Daily Briefing: Wednesday, November 4, 2026

Republican candidates trailed in every statewide race early Wednesday, with 253 of 254 counties reporting in the Texas Secretary of State’s unofficial returns. Gina Hinojosa led Gov. Greg Abbott 52.8 percent to 45.7 percent, and James Talarico led Attorney General Ken Paxton 55.1 percent to 43 percent in the U.S. Senate race. The Texian Partisan’s Texas election night desk carries the full count.

Republican nominees also trailed in all four Texas Supreme Court races on the ballot, including chief justice, and in three Court of Criminal Appeals races and three Fifteenth Court of Appeals races, according to the same unofficial state returns.

Republicans will hold 24 of Texas’s 38 U.S. House seats in January, one fewer than at the start of the current Congress, The Texas Tribune reported. The map the Legislature redrew in 2025 was built to flip five seats; Republicans won one of them and lost two seats they already held, the Tribune reported.

Republicans lost control of both the House and the Senate, according to an NPR analysis of Associated Press race calls. Seven Senate seats changed hands from Republican control, in Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Kansas, Iowa and Maine.

Voters in the Houston-area suburb rejected the city’s continued use of 55 Flock license plate cameras, with just under 54 percent of 46,400 ballots on Proposition A favoring removal, The Texas Tribune reported, citing Galveston County’s election results. The Tribune reported that the cameras are to be removed or covered within 72 hours after the result is certified, and called the vote the first of its kind in Texas.

Gov. Greg Abbott renewed the fire weather disaster declaration he first issued on August 12, 2025, and it now covers 52 counties, according to the proclamation dated November 2.

County teams from the Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) have two public events set for the end of the week. Caldwell County volunteers hold a clipboarding event at Lockhart City Hall on Friday, November 6, the Caldwell event page shows, and the Llano County team holds an information table on the Llano Courthouse Square on Saturday, November 7, according to its listing.