Races for president, Senate are at the top of the ballot for Texas voters in November

North Texas voters will make several important decisions in a November election to determine who will occupy the White House, Congress, Texas Legislature and other important elected positions.
At the top of the ballot, Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, faces former President Donald Trump, a Republican, for president – along with six write-in candidates and tickets from the Green and Libertarian parties.
Harris is joined by running mate Tim Walz, governor of Minnesota, while Ohio Sen. JD Vance is running for vice president alongside Trump.
Harris and Trump are at a statistical dead heat, according to national polls. Strongly Republican Texas, however, is considered unlikely to flip to Harris, according to a recent poll by Morning Consult. For that reason, the state is not seen as a battleground state and is not a focus of either campaign.
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In one of the hottest U.S. Senate races in the country, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, a Dallas Democrat, is trying to unseat Texas’ Republican incumbent, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in Texas since 1994, rarely breaking 40% of the vote. In a spirited run against Cruz in 2018, then-U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke – an El Paso Democrat with high popularity among young voters, received 48% of the vote in the closest Senate race in Texas in decades. U.S. senators serve six-year terms.
Voters across the state will also decide whether to return Republican Christi Craddick to her role as chair of the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry, or to replace her with one of four challengers: Democrat Katherine Culbert, Libertarian Hawk Dunlap, the Green Party’s Eddie Espinoza, or write-in candidate Richard McKibbin.
Other statewide races include one-third of the Texas Supreme Court, where Republican justices Jimmy Blacklock, John Devine and Jane Bland are seeking reelection and face three Democrats and two Libertarians.
A shake-up is coming to the all-GOP Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which saw three Republican incumbents replaced in the primaries earlier this year. The judges were targeted by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton after they ruled that is office did not have the authority to unilaterally pursue voter and election fraud cases.
In nearly a dozen congressional districts in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, voters will choose their local representatives to Washington. Five Republican incumbents are facing challenges from Democrats, including U.S. Reps. Lance Gooden of Terrell and Pat Fallon of Sherman, both former members of the Texas Legislature.
Two Democrats are defending their congressional seats. U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas has recently received attention for a verbal spat with Republican U.S. Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene and for her appointment as a Harris campaign co-chair. U.S. Rep. Mark Veasey of Fort Worth was the first member of the Congressional Black Caucus to call on Biden to leave the presidential race earlier this year.
Four congressional races on North Texas ballots are open seats, and one – U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson’s Republican seat in Amarillo – is uncontested.
Several Texas Senate and House seats will be on Dallas-Fort Worth area ballots. Read about those races and other local contests in The Dallas Morning News voter guide, which publishes Sept. 30.