Tuesday 3 November 2026
Gina Hinojosa beats Greg Abbott for governor of Texas, and Abbott concedes at his Austin watch party
The Associated Press has called the Texas governor's race for Democrat Gina Hinojosa over Republican Governor Greg Abbott. The Associated Press count had Hinojosa at 4,050,374 votes and Abbott at 2,998,368 as of 9:30 p.m. Colorado time, with an estimated 68.5 percent of the vote counted. Abbott conceded at his watch party in Austin on Tuesday night, telling supporters he had called Hinojosa to congratulate her. No Democrat has won the governorship of Texas since Ann Richards, who left office in 1995, and Hinojosa will be the first Latina governor in the state's history.
"After looking at all the details of every county in the entire state, I made the decision to go ahead and call Gina Hinojosa and congratulate her on winning this race for governor of the state of Texas," Abbott said. He has been governor since 2015 and was seeking a fourth term, something no Texas governor has won. He began the year with a campaign fund of 105.7 million dollars. Hinojosa, a state representative from Austin and a lawyer, began her race as a long shot with under 1 million dollars on hand, and she ran on affordability against the longest serving governor in the country.
The final New York Times and Siena poll put the race in a statistical tie, Abbott at 47 percent and Hinojosa at 48. The count ran far past the poll. The Wall Street Journal put Hinojosa at 57 percent and Abbott at 42 with about 67 percent of the expected vote counted. Paired with the Senate result an hour earlier, Texas elected a Democratic senator and a Democratic governor on the same night, in a state that had not elected a Democrat to any statewide office since 1994.
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