by Emerson College gave Cornyn a four-point lead of 51% to 47%. A Data for Progress poll for October 27-November 1 gave Hegar 47% to Cornyn’s 50%. And a Gravis Marketing poll for October 27-28 ranked Cornyn at 49% and Hegar at 43%.
In El Paso, the polls closed at 8 p.m. CST and everywhere else in the state, polls closed at 7 p.m. CST.
Cornyn was projected as the winner much faster than the previous race for the Senate in Texas. The Texas Tribune reported that a winner in Texas was declared in 2016 just after 8 p.m. When Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke had a closer Senate race two years ago, the results were still declared by 9:30 p.m. The Texas Senate race in 2020 was called sooner than the O’Rourke-Cruz race was called.
If the race was closer, voters may have needed to wait for results until absentee ballots were counted, which could be postmarked as late as 7 p.m. today and received by 5 p.m. tomorrow, The Texas Tribune reported. Overseas military ballots have until November 9 to arrive. But the race was not that close.
Follow the 2020 Senate election results courtesy of Heavy’s partners at Decision Desk HQ below.
Cornyn Won the Senate Race
The results in the Senate race for Texas can be viewed in the Decision Desk widget below. This map will update in real time.
Below is the full debate between Cornyn and Hegar from three weeks ago below.
While the Senate race is always attention-grabbing, the Texas Senate race that recently got the most attention was the one between Cruz and former Representative Beto O’Rourke. In that race, Cruz edged out a narrow win with 50.9% of the votes to O’Rourke’s 48.3%. This came out to 4,260,553 votes to O’Rourke’s 4,045,632 votes, much closer than some thought a Senate race in Texas could be and left the door open to wonder about results in Texas in the years to come.
Although O’Rourke fared well in the Senate race, those results did not translate into his short-lived presidential run in this cycle.
See Overall Senate & House Results Below
Below is the map for overall control of the Senate. Similarly, you can hover over the state of Texas or you can see all the results from the Senate races across the country.
You can see a map of the results for the House below. Hover over the state of Texas or any other state whose results you want to see.
In Texas, voting records have been broken so far. More than 8 million votes were already cast as of October 30, The Texas Tribune reported.
READ NEXT: The latest COVID-19 deaths, cases, and updates