Democrats lead in Texas’s big counties. Republicans lead everywhere else. Independents decide it.

“Party loyalists” are voters who took this year’s March Democratic or Republican primary; “Independents” are everyone else who has voted. Texas has no party registration. The calculation assumes every primary voter votes for their party’s candidate and counts only early and mail ballots. County rows use each county’s own rosters; Collin, Denton, Fort Bend, El Paso, Montgomery and the rest of Texas take primary voters from the Texas Secretary of State’s lists of early and mail voters in the March primary, so March Election Day voters count as Independents there. El Paso and the rest of Texas use the state’s November voter lists, which miss mail ballots returned before Oct 19; their ballot totals come from the state’s county counts. The shaded band (45–55%) is a rule of thumb, not a measured range. A what-it-would-take calculation, not a forecast. Counts only: no names, no lists.