Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton built a big early lead against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary runoff for the U.S. Senate, according to incomplete statewide voting results released Tuesday night by the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.
With 133 of the state’s 254 counties reporting results as of 7:30 p.m. Tuesday — half an hour after polls closed — Paxton had received 61.8% of more than 544,000 votes.
If Paxton maintains his lead, he will become the first primary challenger to defeat an incumbent U.S. senator from Texas since Lloyd Bentsen beat Ralph Yarborough in 1970.
A primary runoff win by Paxton would cap an insurgent candidacy that began in April 2025, when he launched his bid to unseat Cornyn on Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s show. While Cornyn has held the advantages of both incumbency and a sizable campaign war chest, most polls over the past 13 months have shown Paxton either leading Cornyn or statistically tied with him.
“Paxton has spent his entire political career assiduously courting the base voters in the Republican Party,” said Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “And it’s many of these hardcore Republicans who have been the most skeptical of John Cornyn.”
President Donald Trump endorsed Paxton last Tuesday, when early voting was already underway. An April poll released by Texas Public Opinion Research suggested such an endorsement by Trump would likely catapult Paxton into an insurmountable lead.
Cornyn edged out Paxton in the first round of primary voting in March, but he failed to garner more than 50% of the vote, the threshold needed to avoid a runoff. That was in part due to a spoiler campaign by Houston-area U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt.
Hunt endorsed Paxton last Tuesday, shortly after Trump weighed in.
Paxton countered attacks by Cornyn by hitting Cornyn for his willingness to work with Democrats over his long career, as well as charging him with failing to support Trump at key moments.
If he holds on to win the primary runoff, Paxton will face the challenge of building a coalition to beat the Democratic nominee, state Rep. James Talarico, in November’s general election. That will need to include GOP voters who previously supported Cornyn, conservatives who sat out the Republican Senate primary and independents.
Most polls looking ahead to the general election have shown Talarico performing slightly better against Paxton than against Cornyn.
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