In Texas, House contest attracts national attention, while immigration, abortion animate governor race

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Texas is booming, adding nearly 4 million new residents over the past decade and gaining two U.S. House seats. It’s also becoming younger and more diverse, making the midterm election another test of whether Texas’ rapidly changing demographics will shake up nearly 30 years of GOP power.

Republicans aren’t running up the score in Texas like they were a decade ago. But they still have a leg up, and national headwinds for Democrats and President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings are giving the GOP even more of a boost after getting a few scares in 2018 and 2020.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has focused his bid to become one of Texas’ longest-serving governors on economic anxieties and record migration coming across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Democrat Beto O’Rourke, the former El Paso congressman who became a party phenomenon in 2018 after nearly ousting Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, has animated supporters outraged over the Uvalde school massacre and a new statewide abortion ban. But Abbott has animated voters over the border issue, and Democrats have found themselves scrambling to protect their turf in South Texas.

I'M GREG ABBOTT: THIS IS WHY I WANT TEXAS' VOTE IN THE MIDTERM ELECTION

Republicans are poised to keep a commanding majority in the Legislature.

All eyes in U.S. House races are on South Texas, where Republicans have redoubled efforts after the GOP nationally made gains with Hispanic voters in 2020. Republican Monica De La Cruz and Democrat Michelle Vallejo are running in the 15th Congressional District that is drawing heavy attention from both parties.

Also on the border is an unusual race between two sitting members of Congress: Republican Rep. Mayra Flores, who won a special election this summer to become Texas’ first Republican Latina in the House, and Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, who switched districts to run in the redrawn 34th district.

Embattled Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who is under FBI investigation and faces separate securities fraud charges, is seeking a third term against Democrat Rochelle Garza, a civil rights attorney.

I'M MONICA DE LA CRUZ: THIS IS WHY I WANT TEXAS' VOTE IN THE MIDTERM ELECTION

Here’s a look at what to expect on election night:

Election Night

Polls close at 7 p.m. local time. Most of Texas is in the Central Time Zone (poll close at 8 p.m. ET) and three counties in West Texas are in the Mountain Time Zone (poll close at 9 p.m. ET). The AP won't make any race calls until after 9 p.m. ET.

How Texas Votes

Texas was the first state to offer in-person early voting in the 1980s and its popularity has steadily grown. While voters can still cast a ballot in person on Election Day, fewer are doing that today. In the 2020 general election, a record 87% of all ballots cast came during the early voting period.

The key counties are in the state’s metropolitan areas — Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin and El Paso — including the growing suburbs that encircle the cities. Democrats typically dominate the urban centers of Harris, Dallas, Bexar, Travis and El Paso counties, while Republicans dominate the suburban counties like Collin, Denton, Fort Bend and Montgomery. The only metropolitan county that has been a toss-up in recent elections is Fort Worth’s Tarrant County.

Outside the metro areas, most counties tend to vote overwhelmingly Republican except for some along the Rio Grande Valley. Those in the southern tip of Texas tend to vote mostly Democrat. The GOP-led state Legislature has shaped the congressional districts in that part of the state to include slices of the San Antonio suburbs, which tend to vote Republican, to try to outweigh the votes in the predominantly Democratic counties to the south.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott speaks during a press conference about the mass shooting at Uvalde High School on May 27, 2022. Abbott will face off against Beto O’Rourke in this year's governor's race. (Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Decision Notes

AP will count votes and declare winners in 174 contested elections in Texas, including seven statewide races, most notably for governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general, and 38 U.S. House races. In the 2020 general election, AP first reported results at 8 p.m. ET — immediately after the first polls closed — and 90% by 1 a.m. ET on Wednesday, Nov. 4.

The AP does not make projections and will only declare a winner when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow the trailing candidates to close the gap.

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Should a candidate declare victory or offer a concession before the AP calls a race, we will cover newsworthy developments in our reporting. In doing so, we will make clear that the AP has not declared a winner and explain why.

The AP may call a statewide or U.S. House race in which the margin between the top two candidates is 0.5% or less, if we determine the lead is too large for a recount to change the outcome. Recounts are only mandatory in Texas when there is a tie. However, a recount can be requested by the loser when the difference between candidates is less than 10 percent of the winning candidate’s vote or if the total votes in a race is less than 1,000 among all candidates. The loser is required to pay for the recount and statewide recounts can easily top $1 million so they are rarely requested.

What Else Should I Know?

Q: What Did We Learn From the Primary?

A: Changes to mail voting rules in Texas led to the state rejecting at least 23,000 ballots outright during the primary, a rejection rate of roughly 13% that is far beyond what is typical. State elections officials say they’ve made efforts to educate voters after many expressed frustration and confusion over the additional requirements.

Q: What’s Changed Since the Pandemic Election of 2020?

A: In addition to the mail ballot changes, Texas Republicans also passed also sweeping new restrictions that banned drive-thru voting and 24-hour polling locations. The tighter rules were squarely aimed at undoing expanded voting options in booming Harris County, which includes Houston, a stronghold for Democrats.

Q: What Do Turnout and Advance Vote Look Like?

A: The Secretary of State hasn’t made a turnout projection. During the last midterm elections in 2018, which had the same races on the ballot except for a contested U.S. Senate race between Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke, the turnout was 46.3 percent of registered voters. If turnout for the first two days of early voting is an overall indicator, it will be down. In 2018, there were nearly 1.2 million votes cast during the first two days, while this year it was at 549,611.

Q: How Long Does Counting Usually Take?

A: Most of the votes are typically counted within 4-5 hours of polls closing statewide, with remaining votes verified over the following days. Unless a race is too close to call, most winners are determined by 2 a.m. ET. In fact, in the 2020 general election, more than half of all votes counted were released within 75 minutes of polls closing statewide.

Texas can count quickly because so much of the state votes early, and counties with 100,000 people or more are allowed to start tallying early votes once the early voting period ends — this year that's Nov. 4 — which gives them a head start. Counties with less than 100,000 can start counting when polls open on Election Day, but with the smaller populations, many still manage to count all early votes by the time polls close.

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Q: What Happens After Tuesday?

A: The AP will not call down-ballot races on election night if the margin between the top two candidates is less than 2%. AP will revisit those races later in the week to confirm there aren’t enough outstanding votes left to count that could change the outcome.