Texas Election Odds — 2026 Live Betting Odds & Voting History

Texas is the second-largest state in the country and the largest reliably Republican state, with 40 electoral votes and a 2026 ballot that includes some of the most consequential races in the cycle. The Republican Senate primary runoff on May 26 between incumbent John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton is the most expensive Senate primary in Texas history, costing more than $100 million in advertising alone. A new congressional map, drawn at President Trump’s request and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in December 2025, is expected to add five Republican seats to the state’s House delegation. And Governor Greg Abbott is on track to become Texas’s longest-serving governor if he wins re-election. Prediction markets are pricing all of it. National 2028 markets and balance-of-power coverage live on the homepage.

Texas governor betting odds

Greg Abbott is running for an unprecedented fourth term. He won the March 3 Republican primary with 82% of the vote against ten token challengers, and entered 2026 with $105.7 million in cash on hand — the largest war chest of any incumbent governor in the country. His campaign raised $22.7 million in the second half of 2025 alone. If Abbott wins re-election and serves a full fourth term, he will become Texas’s longest-serving governor at 16 years, surpassing Rick Perry.

The Democratic nominee is state Representative Gina Hinojosa, a civil rights and union lawyer who represents Austin. She won the Democratic primary with 59% in a nine-way field, easily clearing the runoff threshold. Hinojosa raised $1.3 million in the final ten weeks of 2025, a fraction of Abbott’s haul. Texas has not elected a Democrat to statewide office since 1994, and prediction markets are pricing the general election as a near-certainty for Abbott. The race draws limited market volume relative to the Senate contest below.

Texas presidential election betting odds

Texas has voted Republican in every presidential election since 1980. Trump’s margin has expanded each cycle — 9 points in 2016, 5.6 points in 2020, and 13.7 points in 2024, his largest Texas win ever. The shift was driven by significant gains among the state’s Latino voters, particularly in the Rio Grande Valley, where multiple counties that voted Democratic for decades flipped to Trump.

For 2028, prediction markets are treating Texas as safe Republican regardless of the nominee. The interesting question is whether Texas’s 40 electoral votes function as a baseline Republican floor or as a stepping stone toward an even larger Sun Belt realignment. Markets pricing the 2028 nominee race occasionally generate Texas-specific activity — Senator Cruz has been mentioned in long-shot 2028 markets, though he has not signaled interest — but the state itself is not a competitive presidential market.

Texas senate betting odds

This is the headline race of the cycle in Texas and one of the most-traded markets on Polymarket and Kalshi. Four-term incumbent John Cornyn finished the March 3 Republican primary one point ahead of Attorney General Ken Paxton, 41.9% to 40.5%, with U.S. Representative Wesley Hunt of Houston taking 13.5%. Because no candidate cleared 50%, the race went to a May 26 runoff that is now two weeks away.

Paxton has led every public poll of the runoff. The University of Houston Hobby School (April 28 to May 2) put him at 48-45 over Cornyn, with 7% undecided. Texas Public Opinion Research’s mid-April poll had Paxton up 48-40. Slingshot Strategies modeling found a Trump endorsement of Cornyn would only narrow the gap to 45-42, while a Trump endorsement of Paxton would blow the race open to 55-35. Trump teased an endorsement immediately after the primary but never delivered one, and as of mid-May the field still doesn’t expect one.

The Cornyn campaign has spent more than $60 million attacking Paxton over his impeachment, his FBI investigation, and his wife’s 2024 divorce filing accusing him of adultery. Paxton has held off the attacks by leaning on the MAGA base, where his favorability is sharply higher than Cornyn’s. The Democratic nominee is state Representative James Talarico, who defeated Representative Jasmine Crockett in the March 3 primary. Talarico has out-raised every Senate Democrat in the country in 2026. Democrats have not won a Senate race in Texas since 1988, but polling shows that Paxton in particular faces meaningful general election risk — 24% of Cornyn primary voters tell pollsters they would consider voting for Talarico over Paxton.

Ted Cruz, the state’s other senator, is not up in 2026. His next election is 2030.

Texas house betting odds

Texas’s congressional delegation is the second-largest in the country at 38 seats and the largest where mid-decade redistricting has actively flipped districts. After President Trump asked Republican-led states to redraw congressional maps in mid-2025 to protect the House majority, Texas was first to move. Governor Abbott signed the new map in August 2025. It is designed to expand Republican representation from the current 25 seats to 30, with the five new GOP-favorable seats carved out of previously Democratic-leaning territory in Houston, Dallas, and South Texas.

The map immediately drew lawsuits from the League of United Latin American Citizens and other civil rights groups, who argued the new district lines were the product of unconstitutional racial gerrymandering. A three-judge district court panel agreed on November 18, 2025, blocking the map and ordering Texas to use the 2021 map for 2026. Texas appealed, and on December 4, 2025, the U.S. Supreme Court — through an order written by Justice Samuel Alito — reinstated the new map. Alito wrote that Texas’s motivation was “pure and simple” partisan advantage, which the Court has previously ruled is permissible. The three liberal justices dissented. The full case continued in lower courts, and on April 27, 2026, the Supreme Court issued its final ruling clearing the map permanently.

The new map was used in the March 3 primary. Prediction markets are pricing both the seat-by-seat outcomes and the meta-question of whether the GOP’s five-seat gain will fully materialize in November, since aggressive gerrymanders can backfire by spreading Republican voters too thin in newly competitive districts.