A pair of volatile Senate contests in Texas will headline the first primary night of the 2026 midterm season. And a few groups of voters are set to play critical roles deciding these races — and possibly hint at the keys to other campaigns to come this year. The drama centers on the seat held b y Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who is in the underdog role as he seeks his fifth term. Cornyn faces primary challenges from state Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt. If Cornyn is defeated, he will be the first senator to be denied renomination by his or her own party since Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana back in 2012. Polls have generally shown Paxton running slightly ahead of Cornyn, with Hunt trailing in third. If no one secures a majority Tuesday, the race will be settled in a May 26 runoff between the top two vote-getters, which seems likely. Tuesday’s result, though, should establish who enters that runoff with the upper hand. Overall, nearly half of the GOP vote should come from the Dallas and Houston metro areas. Another one-third or so will come from smaller hubs and midsize cities. And the rest will come from the state’s overwhelmingly Republican rural expanses. Complicating the picture is that there aren’t many recent competitive statewide Republican primaries to provide points of reference. Cornyn faced nominal intraparty opposition the last time he sought re-election in 2020, winning the GOP primary with 76% of the vote. Paxton faced a seemingly more serious primary threat in 2022, when George P. Bush challenged him for attorney general, but he ended up cruising in the runoff, 68% to 32%. But there are a few clues in those performances for where to look Tuesday night. While Paxton won his 2022 primary handily, he put up his weakest numbers in the Dallas and Austin areas, where the GOP electorate tends toward the affluent, college-educated and culturally moderate. Conversely, Cornyn posted some of his best numbers in these areas. Paxton tended to do best in rural West Texas and the small towns of East Texas. In many of the same places, Cornyn’s performance fell short of his statewide average. Paxton also underperformed in the heavily Hispanic counties in deep south Texas near the border — but Cornyn did, too. A key area Tuesday will be around Houston. Harris County will produce about 10% of all votes — more than any other county in Texas. And its densely populated suburbs in Fort Bend, Montgomery and Brazoria counties will, combined, produce only slightly fewer votes. The GOP electorate here is a little different from the Dallas area’s. It’s not quite as affluent, it has a lower concentration of college degrees, and it’s more politically conservative. Cornyn performed adequately here in 2020, but Paxton did even better in 2022. It’s also worth paying particular attention to Montgomery County, where explosive 21st century growth has boosted the population to nearly 750,000. Montgomery has become so large, in fact, that it cranked out a larger raw vote plurality for Donald Trump than any other county in the country in 2024. When Paxton faced a GOP primary runoff in 2022, he took 77% in Montgomery, while Cornyn got 71% in his 2020 primary. Democratic divisions The Democratic primary for the Senate, meanwhile, is a bit of a mystery. A University of Texas poll late last week put Rep. Jasmine Crockett up by 12 points over state Rep. James Talarico, while an Emerson College poll over the weekend showed Talarico ahead by 5. There is some agreement among the various surveys. Among Black voters, who will make up about 20% of the electorate, Crockett is crushing Talarico. Talarico does appear to be ahead with white voters, who should account for just over 40% of the electorate. But the extent of his lead here is unclear: Emerson pegged it at 42 points, while the University of Texas poll had it at 6. A third poll, conducted for the University of Houston two weeks ago, put Talarico ahead by 17 points among white voters. Hispanic voters loom as a potentially decisive constituency. They should account for about one-third of all votes in the primary, but the polling has been all over the map. Emerson shows Hispanic voters breaking for Talarico by 21 points, the University of Texas has them going for Crockett by 4, and the University of Houston has Crockett up 9 with them. There may be a decent model for this Democratic race. In 2020, MJ Hegar and Royce West faced off in a Democratic primary runoff with potentially similar demographic and geographic contours. West was a state legislator from the Dallas area with deep support from Black voters. Like Crockett, he ran to the left and was vastly outraised and outspent by his opponent, whose supporters portrayed him as unelectable in the fall. Hegar, meanwhile, was an Air Force veteran whose near-miss bid for an Austin-area congressional seat in 2018 had made her something of a celebrity among Democrats nationally. She was the recipient of glowing and extensive coverage in national media outlets — much like Talarico, whose own political base is also in the Austin area. The contest was close, with Hegar ultimately prevailing 52% to 48%. West came close by running up a landslide in the Dallas area, which accounted for nearly one-third of the runoff vote. He also narrowly won the greater Houston area and rolled up landslide margins in East Texas, which has a sizable Black population. Hegar, meanwhile, ran up the score around her Austin base, but the reason she was able to eke out a win is that the Hispanic vote broke her way — as seen in the margins she secured in the El Paso and San Antonio areas and in South Texas. Those same heavily Hispanic areas may well end up deciding whether it’s Crockett or Talarico who advances to the general election this time around. This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. ...read more read less