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| Turnout | 45.85%  | ||||||||||||||||
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     Abbott: 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% 80–90% >90% O'Rourke: 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% 70–80% 80–90% >90% Tie: 40–50% 50% No data | |||||||||||||||||
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| Elections in Texas |
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 Government |
The 2022 Texas gubernatorial election took place on November 8, 2022, to elect the governor of Texas. Incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott won re-election to a third term, defeating the Democratic nominee, former Congressman Beto O'Rourke.[1] All statewide elected offices are currently held by Republicans. In his previous gubernatorial race in 2018, Abbott won with 55.8% of the vote.[2]
The Democratic and Republican primaries were held on March 1, 2022. O'Rourke and Abbott won outright majorities in their respective primaries, and therefore did not participate in the May 24 runoffs.
Texas has not elected a Democratic candidate for governor since Ann Richards in 1990. Additionally, Abbott had a strong approval rating on election day, with 55% of voters approving to 45% disapproving.[3] Beto O'Rourke, who gained national attention in 2018 for his unusually close and competitive campaign against Senator Ted Cruz, was widely viewed as a rising star in the Texas Democratic Party and potential challenger for Abbott, but a failed run for President of the United States in 2020 prompted criticisms of opportunism via Republican attempts to brand him as anti-law enforcement and his former stance and disavowed comments on guns.
Abbott won by 10.9%, a slightly smaller margin of victory than his 13.3% margin in 2018 in spite of a much more Republican national climate in 2022, making this the closest gubernatorial election in Texas since 2006, and the closest election of Abbott's entire political career since his first race for the Texas Supreme Court in 1998. Beto O'Rourke, meanwhile, performed 8.3% worse than his 2018 Senate run, but he still won the highest share for a Democratic gubernatorial candidate since Ann Richards received 45.9% in her unsuccessful reelection bid against George W. Bush in 1994. Abbott's raw vote total was less than his 4.65 million in 2018, while O'Rourke set a record of most raw votes for a Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate at around 3.55 million, but it was also less than his 4.04 million vote total in the 2018 Senate race.
Abbott carried 235 out of 254 counties, flipping the heavily Hispanic counties of Culberson and Zapata and becoming the first Republican gubernatorial candidate to win the latter in the state's history (though Zapata had earlier voted Republican in the 2020 presidential election), while O'Rourke became the first Democratic gubernatorial candidate to win the county of Fort Bend since 1974. O'Rourke outperformed Joe Biden two years prior among Latino voters, though his performance with them was still worse than past nominees.
- ^ "2022 US Governor Election Results: Live Map". ABC News. November 9, 2022. Retrieved November 9, 2022.
- ^ "Greg Abbott, Governor: Salary, biographical details and latest news". The Texas Tribune. Archived from the original on January 29, 2010. Retrieved June 3, 2021.
- ^ "Texas Governor Midterm Election 2022: Live Results and Updates". www.nbcnews.com. Retrieved December 20, 2022.