2020 Texas Senate election


The 2020 Texas Senate elections took place as part of the biennial United States elections. Texas voters elected state senators in 16 of the 31 state senate districts. The winners of this election served in the 87th Texas Legislature. State senators serve four-year terms in the Texas State Senate. Those elected in 2020 will only be elected for two years, however, as part of the 2-4-4 term system. A statewide map of Texas's state Senate districts can be obtained from the Texas Legislative Council. and individual district maps can be obtained from the U.S. Census.
Following the 2018 state senate elections, Republicans maintained effective control of the Senate with 19 members. To claim control of the chamber from Republicans, the Democrats would have needed to net four Senate seats.
The Democratic Party gained one seat, leaving the Republicans with an 18 to 13 majority in the chamber. This broke Republican's effective supermajority in the chamber, as legislation typically requires 19 votes, three fifths, to pass the chamber. At the urging of lieutenant governor Dan Patrick, the senate voted to reduce this threshold to 18, just as he had done to reduce the threshold from 21 to 19 during the 2015 session.

Retirements

One incumbent did not run for re-election in 2020:

Democrats

  1. District 29: José R. Rodríguez: Retiring

Incumbents defeated

In the general election

Republicans

  1. District 19: Pete Flores lost to Roland Gutierrez.

Predictions

Despite the state's competitive elections for President and House of Representatives, analysts considered the Texas Senate extremely unlikely to flip control due to the small number of competitive seats up for election in 2020.
SourceRankingAs of
The Cook Political ReportOctober 21, 2020
Sabato's Crystal BallMay 7, 2020

Close races

DistrictWinnerMargin
District 19Democratic 3.29%

Detailed results by State Senate District

District 19

Incumbent Republican Pete Flores, who was elected in an upset in a 2018 special election, ran for re-election. He was defeated by Democratic state representative Roland Gutierrez.

Special elections

District 14

The seat for District 14 became vacant on April 30, 2020, after the resignation of Kirk Watson. A special election was originally called for July 14, 2020. However, Eddie Rodriguez chose not to contest the resulting runoff, thus the scheduled runoff was canceled and Sarah Eckhardt was deemed elected.

District 30

A special election for Texas State Senate District 30 has been called for September 29, 2020. The candidate filing deadline was August 28, 2020. The seat became vacant after the resignation of Pat Fallon on August 23, 2020.