U.S. Sen Ted Cruz managed to survive his second reelection bid by defeating his Democratic challenger U.S. Rep. Colin Allred in one of the most expensive races this electoral cycle. With this victory, Cruz will enter his third term in the U.S. senate, which will end in 2031.
At the time this article was published, Cruz had received 4,571,420 votes (53.6%) against Allred, who received 3,796,105 votes (44.5%), according to the Associated Press. However, these results are preliminary.
It appears that Cruz achieved a better performance than his last reelection campaign against former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke. This past race, Cruz managed to win by just 2.6 percentage points.
The match was widely watched, managing to attract national attention. Allred managed to cut rapidly the distance between him and Cruz, forcing many forecasters to change their Texas Senate race prediction from “likely Republican” to “lean Republican.” Despite this, Cruz managed to win and demonstrated that Texas is still a Republican stronghold.
Cruz’s campaign was focused on picturing himself as a moderate Republican who can work with Democrats. This is a change of tone from his previous election, where he learned that he needed to appeal to moderate voters if he wanted to win.
In addition, one key strategy from Cruz’s campaign was to state from the beginning that he was in danger. From the start, Cruz stated that Democrats were targeting him and that they were going to pour millions into the Texas race just to defeat him. This rapidly attracted attention from donors who, despite his doubts on Cruz, preferred to maintain a Republican in the Senate, than to lose the seat.
With this victory, Republicans get to keep one seat and are expected to gain a majority in the upper chamber, according to forecasters. At the time this article was published, Republicans managed to flip one seat in West Virginia.
