Why AP called the Texas Senate race for Ted Cruz

WASHINGTON — (AP) — The Associated Press declared that Republican Sen. Ted Cruz successfully defended his seat against Democratic Rep. Colin Allred based on the incumbent's competitive showing in the state's large population centers, bolstered by his overwhelming leads in more conservative rural areas across the state.

Cruz’s victory, which the AP declared at 11:39 p.m. ET, blocked a possible path in which Democrats might have retained control of the Senate by offsetting possible losses by vulnerable Democratic incumbents in other parts of the country.

The AP only declares a winner once it can determine that a trailing candidate can’t close the gap and overtake the vote leader.

CANDIDATES: Cruz (R) vs. Allred (D) vs. Ted Brown (Libertarian)

WINNER: Cruz (R)

POLL CLOSING TIME: 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. ET, depending on the part of the state

ABOUT THE RACE:

Facing their most difficult Senate map in years, Democrats looked to the Cruz-Allred matchup as one of their only chances to possibly defeat a Republican incumbent and offset an expected loss in West Virginia and highly vulnerable seats in Montana, Ohio and elsewhere. Cruz first won this seat by a 16-point margin in 2012, when he ran to replace 20-year Republican incumbent Kay Bailey Hutchison. He faced a much tougher contest in 2018, when then-Rep. Beto O'Rourke gained national attention for coming within 3 percentage points of defeating Cruz.

Allred, a former NFL linebacker and civil rights attorney, represents the Dallas-area 32nd Congressional District. He defeated 11-term Republican U.S. Rep. Pete Sessions in 2018. Sessions returned to Congress in 2021.

Allred has slightly outspent Cruz for the cycle, with each spending about $77 million on the race as of mid-October. Cruz entered the final stretch of the campaign with a $9.6 million to $2.5 million cash advantage.

Texas was once a heavily Democratic state, but Republicans have dominated statewide politics since the 1990s. A Democrat hasn’t held a U.S. Senate seat in more than 30 years. In more recent elections, Democratic candidates tend to perform best in the population centers of Dallas, Harris (Houston), Travis (Austin), Bexar (San Antonio) and El Paso counties, as well as along the southernmost border with Mexico. Republicans won by large margins across most of the state, as well as the more competitive counties surrounding Dallas and Houston.

WHY AP CALLED THE RACE:

At the time the AP called the race, Cruz led Allred in the statewide vote by more than 10 points with about 76% of the vote counted from almost every county. The incumbent posted big leads in traditionally Republican areas in the east and in the plains regions that make up much of the state. But he also stayed competitive with Allred in both the Democratic population centers of the Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston areas.

Cruz was outperforming Trump's 2020 share of the vote in those areas and narrowed the Democrats' traditional advantage there. He was trailing Allred by about 4 percentage points in the area, while Trump trailed Democrat Joe Biden in those areas by between 8 and 9 percentage points in 2020.

Allred also underperformed in almost all of the state's most populous counties compared to O’Rourke in his 2018 run against Cruz. He was slightly trailing O’Rourke's performance in Harris (home of Houston), Dallas, Travis (home of Austin) and Bexar (home of San Antonio) counties but was far behind in O'Rourke's home county of El Paso by 15 percentage points.

Allred was running competitively in Fort Worth-based Tarrant County, which is one of the most competitive of the state's large counties. Trump won Tarrant comfortably over Hillary Clinton in 2016, but both O'Rourke and Biden carried it narrowly in 2018 and 2020. At the time AP called the race, Allred was trailing Cruz in Tarrant but by 2 a.m. ET was ahead by a razor-thin margin.

In order to overtake Cruz's statewide lead, Allred would have needed to win the remaining untabulated ballots by more than 30 percentage points over Cruz, but he was not performing at near that level in the areas where the most outstanding votes remained.

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