WASHINGTON.- Senator Ted Cruz delivered the starkest warning yet from inside the Republican Party days before the November 3 midterm elections, telling listeners of his podcast that Republicans could lose Texas, every statewide race in the state, and as many as eight Senate seats if conservative voters do not turn out on Election Day.
"Texas is excruciatingly close. Understand we could lose Texas," Cruz said on his podcast, Verdict. "And by the way, not just the Senate race. We could lose every single statewide race in Texas. That's how close these numbers are."
Cruz pointed to early voting figures that he said show Democrats "massively out-turning out" Republicans across the country. "If the election were over today, if just the early votes that have been cast so far were counted, Republicans would lose massively. It would not be close," he said. "We would lose both the House and Senate. It would be a bloodbath."
The Texas Republican, who has campaigned in recent weeks in Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Michigan and Iowa, said eight to ten Senate races nationwide are "basically tied." On a good night, he said, Republicans could hold 53 Senate seats; on a bad night, they "could wake up the day after Election Day, instead of 53 Republicans, with 45."
In Texas, the Senate contest pits Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, endorsed by President Donald Trump, against Democratic state Representative James Talarico. A CNN/SSRS poll conducted October 20 through October 27 found Talarico leading Paxton 49 percent to 43 percent among likely voters, while the governor's race between Greg Abbott and challenger Gina Hinojosa is neck-and-neck in polling averages. Early voting data analyzed by Republican researchers and reported by NBC DFW showed voters with Democratic primary histories casting about 70,000 more ballots than those with Republican primary histories.
Trump won Texas by 14 percentage points in the 2024 presidential election, which makes Cruz's alarm all the more striking — and it comes as billionaire Elon Musk has poured a reported 442 million dollars into the midterms, including 168 million dollars in Texas races, to shore up Republican candidates.
Cruz insisted his warning was not based on unreliable polling. "I can tell you having run a lot of campaigns, having examined a lot of numbers, these data are not fake," he said. "We got to fix that." He urged Republican, independent and libertarian voters to vote on Tuesday, while cautioning that early-vote data are not election results and that turnout patterns among early voters do not necessarily predict the final outcome.
Republicans currently hold a 53-47 Senate majority, with 35 of the 100 Senate seats on the ballot, and Democrats need a net gain of just three seats to retake the House. More than 43 million Americans had already voted early by five days before Election Day, according to an Associated Press analysis.
Fuentes: News18, 1 de noviembre de 2026; political.org, 30 de octubre de 2026; TRT World, 31 de octubre de 2026; Newsmax, 30 de octubre de 2026; The Times, 1 de noviembre de 2026.