{"id":471215,"date":"2026-10-20T03:58:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T03:58:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/471215\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T03:58:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T03:58:09","slug":"is-tarrant-county-the-ohio-of-texas-why-its-a-key-county-to-watch-in-the-u-s-senate-race-texas-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/471215\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Tarrant County the Ohio of Texas? Why it’s a key county to watch in the U.S. Senate race, Texas elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

The political ground in Tarrant County is red hot, and the battle for Texas’ U.S. Senate seat<\/a> is turning up the heat.<\/p>\n

Gov. Greg Abbott<\/a>, Attorney General Ken Paxton<\/a> and Democratic rival James Talarico<\/a> have all made their way to Fort Worth as the high-stakes Senate showdown draws national attention.<\/p>\n

The reason? Tarrant County<\/a> could offer one of the clearest signals of where Texas voters are headed.<\/p>\n

“What makes it particularly significant is it’s the last urban county in Texas in which Republicans are genuinely competitive,” said Matthew Wilson, a political science expert at Southern Methodist University.<\/p>\n

Unlike other major urban counties in Texas, Tarrant County remains a battleground where both political parties have a fighting chance.<\/p>\n

It’s growing population, suburban swing voters and Hispanic electorate make it a political prize \u2014 and potentially a bellwether for statewide elections, Wilson said.<\/p>\n

“Since it is two-party competitive, that creates a lot of attention in Tarrant County, both as electorally significant and also as a bellwether for trends that might be relevant elsewhere in the state too,” Wilson said.<\/p>\n

So, is Tarrant County becoming the Ohio of Texas?<\/p>\n

“It’s definitely the Ohio of Texas in a sense,” Wilson said, noting that Ohio itself is no longer the reliable national bellwether it was two decades ago.<\/p>\n

But Wilson cautions that Tarrant County alone won’t tell the entire story on election night.<\/p>\n

He’s also watching the Texas-Mexico border, where Republicans have made significant gains in recent election cycles and Democrats are hoping to win back Latino voters.<\/p>\n

“I would look at those counties along the Texas-Mexico border because they swung so much in favor of Trump and the Republicans over the last several cycles,” Wilson said.<\/p>\n

The Republican strongholds of the Texas Panhandle and deep East Texas could also help reveal the statewide political picture.<\/p>\n

Still, Wilson believes Tarrant County deserves top billing.<\/p>\n

“If you had to only pick one county to watch in order to infer the statewide outcomes, Tarrant County would be a pretty good choice,” he said.<\/p>\n

With national attention focused on Texas’ Senate race, Tarrant County is more than a campaign stop. It could be the biggest single piece of the puzzle in determining which party comes out on top.<\/p>\n

And for now, the political ground shows no signs of cooling off.<\/p>\n

Long lines, voting machine problems or other issues at the polls? CBS News Texas wants to hear from you, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The political ground in Tarrant County is red hot, and the battle for Texas’ U.S. Senate seat is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[145,392,2135,1967,1688,122,27,29,75069,28,292],"class_list":["post-471215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-donald-trump","tag-greg-abbott","tag-james-talarico","tag-ken-paxton","tag-ohio","tag-tarrant-county","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-midterm-elections","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}