How to watch Texas elections returns like a pro

The big picture: Here are our tips for what to watch for as soon as the polls close to give you an early sense of who will win Texas' U.S. Senate election, the Austin mayoral race and, of course, the White House.

Between the lines: With very likely more than half of total Texas voters casting early ballots, the biggest tell will be early voting returns, which county election officials can release after polls close.

• Early voting will be decisive, Travis County Republican Party chair and national political consultant Matt Mackowiak, who isn't involved in any statewide campaigns this election, tells Axios.
• "It's hard to see how anybody behind in early voting wins on Election Day unless it's very, very close," he said.

Yes, but: Early voting may be more telling in urban and suburban areas than in rural ones, which may have only one polling place, Mackowiak warns.
That "might not be convenient for voters in that county, so they may wait for Election Day," he says.

The intrigue: In the 2022 mayoral race runoff, Kirk Watson won the early vote but lost in the election day vote, David Butts, who is serving as a Watson campaign consultant, tells Axios.

• "In the runoff, it was not until the final boxes from [the] Austin [portion of] Williamson County came in that we were assured of Watson's victory."

What they're saying: If a local candidate "has 55% or above in the early vote, it's likely over," says Austin-based political strategist Ed Espinoza, who is not involved in any campaigns this election. "You would need to lose 10% on election day, and it's hard for any candidate to gain or lose 10 points."

Zoom in: Butts says that he'll look at returns from around the University of Texas campus, Barton Hills, and Mueller.

• "If he has a majority in those boxes, he will win without a runoff. If they're heavily fragmented, it will depend on how badly split up they are."

Zoom out: In the race pitting Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz against Democratic U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, Mackowiak will be looking at "eight to 10 battleground counties" in Texas — including Tarrant, Denton and Collin in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Fort Bend, Montgomery and Waller near Houston, and Williamson and Hays outside Austin.

• "The expectation is that Cruz will get killed in the urban counties," Mackowiak says. "I'll be looking at what's happening in that second tier."
• "And then in the border counties, in which Trump is hoping to perform well with Hispanics, does Cruz benefit from that? How much will he?"
• "The third thing I'm looking at is how much is Cruz going to underperform Trump."

The big picture: Espinoza tells Axios he'll be chiefly looking at returns from some of the same suburban counties cited by Mackowiak — as well as Jefferson County (home to Beaumont) and Nueces County (Corpus Christi), which Republicans have been winning by small margins — for both a view into the unfolding returns and a wider window into Texas' long-term political direction.

Hang tight: We may not know the results of the presidential race until Thursday at the earliest.

The bottom line: "It's going to be a long night in general, but a little shorter in Texas," says Espinoza.