Photo illustration: Axios Visuals; Photos: Emil Lippe/Getty Images and Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Election Day is Nov. 5. Control of the White House and Congress is at stake.
Why it matters: State legislative seats are also on the ballot — but those chambers are extremely likely to remain under Republican control.
And U.S. House races are expected to be lopsided, with districts drawn to favor one party.
The big picture: The most watched race in Texas will be between Dallas Democratic Congressman Colin Allred and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, the Republican former Texas solicitor general first elected to the Senate in 2012.
Cruz and Allred have agreed to a televised debate on Oct. 15 in Dallas.
Allred, a fundraising juggernaut and civil rights attorney, has tried to make the election a referendum on Cruz's anti-abortion rights positions, and he's criticized Cruz's visit to Cancún, Mexico, in 2021 during the deadly Texas winter storm.
Allred recently picked up the endorsement of Republican former Rep. Liz Cheney.
Cruz, meanwhile, has tried to energize Texas Republican voters, warning them against complacency amid a newly invigorated Democratic Party.
Despite a record of voting against major pieces of bipartisan legislation — the CHIPS Act and the Ukraine-Israel aid package — Cruz has presented himself on the campaign trail as a dealmaker. It's part of an effort to augment his conservative, rural base with suburban swing voters, per the Wall Street Journal.
