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US Midterms 2026
16APR

Texas Senate, TX-35 both slip to Leans Republican

3 min read
09:34UTC

Cook Political Report and Sabato's Crystal Ball both moved Texas Senate from Likely Republican to Leans Republican on Wednesday 27 May; Sabato also downgraded TX-35, citing split-ticket vulnerability that the district's redrawn boundaries introduced.

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Key takeaway

Cook and Sabato's simultaneous downgrades confirm Texas Senate has moved from a structural Republican hold to a contested seat.

Cook Political Report moved Texas Senate from Likely Republican to Leans Republican the day after Paxton's runoff victory. Sabato's Crystal Ball, run by the University of Virginia Center for Politics, made the identical move the same day and extended its reassessment to TX-35, the San Antonio-area congressional district redrawn under PlanC2333⁠1.

The TX-35 downgrade turns on a measurable split-ticket gap. Trump carried TX-35 by ten points in 2024; Senator Ted Cruz won it by under four points in the most recent Senate race⁠2. Redrawn boundaries did not erase the district's tendency to diverge on Senate candidates, and Sabato's assessment suggests Paxton's documented controversies make a repeat of the Cruz-Trump gap likely. Sabato framed the full House map as "a bit redder, but not by enough to protect Republicans from a wave"⁠3, which places TX-35 in the category of seats the redistricting harvest was designed to insulate but cannot guarantee.

Cook and Sabato are nonpartisan forecasting services whose Solid/Likely/Lean/Toss-up ratings are the industry reference for race competitiveness; a simultaneous move from two independent services in one calendar day carries more weight than either rating in isolation. The Senate majority is currently a three-seat cushion; Texas had been priced as safe, and now it is not. The newly competitive rating does not mean Talarico is favoured; it means the NRSC must budget for Texas on top of the seats it was already defending, thinning its resources across a wider front.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Two of the most widely followed US election forecasting services, Cook Political Report and Sabato's Crystal Ball, rate every congressional and Senate race on a scale from 'Safe Republican' through 'Toss-up' to 'Safe Democrat'. Moving a race toward the competitive end means more resources will be deployed there and that the outcome is genuinely uncertain. Both services moved the Texas Senate seat from 'Likely Republican' to 'Leans Republican' on 27 May, the day after Paxton won the primary. A 'leans' rating means the seat tilts toward one party but is not out of reach for the other. TX-35 is a congressional district in the San Antonio area redrawn in 2026 under a Republican-drawn map called PlanC2333. Even under that friendly map, the district showed split-ticket behaviour: voters there backed Trump by a wide margin but voted much more narrowly for Republican Senate candidates. That gap is why forecasters flagged it as vulnerable.

Deep Analysis
Root Causes

The TX-35 downgrade rests on a specific redistricting arithmetic introduced by PlanC2333. The district was redrawn to pack Democratic-leaning Latino voters in sufficient concentration to be described as Republican-performing but not Republican-safe. Cruz's sub-four-point margin there in prior Senate cycles indicates the district contains a significant bloc of voters who back Republican presidential candidates but split to moderate Democrats or independents in lower-profile races.

At the Senate level, the downgrade reflects a compounding of two independent factors: Paxton's candidate-quality discount from legal exposure, and a generic ballot environment now at D+6.9 that shrinks the effective Republican structural buffer in red-leaning seats.

Sources:Sabato's Crystal Ball
Mentions:Cook Political Report →PlanC2333 →Texas →Virginia →Nevada →Heritage Foundation →Donald Trump →National Republican Senatorial Committee →TX-35 →Ted Cruz →Sabato's Crystal Ball →University of Virginia Center for Politics →
First Reported In

Update #7 · Paxton wins; maps lock

Sabato's Crystal Ball· 29 May 2026
Read original →
Causes and effects
Caused by
Paxton routs Cornyn despite nine-to-one spend
Paxton's 63.8% runoff win directly triggered Cook and Sabato's same-day and next-day moves of Texas Senate and TX-35 to Leans Republican.
Occurred 26 May 2026
Read story →
This Event
Texas Senate, TX-35 both slip to Leans Republican
Two independent forecasters downgraded the same Texas seat within 24 hours of Paxton's win, signalling that candidate quality has converted a structural Republican advantage into a genuine Senate majority risk.
Led to
Letlow's 15-point lead collapses to a tie
Cook and Sabato moving Texas Senate to Leans Republican after the Paxton win signalled the pattern of outside-money failure that the Louisiana poll now echoes.
Occurred 16 Jun 2026
Read story →
Letlow routs Fleming by 13.6 points
The post-Paxton ratings shift set the benchmark against which Letlow's rout is now read.
Occurred 27 Jun 2026
Read story →
Different Perspectives
Judge Mary Geiger Lewis, US District Court for the District of South Carolina
Judge Mary Geiger Lewis, US District Court for the District of South Carolina
Lewis dismissed on standing, without prejudice, the challenge by the South Carolina NAACP and three voters with disabilities to limits on who may help voters. The limits, including a cap of five voters per assistant, stand for the 3 November Senate election.
Judge Victoria Marie Calvert, US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia
Judge Victoria Marie Calvert, US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia
Calvert dismissed the Justice Department's suit for Georgia's unredacted voter list on 30 September, holding that the 1960 Civil Rights Act does not override state privacy law. Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger need not hand over birth dates, Social Security numbers or licence numbers.
Chad Bianco, Riverside County Sheriff
Chad Bianco, Riverside County Sheriff
Bianco, ordered by the state supreme court on 24 September to return about 650,000 Proposition 50 ballots, called his seizure a lawful investigation. He told CalMatters he would appeal to the federal courts.
Fairshake network, through Defend American Jobs
Fairshake network, through Defend American Jobs
Fairshake, the crypto-industry super PAC, has said it will spend $30 million against Sherrod Brown, and Defend American Jobs, which the Washington Times places in its network, filed $11.46 million in Ohio. The Washington Times reports that the ads do not mention cryptocurrency.
Texas PAC
Texas PAC
The super PAC reported $61.41 million of new spending on 30 September, its two largest lines opposing James Talarico and supporting Ken Paxton. Its race total of $131.53 million is the largest outside effort in any Senate contest this week, with donors undisclosed until 15 October.
Sabato's Crystal Ball
Sabato's Crystal Ball
Sabato moved three Virginia seats on 29 September, putting Jen Kiggans's 2nd District at Leans Democratic and the 1st at Toss-up. It wrote that a Democratic win in the 5th, now Leans Republican, would fit a 2006-style wave.