Beyond Congress: Texas Elects a Democratic Governor, Democrats Take a Majority of Statehouses' Top Jobs, and Voters Split on Voter ID

Democrat Gina Hinojosa defeated Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday, ending more than three decades of Republican control of the governor's office in the country's second-largest state, according to an Associated Press race call reported by NPR. The result was part of a broader shift in state governments that went beyond the fight for Congress.

Texas

Hinojosa, 52, an Austin state representative and former Austin school board president who grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, will be the first Latina to serve as Texas governor and the first Democratic governor since Ann Richards left office in 1995, NPR reported. She campaigned on public education and household costs, opposed the private-school voucher program Abbott championed, which began in 2026 with $1 billion in public money, and pledged to replace Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath with an educator.

Abbott, 68, had sought a fourth term, promising lower property taxes and saying he had made Texas safer, in part by securing the border, according to NPR. Hinojosa will likely face a Republican-led Legislature, NPR reported, citing Trinity University political scientist David Crockett, who said, "Getting any meaningful legislation through is going to require them to find something they can agree on and that's not going to be easy."

President Donald Trump blamed Abbott for the loss. "If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn't become a RINO in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn't have lost," Trump wrote on Truth Social, according to the BBC.

Democrats also flipped governorships in Georgia, where Keisha Lance Bottoms defeated Rick Jackson and became, according to Ballotpedia, the first Black woman elected governor in the United States and the first Democrat elected governor of Georgia since 1998; in Iowa, where Rob Sand defeated Zach Lahn; and in Ohio, where Amy Acton defeated Vivek Ramaswamy. Ballotpedia said Iowa and Ohio last elected Democratic governors in 2006.

Ballotpedia said Abbott was the second sitting governor to lose a bid for another term this year, after Rhode Island Gov. Daniel McKee lost the Democratic primary.

Governors and trifectas

Democrats gained four governorships, giving them a majority of the nation's governors for the first time since 2010, according to Ballotpedia's count as of 1:30 a.m. With some races uncalled, Democrats will hold at least 27 governorships and Republicans at least 20, Ballotpedia reported.

A trifecta is when one party holds the governorship and both legislative chambers. Democrats gained trifectas in at least Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, and Republicans lost trifectas in Georgia, Iowa, Ohio and Texas, according to Ballotpedia, which said 24 states' final trifecta status remained uncalled. Going into the election there were 23 Republican trifectas, 16 Democratic trifectas and 11 divided governments.

Democrats also gained control of five legislative chambers: the North Carolina House, the Wisconsin Senate and Assembly, the Pennsylvania Senate and the Minnesota House, Ballotpedia reported. Republicans had not gained any chambers as of its update, and lost their supermajority in the Florida Senate.

Ballot measures

On abortion, Virginia voters approved a constitutional amendment establishing a right to reproductive freedom, and Missouri voters defeated Amendment 3, which would have repealed that state's constitutional right to reproductive freedom and banned abortion and certain medical procedures for transgender minors, with exceptions, according to Ballotpedia. Measures in Nevada and Idaho that would establish abortion rights were uncalled.

Voter identification measures split. Voters in North Carolina and Ohio approved amendments expanding voter ID requirements, including North Carolina's extension of its photo ID requirement to mail ballots. Voters in Arizona, California and Colorado rejected measures that would have established or expanded voter ID rules, Ballotpedia reported.

Arkansas, Kansas, South Dakota and West Virginia approved measures adding citizenship requirements for voting in state and local elections to their constitutions, according to Ballotpedia.

Local races and a new kind of recall

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg won reelection, and the Los Angeles mayoral race between incumbent Karen Bass and City Council member Nithya Raman, both Democrats, was uncalled, Ballotpedia reported.

In Yukon, Oklahoma, Mayor Brian Pillmore was removed in a recall tied to a data center, Ballotpedia reported, making him the fourth U.S. official removed in a data center-related recall. Similar recalls in Mason, Michigan, and San Angelo, Texas, were uncalled. Ballotpedia counts 46 recall efforts related to data centers against 83 officials in 10 states so far this year.

What remains uncertain

The figures are counts of projected results as of early Wednesday. Final trifecta status in two dozen states, several ballot measures and some governor's races had not been called, and official results will come from state certification in the coming weeks.