SAN ANTONIO — In 2012, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz easily won his Senate seat by more than 1.2 million votes.
In 2018, he needed every one of his 4.26 million votes to hold off upstart Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke. Out of more than 8.3 million ballots cast in that race, just 215,000 separated the candidates at the end of a gritty Senate battle.
If that trend continues, this year's battle between Cruz and U.S. Rep. Colin Allred – the latest Democrat looking to unseat him – could be a dramatic one at the finish line. The latest poll by the UT Tyler Center for Opinion Research shows Cruz, 53, leading by just two percentage points among likely voters, although others show his advantage closer to five percentage points.
Election Day is Tuesday.
Bexar County, which has voted blue in the last three Senate elections to pick a Texas representative, is likely to go for Allred, 41, along with other urban areas of the state. The last pre-election poll by the UTSA Center for Public Opinion Research shows he has a sizeable 17-point lead among likely voters.
Texas hasn't sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since Lloyd Bentsen, who served from 1971 to 1993.
Check back on election night to see results after the polls close at 7 p.m.
How we got here
Cruz, a polarizing political figure who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump and controversially left for Cancun during the debilitating and deadly February 2021 winter storm, confirmed in November 2022 that he would seek reelection to the Senate.
Allred jumped into the race six months later, and has tried to pitch himself as a moderate option who can work with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. He has represented Texas' 32nd Congressional District since 2019 after playing in the NFL and working in the Obama administration.
Cruz didn't break a sweat in the Republican primary earlier this year, garnering 88% of the vote. Allred, meanwhile, emerged victorious from a crowded Democratic primary contest that also included Uvalde-area State Sen. Roland Gutierrez.
The race that's developed since then between the incumbent and his challenger has been contentious and expensive.
With Democrats defending twice as many Senate seats as Republicans, Allred's bid could be their best chance to flip a seat next month and preserve their thin Senate majority. Cruz is imploring Republican supporters to take the challenge seriously, six years after his narrow victory over Beto O’Rourke revealed fault lines for Republicans after decades of dominance in Texas.
But Allred, who would become Texas’ first Black senator, is doing things his own way. Out for more than the moral victories Texas Democrats have settled for since 1994 — the last time they won a statewide election — Allred has run to the center and away from O’Rourke’s barnstorming and break-the-rules blueprint. The different look has frustrated some Democrats, but amid signs of a competitive race with less than a month to go, Allred is sticking to the script.
Allred, a three-term congressman from Dallas, is by nature a far different candidate than O’Rourke, an electrifying orator who was quick to hop up on a table to fire up a crowd and road-tripped across all 254 counties. Allred describes himself as someone who “keeps a cool head” and presents himself as a bipartisan problem-solver. To win with that low-key approach, he'll need enthusiasm generated by Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket even as he sets himself apart from her in a state former President Donald Trump is expected to win handily.
“Colin has to outperform Harris, so that’s a little more delicate for him than it was for us,” said David Wysong, a top O'Rourke adviser during his 2018 run against Cruz.
Allred boosts his moderate credentials by touting endorsements from prominent Republicans, including former U.S. Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney.
Other factors also could work in Allred's favor. Most notably, there's the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 to strip away constitutional protections for abortion, a ruling that paved the way for Texas to outlaw nearly all abortions. That has been a winning issue for Democrats ever since, even in red states like Kentucky and Kansas.
Allred has featured abortion rights in his campaign, highlighting the personal story of Kate Cox, a Texas woman forced to flee the state to get an abortion after doctors determined her fetus had a fatal condition for which there are no exceptions under Texas law.
He has also not let up on Cruz's family vacation to Mexico during a deadly winter storm that crippled the state's power grid and is likely to remind voters again when the candidates debate on Oct. 15.
Cruz, meanwhile, has transformed from selling himself as an unapologetic partisan who showed little interest in governing when he arrived in Washington to a get-things-done Republican holding the line against Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats. He remains just as combative, attacking Allred as a “radical leftist” and linking the congressman to immigration problems and transgender rights.
“Let me tell you, Chuck Schumer and the communists have set their targets on Tarrant County,” Cruz told a packed house of supporters at Outpost 36, a barbecue restaurant in the Fort Worth suburb of Keller.
“They can’t have it,” he said, prompting cheers from people waving Cruz signs that read “Keep Texas Texas.”
Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth and the fast-growing suburbs surrounding it, is the kind of place Allred needs to win big in. Races here have been close in recent cycles, with O’Rourke topping Cruz by less than 1 percentage point in 2018 and President Joe Biden winning the county by a similar margin four years ago.
“Six years ago it was a real battle, and this year it’s a real battle,” Cruz said. “It’s not complicated. If you are a hardcore partisan Democrat, after Donald Trump there’s nobody in the country you want to beat more than me.”
And while O'Rourke's Senate campaign in 2018 may have provided some kind of statewide roadmap for Democrats, he lost in his attempt to unseat Gov. Greg Abbott two years ago by more than 10 percentage points.
The amount of money being spent by both sides hints at the race's national significance.
According to AdImpact, which tracks spending on advertising, the $120 million both parties are spending on the Texas U.S. Senate race is set to exceed the roughly $40 million either paid for or reserved in the Florida Senate race, another top target for Democrats. But it pales in comparison with races in Montana and Ohio, where total spending exceeds $700 million on races in which Democrats are defending seats in red-leaning states.
Part of the heavy spending in Texas is attributable to its size, with 20 separate television markets, including two of the largest and most expensive in the country in Dallas and Houston.