Texas · Governor

Who is running?

Gina Hinojosa (Democratic), Greg Abbott (Republican), Pat Dixon (Libertarian). The margin below is Gina Hinojosa minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.

The race, in brief

Texas elects a governor on November 3, 2026. The state profile on file records a non-Hispanic white share of 0.4, a Hispanic share of 0.4 and a foreign-born share of 0.2. The text notes that Democrats have not won a gubernatorial election in Texas since 1990.

Republican incumbent Greg Abbott, governor since 2015, is seeking a fourth term; if re-elected he would become the state's longest-serving governor. He won the March 3 primary with 81.8% against minimal opposition. The Democratic nominee is state representative Gina Hinojosa, in the House since 2017, who won 58.5% over a field that included former congressman Chris Bell. Libertarian Pat Dixon is also on the ballot. As of July 15, 2026 Abbott had raised $25,505,117 in the period with $67,229,566 on hand; Hinojosa had raised $6,171,779 with $3,002,415 on hand.

Six of the seven raters listed rate the race R; RealClearPolitics calls it a Tossup (September 22, 2026). The average of six poll aggregates is Abbott 48.3%, Hinojosa 46.1%. Recent polls include Big Data Poll (September 24–26) Abbott 49%, Hinojosa 44%; Stratus Intelligence (R) (September 22–24) Abbott 50%, Hinojosa 45%; Marist University (September 17–20) Hinojosa 49%, Abbott 46%; Texas Southern University (September 15–19) Abbott 49%, Hinojosa 45%; and ReconMR/Siena University (September 8–11) Hinojosa 49%, Abbott 45%.

A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: facts.forecast carries no basis field, so the dossier cannot say whether the model uses the state polls reported here.; facts.candidates marks Abbott as incumbent: false, while the text names him the Republican incumbent.; The Democratic primary results table is truncated after Hinojosa's line, so the other candidates' shares are not given.; Ratings are given only as 'R' or 'Tossup', with no Safe/Likely/Lean grade.; No endorsements are listed (the endorsement sections are empty in the text).

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 56052f23768d; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 4.5 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

The state in numbers

ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.

Who is ahead, and by how much?

Two numbers because they answer two questions. The nowcast is where opinion stands; the election-day forecast is where it is likely to end up.

How likely is each to win?

Monte Carlo error is ±0.2 points. A change smaller than that is simulation noise rather than news, and this page will not describe it as movement.

How wide is the range?

Nowcast: 90% of simulations fall between -14.5 and +3.5 points. Election day: -16.9 to +5.2. The election-day interval is 4.1 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.

What is the uncertainty made of?

Total sd 7.04 points, made of race-specific polling error 50%, drift to election day 33%, correlated polling error 12%, latent opinion 5%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.

What evidence is this built on?

33 polls, most recent 2026-09-20. 58% verified against a primary source.

What changed since the last run?

Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is Gina Hinojosa ahead of Greg Abbott. Over 13 stored forecasts the central estimate moved -2.4 points. There were 7 specification changes (marked on the axis) and no new polls arrived over this window — so every movement in this chart is a change to the model, not a change in the race.

Since 2026-10-01: margin +0.00 points, win probability +0.0 points, on +0 polls. Of that, +0.00 points came from +0 poll(s), -0.03 from the shorter horizon, and +0.03 from the model specification.

How has this model done before?

Measured on 230 forecasts across 230 races in cycles 2016,2018,2020,2022,2024: mean absolute error 4.56 points, Brier score 0.0543. The nominal 90% interval contained the result 94% of the time, the 80% interval 84%, and the 50% interval 47%. Read that with care: a national polling miss moves every race in a cycle at once, so the sample size for a question about the intervals is 5 cycle(s), not 230 forecasts. Per cycle -- bias +1.644 pts; 2016: n=43 bias=+4.68 cov90=0.860; 2018: n=63 bias=-0.52 cov90=1.000; 2020: n=35 bias=+5.44 cov90=0.886; 2022: n=54 bias=-0.60 cov90=0.944; 2024: n=35 bias=+1.48 cov90=1.000.

Where did every number come from?

Nowcast run 254b57bd-15b6-4630-b4bb-0e95b1dac595 and election-day run 37c41d6e-a578-464c-b0b3-915ff8156cf2, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.