BREAKING — Published May 26, 2026 · By Roe Baynes · 3 Min Read
For full background on this race read our complete coverage: Texas Senate Race 2026: The Lone Star Showdown and Texas Senate Race 2026: The Rundown
It is over for John Cornyn — and the numbers tell the story in brutal, unambiguous terms.
NBC News has projected Ken Paxton the winner of tonight’s Republican Senate runoff in Texas — with early returns showing Paxton receiving 63.1% of the vote to Cornyn’s 36.9% across 133 of 254 counties reporting, a margin of over 26 points that grew as the night wore on. The establishment poured everything it had into stopping Paxton — and it was not enough.
The total advertising spend for the entire GOP race stands at just under $130 million — the most expensive Republican Senate primary in history. The runoff alone cost more than $30 million in additional spending. Pro-Cornyn advertising during the runoff totaled approximately $23 million while pro-Paxton advertising totaled just $7 million. The establishment outspent the grassroots challenger by more than three to one in the runoff alone — and Paxton won by nearly 24 points anyway. Money could not save John Cornyn from his own record.
What Decided It
Three factors combined to make tonight’s result not just inevitable — but historic.
Trump’s endorsement — delivered just one week before tonight’s vote — acted exactly as the polling predicted, and then some. Pre-endorsement polls showed Paxton leading 48%-40%. After Trump’s Truth Social post calling Cornyn a man who “was not supportive of me when times were tough,” that margin was projected to widen to 55%-35%. Tonight’s numbers blew past even that projection — Paxton winning with nearly 62% of the vote.
Wesley Hunt’s voters — the 13.5% of Republican primary voters who backed the Houston Congressman in March — broke overwhelmingly toward Paxton as predicted. Hunt’s voters were never Cornyn voters. They wanted someone younger, more conservative, and more MAGA-aligned than the incumbent. Paxton was the only available option on tonight’s ballot that fit that description.
Cornyn’s record — decades of establishment politics that the MAGA base never forgave, from calling Trump an “albatross” in 2016 to authoring landmark gun control legislation that alienated Second Amendment advocates across the state. No amount of money or last-minute loyalty signals could erase that record in a MAGA primary electorate. The bellwether moment came in Tarrant County — which Cornyn had carried in the March primary. Tonight Paxton flipped it by 18 points, winning 59%-41%. When a candidate loses a county they won in the primary by that margin the race is over.
A Historic Night for Texas
Tonight’s result carries significance beyond this single race. Paxton’s victory makes him the first primary challenger to defeat an incumbent U.S. Senator in Texas history — a milestone that underscores just how complete the MAGA realignment of the Republican Party has become.
John Cornyn served in the United States Senate for 24 years — first elected in 2002, re-elected four times, serving as Senate Republican Whip and chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He is one of the most powerful institutionalists the Senate Republican caucus has produced in a generation. And tonight Texas Republican voters ended his career by nearly 24 points.
This makes Cornyn the second establishment Republican senator ousted by his own party’s voters in the span of two weeks — following Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, whose primary defeat Baynesworld.com covered extensively. The pattern is now undeniable. Republican voters across the country are systematically removing long-tenured establishment figures who they believe have delivered more for Washington’s donor class than for the voters who sent them there.
What Comes Next — The General Election
Paxton’s nomination victory sets up what is shaping up to be one of the most competitive Senate general elections in Texas in decades. The winner of tonight’s runoff will face Democratic state Rep. James Talarico in the November 3 general election. No Democrat has won a statewide election in Texas since 1994.
But the pre-runoff polling was sobering for Republicans. Talarico was leading Paxton 46%-41% in head-to-head polling before tonight — with independents breaking for the Democrat by over 20 points. And 24% of Cornyn voters said before the runoff that they would likely vote for Talarico in November if Paxton won the nomination. Those are voters Paxton will need to win back between now and November 3.
Paxton enters the general election with Trump’s full backing and the energy of a grassroots movement behind him. He also enters with a securities fraud indictment that has never gone to trial and a 2023 impeachment by his own party’s state legislature still on his record. Whether Texas voters in a general election are willing to overlook that baggage — or whether Talarico successfully uses it to peel away enough moderate Republicans and independents to flip the seat — is the defining question of the next five months.
The Cook Political Report rates the seat Likely Republican. History favors the GOP. But this race is genuinely competitive in a way Texas Senate races have not been in a generation.
Watch November 3 closely.
This article will be updated as final results are certified. For complete background on both candidates, the primary history, polling data, and general election analysis read our full coverage: Texas Senate Race 2026: The Lone Star Showdown
