Texas election math has wandered into the weeds, and this time it brought a calculator. According to a report from The Gateway Pundit, James Talarico had 4,880,229 votes in the Texas Senate race by midnight Wednesday. That already put him above Kamala Harris’s 4,835,250 votes in Texas in 2024. A later update at 8 AM CT listed Talarico with 5,388,840 votes. The tally moved quickly, and the report treated the increase as a major turnout question.
The 2024 comparison matters. President Trump won Texas with 6,393,597 votes and 56.1% of the statewide vote. Harris received 4,835,250 votes, or 42.5%. The newer Talarico figure was more than half a million above Harris’s total, which is why the report asks, "How does that happen?" It is a blunt question, but the numbers presented in the article explain why it was asked.
The report says Talarico defeated Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. Paxton was listed with 3,847,153 votes, about 2.5 million fewer than President Trump. That gap is hard to ignore in any comparison of Texas statewide results. It also gives Republicans plenty of reason to want a clear accounting of how the totals were calculated and when the numbers changed. Nobody needs a dramatic conspiracy theory to ask for basic transparency, despite how allergic modern politics can be to simple explanations.
The governor’s race added another eyebrow-raising comparison. Democrat Gina Hinojosa reportedly won 4,735,613 votes, defeating three-time Republican Governor Greg Abbott by seven percentage points. Hinojosa’s total was nearly equal to Harris’s 2024 number, and the report said she might pass Harris as more ballots were counted. So the article was not focused only on Talarico. It also pointed to a wider pattern in the reported Texas totals.
Then came the updates. One update said Talarico had more than 200,000 votes above Harris and had crossed five million. The next listed 5,388,840 votes at 8 AM CT and celebrated the figure as "CRUSHING Kamala’s numbers!" The report added, "These are absolutely shocking numbers that pundits will ponder for days to come." The language is undeniably dramatic, but the underlying issue is straightforward: the reported total changed sharply as counting continued, and the article did not identify a reason for the jump.
That leaves the central question hanging: "Where did they come from?" The original article describes Talarico as a far-left state senator and asks how a candidate it says "never worked" could draw so many votes in an off-year Texas Senate race. That wording is the source’s framing, not a proven explanation. The report presents the totals and comparisons, but it does not supply a cause for the changing numbers.
For Texas Republicans, the sensible response is neither blind dismissal nor instant certainty. Ask for the timeline, the updated totals, and the explanation. Election reporting should not force readers to do midnight arithmetic while the scoreboard keeps moving. If Talarico’s final total stands, voters deserve context for how it reached that level. If the count was still changing, that context should be stated plainly. This is not an outrageous demand. It is what accountability looks like when the numbers become the story.
The report closes by putting the main figures side by side: President Trump received 6,393,597 votes in Texas in 2024. Harris received 4,835,250. The later reported Talarico total reached 5,388,840, while Hinojosa’s total was 4,735,613. It ends not with an explanation, but with the question, "So… What are your thoughts?"
Source: The Gateway Pundit
Leave a Comment