Election 2020 Texas: Presidential Race, U.S. Senate Race, More

AUSTIN, TX — Texas cast ballots in record numbers during the 17-day early voting period, and now Election Day is upon us.

In the Lone Star State, 973,143 voters cast their ballots by mail and 8,745,958 voted early in-person, according to the U.S. Elections Project — exceeding 2016 voting levels. The GOP exerted changes to this year's election, including banning straight-ticket voting as voters had been allowed to do. During the early voting period, the Texas Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Republican measure allowing for a single site for mail-in ballots to be dropped off.

Polls open Tuesday at 7 a.m. across Texas, and close at 7 p.m. You can find your local polling place, view your sample ballot for Tuesday or track your absentee ballot via VoteTexas.gov.

The specter of the coronavirus looms large across the state, where 957,000 cases of the respiratory illness have been reported since the onset of the virus, along with 18,582 deaths as of Monday.

The state’s 38 electoral college votes are critical in deciding whether Donald Trump wins a second presidential term or if Democratic challenger and former Vice President Joe Biden can ascend to the presidency. The latest polling average from RealClearPolitics shows Biden and Trump in a dead heat in Texas at 49 percent for each among the electorate.

Given the tight race, ballots may be tabulated well into the night once polls close. The reason is twofold: this is an election year of high interest given the divisiveness between the two major parties, and a Texas law allows voters to cast ballots if they are in line when the polls close by 7 p.m. — potentially adding hours of delay. Helping mitigate that was a 2020-specific change this year that did not include grocery stores as makeshift polling sites given the coronavirus pandemic. Ballots cast at grocery sites have historically taken longer to tabulate.

Both candidates hit the campaign trail hard in Texas in the final weeks of the campaign, with Trump launching a bus tour in San Antonio before moving on to Granger in Central Texas within Williamson County before ending at Bedford in the northern part of the state. The Biden camp hit key parts of Texas before being forced to cancel a stop in Austin when the campaign bus was swarmed by Trump supporters on Interstate 35, their vehicles nearly ramming the bus as it traveled through the busy artery.

Patch will be bringing you live results for the presidential race in Texas. Check back here when polls close for links to our live updating results from election night.

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If early voting is any indication, there will be an avalanche of ballots on Nov. 3 that may not be tallied until the wee hours on Wednesday. Early voting this year surpassed 2016 totals by 107.8 percent as a share of votes in the last presidential election.

The presidential race is not the only election on the ballot voters in Texas will decide on Tuesday. Voters also have a number of House seats to consider, along with a U.S. Senate seat pitting incumbent John Cornyn against war veteran MJ Hegar. On a more granular level, voters across Texas will decide from among candidates running for city councils and county seats.

Voters will decide on U.S. House races across the state as Democrats are poised to present serious challenges in up to 10 districts firmly held by Republicans. The GOP hope to retake a couple of seats that Democrats flipped in 2018. All 150 seats in the State House of Representatives are up for grabs in Texas. The aforementioned U.S. Senate race will be closely watched with another pair of candidates vying for the seat in addition to Cornyn and Hegar, Green Party candidate Kerry McKennon and David Collins of the Green Party.

Below are the races Patch will be updating live on election night:

• Texas presidential election results
• U.S. Senate race
• Texas State House Race
• City council races.
• Williamson County Sheriff's race.
• Travis County District Attorney race.

Check back here when the polls close for live updating results.