It’s Election Day, and Texas is one of the states that could define how the night gets read nationally. A Talarico win would end 32 years without a Democrat holding statewide office in Texas: the kind of result that reshapes how both parties plan for 2028. A strong night for Republicans would do the opposite: hold both the Governor’s mansion and the Senate seat, and blunt the picture of a blue wave building elsewhere in the country. Prediction markets have made their lean clear for weeks, but the numbers moving on Election Day itself, as the first votes get cast and the last holdouts make up their minds, show just how much the next few hours still matter.
Talarico’s Odds Hold Near 74% on Election Day
On Kalshi, James Talarico’s contract is trading at 74 cents to Ken Paxton’s 28 as polls open statewide, on more than $89.7 million traded on the Texas Senate market alone. That’s down a touch from Monday, when both Kalshi and Polymarket had Talarico between 74% and 75%: among the strongest Democratic readings prediction markets produced all cycle.
The Governor’s race tells a different story: GregAbbott’s contract sits at 65% to GinaHinojosa’s 35%, a reminder that a Democrat flipping the Senate seat would be an exception in Texas, not the start of a trend down the ballot.
| Race | Candidate | Kalshi Price | Contract Volume |
| Senate | James Talarico (D) | 72% | $89.7M |
| Senate | Ken Paxton (R) | 28% | $89.7M |
| Governor | Greg Abbott (R) | 65% | $19.2M |
| Governor | Gina Hinojosa (D) | 35% | $19.2M |
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Final Polls: Times/Siena Has Talarico Up 7
The last New York Times/Siena College poll, released Sunday and conducted Oct. 23 through Nov. 1 among 1,215 Texans, put Talarico ahead of Paxton by 7 points, with a margin of error of 3.3 points. Of the seven Senate battlegrounds the poll covered nationally, Texas and Michigan were the only two where a Democratic lead held up outside the full margin of error: every other race was a statistical tie. Independent voters broke hard for Talarico, giving him a 30-point edge over Paxton in that group, the widest independent split of any Democrat in the poll.
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Record Early Vote: What the Turnout Shows
More than 6.3 million Texans had already voted by last Wednesday, a 50% jump over the same point in the 2022 midterms. The surge outpaced early turnout in several of the state’s largest counties, including Harris, Dallas and Tarrant, putting Texas on track for one of its highest-turnout midterms in years before a single Election Day vote gets counted.
Texas doesn’t register voters by party, so there’s no official breakdown of who those 6.3 million ballots belong to. Political consultants model it off primary history instead, and the early numbers were close: voters with a Democratic primary history made up about 36% of ballots cast in the first days of early voting, against 35% with a Republican one, according to Austin-based consultant Derek Ryan.
Roughly a third of early voters had no primary history at all: people who only vote in general elections, or are voting for the first time. That group, more than any partisan base, is the one both campaigns are watching to see which way it breaks.
What Would Have to Happen for Paxton to Win
Talarico’s lead on the polls and on the markets comes with a real caveat. The same Times/Siena survey found that voters who decided only in the last month favored Republicans by a 9-point margin across the seven battlegrounds it covered.
The pollster also flagged a familiar blind spot: white voters without a college degree have historically been among the hardest groups to reach, and polling error in that group has run higher than almost any other in past cycles. For Paxton to close the gap, he’d need that late swing and that polling miss to show up in Texas specifically: on top of a softer Democratic turnout than the early-vote numbers currently suggest.
If you want to read more about politics and elections, visit Prediction Proand read our midterms predictions.
Last-Minute Checklist: What to Check Before Trading Texas
- Texas polls close at 7 PM local time, 8 PM ET for most of the state on Central time, 9 p.m. ET only in El Paso and Hudspeth County, on Mountain time.
- Statewide calls on close races typically wait until every Texas poll has closed, so don’t expect a result right when the Central time zone wraps up.
- Check which contract you’re looking at on Kalshi or Polymarket, and how it resolves if the race isn’t called on election night.
- Watch the spread before placing a large position: it tends to widen as volume shifts late in the evening.
- A market price is a snapshot, not a guarantee. It can move fast once precincts start reporting.
