The 2018 United States Senate election in Texas was held on November 6, 2018, along with other elections to the United States Senate and elections to the United States House of Representatives in additional states. Incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Ted Cruz secured a second term, defeating Democratic U.S. Representative Beto O'Rourke. The primary was held on March 6, 2018, the first primary of the 2018 season.
No Democrat has won a general election for statewide office in Texas since Bob Bullock was reelected as lieutenant governor in 1994, with election forecasters declaring it a safe Republican seat at the beginning of the 2018 cycle. However, O'Rourke gradually closed the gap. Leading up to the election, the race was considered unexpectedly competitive.
On Election Day, Cruz defeated O'Rourke by a margin of just under 215,000 votes, or 2.6 percent; the race was the closest U.S. Senate race in Texas since 1978.
In 2012, after a stunning upset victory in the Republican primary, then-Solicitor General of Texas Ted Cruz defeated former member of the Texas House of Representatives Paul Sadler by a 16-point margin (56%âÂÂ40%). Texas has not elected a Democratic senator since 1988. As conservatives began turning to the Republican Party in once strongly Democratic areas, Democratic voters in the state were largely based in the majority-Hispanic communities in Southern Texas and in populous metropolitan cities, such as Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas, as well as the heavily Hispanic city of El Paso on the state's western tip, which O'Rourke represented in the U.S. House.
Since 1990, Texas has voted for Republican statewide candidates in all elections, whether it be presidential, gubernatorial, or senatorial, often by large margins. In 1998, Governor George W. Bush won re-election by 37 points over his Democratic challenger, Garry Mauro. In 2000, Governor Bush won Texas by 21 points over Vice President Al Gore. In 2004, President Bush won Texas over Senator John Kerry by 23 points, winning rural areas by landslide margins, capturing urban zones, and coming very close to winning the Latino vote (49% to Kerry's 50%). Democrat Barack Obama was defeated by margins of 12 points in 2008, against John McCain, and 16 points in 2012, against Mitt Romney, respectively. However, in 2016, Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton by only a 9-point margin, demonstrating a possible shift away from the Safe Republican status it had held for over a decade. This has led Democrats to begin targeting Texas as a potential future swing state. It should also be noted that Ted Cruz defeated Donald Trump in the Texas Republican primary for U.S. president in 2016.
As of June 2018, Senator Cruz held a 49%âÂÂ44% approval rating among Texans in a state Donald Trump won by 9 points against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Among groups that tend to affiliate themselves more with the Democratic Party, Senator Cruz held a 29% approval rating among Hispanics, 37% among women, and 42% among college-educated voters.
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In the third quarter of 2018, O'Rourke raised $38.1 million. This was the largest quarterly total raised by a U.S. Senate candidate until Jaime Harrison raised $57 million in the third quarter of 2020 in the South Carolina election. Cruz and O'Rourke combined to raise a record-setting total of $126 million during the 2018 campaign.
On November 6, 2018, Ted Cruz defeated Beto O'Rourke. However, O'Rourke performed unexpectedly well, outperforming pre-election polling. In addition, O'Rourke flipped numerous counties that Donald Trump carried in 2016, including Williamson (includes Round Rock and Georgetown), historically conservative Tarrant (includes Fort Worth and suburbs within the DFW metroplex), Jefferson (includes Beaumont and Port Arthur), Nueces (includes Corpus Christi), sparsely populated Brewster (includes Big Bend National Park), and Hays (includes San Marcos). Cruz won only one county that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, sparsely populated Kenedy (coastal region south of Corpus Christi).
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Counties that flipped from Republican to Democratic
Cruz won 20 of 36 congressional districts; O'Rourke won the other 16, including three held by Republicans.
Official campaign websites