Could Texas Elect a Democratic Governor for the First Time in More Than 30 Years? Polls Show a Tight Race

Abbott last won re-election by a more than 10-point margin four years ago. Most polls, though, indicate that the governor holds a small, single-digit lead as the November election approaches. In one Fox News survey conducted between Sept. 24-28 by the Beacon Research/Shaw & Company Research, the Republican incumbent led Gina Hinojosa, a Democratic state Representative, by roughly five percentage points.

Some other polls, meanwhile, show Hinojosa ahead of the governor by a narrow margin. A poll conducted by the New York Times/Siena University between Sept. 21-30, for instance, found that 49% of likely Texas voters said they would back Hinojosa for governor, while 46% said they would re-elect Abbott.

“This is an unusual situation in Texas politics,” says Joshua Blank, the research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “It’s rather uncommon to see any Democratic candidate leading in anything other than a single outlying poll leading up to the election.”

And the governorship isn’t the only race threatening to upend the political scene in the state this fall: the Texas Republican Party is also grappling with a close-fought Senate contest, in which Democratic state representative James Talarico is leading the GOP’s nominee, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, in most polls by a razor-thin margin.

“The polls are indicating that this is a very difficult year for Republicans nationwide, but especially in red states like Texas where the unpopularity of the Donald Trump presidency is dragging candidates down below the normal benchmark and cushion that they have enjoyed, in the case of Texas, for close to 30 years,” says Mark Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University.

Nationwide, Trump’s approval rating has hit a new low; according to the latest Associated Press/NORC polls, roughly 31% of adults in the country approve of the President, far below the approval rating he had when he was sworn in for a second term in January 2025. When it comes to how Trump has handled the economy in particular, his approval rating is even lower, at 26%, according to AP/NORC polling.

Support for Trump is higher in Texas—around 42% of respondents in the state for polling conducted by the Texas Politics Project said they had a “favorable” opinion of him in August. But the portion of respondents in that Texas survey who said they had an unfavorable view of the President—51% in August—exceeds those who said they held a positive opinion of him. And the number of people who hold a positive view of Trump has fallen since December 2024, when 54% of respondents said they had a favorable opinion of Trump, according to the Texas Politics Project.

But Texas voters are concerned about the cost of living, Blank says, and have expressed disapproval of how Trump is handling the economy. Texas is a large state that is geographically sprawling, so voters are particularly affected by the soaring gas prices sparked by the war in Iran, according to Blank.

“The challenge for Republicans is that the issues that voters consistently tell us are the most important to them are the ones that Trump is finding his ratings at their lowest,” Blank says. “While Texas is less negatively disposed towards the President as some other states, and certainly as the country as a whole, Texas is still part of the broader political conversation, and Texans are expressing less positive evaluations of the President than we’ve seen in the past.”

If Hinojosa were to win the governorship, it would mark the first time since 1990 that Texas voters have elected a Democrat to be their governor—a remarkable shift in partisan politics in a staunchly Republican state. If that were to happen, experts predict that Hinojosa would use her veto power to stall much of the state legislature’s conservative agenda. Hinojosa has said that, if elected, she would use her veto power to block partisan congressional redistricting efforts.

“It would be a major seat change in the direction of Texas government,” Blank says. “It’s not that a victory by Hinojosa would lead to a significant or drastic change in policy, but it would lead to a significant stoppage in the advancement of conservative legislation in the state. It’s not that she could control what the legislature could do, but she could exercise her veto in a way that would fundamentally change the focus of the legislative output.”

He notes, though, that even if Hinojosa were to win the governorship, it doesn’t mean that Texas is “turning blue;” it would just be "a reflection of the increased competitiveness in a ... diverse, huge state like Texas."

Jones says he believes that Hinojosa has a “relatively low probability” of defeating Abbott for the governorship, in part because Hinojosa has a strong liberal voting and policy record that is “well to the left of where the average Texas voter is.” Jones says that if Abbott can convince Republican voters to vote “based on partisanship and policy, not based on other factors,” he has a strong advantage.

“I think we’re still in a situation where Abbott, at the end of the day, should be able to pull this one out, but it’s going to be the smallest margin that he has had in any of his gubernatorial elections,” Jones says.

Republicans are expending a lot of effort to mobilize their base to show up at the polls next month. “One of the things to watch is whether or not all of the money that’s being spent now is effective in re-engaging Republicans who would never vote for Democrats, but if enough of them stay home, a Democrat might get elected,” Blank says. “If Republicans are able to turn out their voters, they are almost guaranteed of winning the election.”