Gina Hinojosa wins Texas governor race, ending more than 30 years of Republican control
Democrat Gina Hinojosa has defeated three-term Republican Governor Greg Abbott in Texas, becoming the state’s first Latina governor and its first Democratic governor since the 1990s.
Democrat Gina Hinojosa has won the race for governor of Texas, defeating three-term Republican incumbent Greg Abbott in one of the most stunning upsets of the 2026 midterm elections. The Associated Press called the race for Hinojosa on Tuesday night, and Abbott conceded later that evening, ending his bid for a fourth term in office.
Hinojosa, a 52-year-old state representative from Austin, will become the first Latina governor in Texas history when she takes office in January 2027. She will also be the first Democrat to hold the governor’s office since Ann Richards, who left office in 1995, closing a chapter of Republican control that lasted more than three decades.
Abbott, who has held the office since January 2015, conceded at about 10 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, according to reports of his concession remarks. His defeat denies him a fourth term and removes from office one of the country’s most prominent Republican governors and a steadfast supporter of President Donald Trump.
The result had been rated as leaning Republican as recently as 1 October by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, and Hinojosa was widely described as a longshot candidate against an incumbent who had never won re-election by fewer than 11 points. Her victory therefore ranks among the biggest surprises of an election night that delivered sweeping Democratic gains across the country.
Hinojosa built her campaign around public education, household costs and criticism of the state’s Republican leadership. As a five-term Austin lawmaker, she argued that Texas families were being squeezed by rising everyday costs and that the state’s schools deserved greater investment, themes that resonated far beyond her home city in a state long considered reliably Republican.
Her win came on the same night Democrats captured the Texas Senate seat, with James Talarico defeating Ken Paxton, giving the party control of two of the state’s top offices for the first time in a generation. Together, the two victories have accelerated talk of Texas shifting from a Republican stronghold towards a genuine battleground state.
The scale of the change is difficult to overstate. Texas is the second most populous state in the country, and its governor commands one of the largest state budgets and some of the broadest executive powers in the United States. A Democratic governor will now sit at the centre of national debates over immigration enforcement, energy policy, education funding and voting rules.
Reactions poured in from across the political spectrum as the result became clear. Democrats hailed the win as proof that their message on affordability and public services could reach voters in states they had long written off, while Republicans began an internal reckoning over how a race rated in their favour slipped away in a single night.
Attention now turns to the transition. Hinojosa takes office in January 2027 and will have to assemble an administration, set out a legislative programme and negotiate with a state legislature where Republicans still hold considerable power. How much of her agenda survives that negotiation will be one of the defining tests of her first year.
For Texas itself, the result marks the end of an era. More than thirty years of uninterrupted Republican control of the governor’s office shaped the state’s approach to taxes, regulation, abortion, guns and border security. Whether Hinojosa’s victory proves to be a lasting realignment or a single extraordinary night will only become clear in the elections that follow.
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