Questions Mount Over Texas Election Data as Republicans Call for Answers

After Democrats took hold of Texas on Election Day, many Texans are raising questions of whether the election was fair and if fraud took place. 

Numerous irregularities in Texas’ voter totals are causing many across the state to wonder if illegal votes were cast in the Texas election.

Election observers have noted some highly unusual facts about this year’s midterm results in Texas. First, Gina Hinojosa, the state’s new governor-elect, received a whopping 1.7 million more votes than Democrat gubernatorial candidates Beto O’Rourke in 2022 and Lupe Valdez did in 2018. James Talarico, the state’s new Democrat senator-elect, received nearly as many votes as President Donald Trump did in 2024.

In 2018, Gov. Greg Abbott received 4.6 million votes, while his Democrat challenger, Valdez, received 3.5 million. In 2022, Abbott received 4.4 million, while O’Rourke won 3.5 million. However, in 2026, it appears that Democrats gained 1.7 million votes, as Abbott received nearly the same number of votes, 4.5 million, while Hinojosa received 5.2 million.

Additionally, in the U.S. Senate race, Talarico received 5.45 million votes, compared to Republican Ken Paxton’s 4.25 million. Trump received a total of 6.39 million votes from Texas during the 2024 presidential race, and Talarico was only 940,000 short of that entire number during a midterm election—when voters are less likely to turn out.

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Former Texas state Senate candidate Joseph Trahan is among those pointing out the odd circumstances of the midterm election, sharing that 2 million new votes “only came from 5 counties.” 

“Mayes Middleton was ahead by 647,903 votes in the 249 of the 254 Texas counties. Then BOOM…2 Million NEW VOTERS showed up Democrat Nathan Johnson in Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Travis & Bexar counties that had NEVER voted before,” Trahan wrote on X, citing unofficial secretary of state numbers.

Trahan then broke down the statewide numbers in the Texas attorney general race, where Republican Mayes Middleton received 4.5 million votes, and Democrat Nathan Johnson received 5.1 million. 

In five counties—Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Travis, and Bexar—Johnson received 2.6 million, whereas Middleton received 1.36 million. 

Breaking down the numbers further, Trahan explained that if one subtracts the numbers from the five counties from those in the remaining counties, Middleton had 3.14 million votes, whereas Johnson had 2.49 million, giving Middleton a lead of 647,903 votes in the other 249 counties. 

“A perfectly normal 2 Million NEW votes? MORE than a presidential election? Explain this to me,” Trahan said in his X post.

Additionally, Kyle Becker, an independent journalist and former writer/associate producer for Fox News, wrote an article detailing the irregularities in the Texas election. 

One point Becker brought forward was that an independent research publication found that a published Texas secretary of state early-voting dashboard snapshot for Oct. 19 found that the number of early voters went from 806,239 to 777,891. The screenshots were taken on Oct. 22 and Oct. 23, revealing a decrease of 28,348. 

The investigation referenced in Becker’s article also reported that there were other changes to published figures. 

“The investigation also documented a reported 1,224-ballot decline in a previously published mail-ballot total, early in person votes attributed to dates before early voting officially began, and a 27,049-vote discrepancy between Harris County’s reported October 28 turnout and the corresponding state dashboard figure,” Becker wrote.

Becker also pointed to a similar question being asked on X, which is how North Texas Republican U.S. Rep. Brandon Gill won reelection in District 26, the same district in which Talarico beat Paxton by 13 points.

He says that while this, on its own, is proof of manipulated votes, the demand for transparency in the Texas election is “reasonable.” 

“But the broader demand for transparency is entirely reasonable. Texas voters deserve a clear, independently verifiable accounting of the numbers,” Becker wrote in his article. “Because when public elections reports change by tens of thousands of votes, and in some comparisons hundreds of thousands, officials should be able to show exactly what changed and why.” 

Donald Palmer, a senior legal fellow for election security at The Heritage Foundation, told the Daily Signal that he plans to sit down with experts and pollsters to ask more questions regarding the Texas elections.

“There was significant better (general election) turnout on the D side, even though R’s did not do so bad. But also, how did the independents turn? Because there is no party registration in Texas, it may seem that it was all D’s who voted for the state ticket, but there could have been significant crossover to the D ticket,” Palmer said. “For now, we need more information.” 

The number of registered voters in Texas has continued to rise sharply over the past decade, with 19,041,684 as of 2026, 18,623,931 as of 2024, and 17,672,143 as of 2022.

Since Texas does not require proof of citizenship when registering to vote, but only a signed declaration that one is a citizen, the state can’t validate the true citizenship status of registered voters until votes are cast.