Democrat Gina Hinojosa unseats Texas Gov. Greg Abbott

Matthew Adams, Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Nov 3, 2026

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Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa has pulled off an upset in the Texas governor’s race, unseating three-term Republican incumbent Greg Abbott.

Abbott conceded defeat just after 10 p.m.

“There are still votes to be counted, but mathematically we’re not going to be able to win this election,” Abbott told supporters at his election watch party in Austin.

Hinojosa is the first Democrat and the first woman to win the state’s top office since Ann Richards in 1991. Statewide, she leads Abbott by more than 15 percentage points, according to the Associated Press. She holds a similar lead in Tarrant County.

Abbott had greater name recognition and far more cash than his opponent, but Hinojosa capitalized on voter angst over Abbott’s earlier support of data centers in Texas and his support for a school voucher program that gives public dollars to families to use for private school tuition and homeschool costs, funneling money away from the public school system.

On the campaign trail, Hinojosa rallied against school vouchers and state takeovers of public school districts, such as the one that happened in Fort Worth this year. She vowed to help lower living costs, healthcare costs and property taxes, saying Abbott “prioritized putting taxpayer money in the pockets of global corporations at the expense of investments in Texans.”

With regard to data centers, Hinojosa called for a moratorium on data center permits until the state legislature could create safeguards to protect Texas resources and communities.

Like Hinojosa, Abbott campaigned on lowering costs and property taxes. That included a plan that would have allowed voters to abolish school district property taxes. With regard to public education, Abbott sought restrictions on electronics and technology in classrooms in order to reduce distractions, and he said he would cut wasteful spending in schools to maximize the return on taxpayer investment.

Ultimately, it wasn’t enough to sway voters alienated by soaring prices and a perceived lack of financial support for education.

Leading up to the election, many traditional Conservatives broke ranks and declared support for Hinojosa. In Johnson and Hood counties, Republican voters told the Star-Telegram in June that they would “flip” if it meant keeping data centers out of their communities.

At a recent rally in Lake Worth, Hinojosa predicted that reliably red, Republican Tarrant County would be “ground zero” for a Democratic blue wave, pointing to Taylor Rehmet’s Texas Senate victory earlier this year as the beginning of that shift.

“Then we started seeing Democrats winning all throughout the state, all throughout the year,” Hinojosa told rally attendees. “And now what we’re seeing is polling numbers that show we are winning. It’s not because people are Team Democrat. It is because people are for change.”

That prediction proved prescient, with Hinojosa set to ride that blue wave into the Texas Governor’s Mansion.

Hinojosa is from Brownsville. She graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and earned a law degree from George Washington University in Washington. She began her law career as a civil and labor rights attorney. Her first elected position was as an Austin school district trustee. Hinojosa was elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 2016, representing District 49, which encompasses parts of Austin.

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