KSEV Mornings · November 4, 2026 · Hour 1
The morning after a rough night for Texas Republicans: why the loss can’t just be put on President Trump, Wayne calling in from the airport, exit polls by age and race, and callers on block walking, gas prices and cultural issues.
James Talarico beat Ken Paxton as Democrats won big across Texas, and Craig Coglianese opened the show the morning after with a warning: a lot of Republicans, politicians and talking heads will be tempted to start trashing Trump. “This overwhelming loss can’t just be put on the feet of Trump,” Craig said.
It can’t all be put on Trump
Craig said these races weren’t close, even though many people, himself included, expected them to be. Some of the blame can go to the rhetoric, the talking points and the way Republican candidates presented themselves, he said, but President Trump wasn’t on the ballot and he’ll spend the next two years fighting the left and vetoing the crazy stuff. Craig’s read on Trump himself: “Trump is great at being someone with a chip on his shoulder and an underdog. He’s not good at being in power.”
Wayne calls in from the airport
Wayne Dolcefino, traveling today, called in by phone. “No one, I think, expected this. But maybe we all should have,” he said. “We were warning about the Paxton candidacy from the very beginning.” Craig read the exit polling on Hispanic voters, 66% for Talarico to 32% for Paxton, and Wayne said there is a big difference between attacking someone for corruption and attacking them personally. It’s fun to point out that Talarico is weird, “because he is,” Wayne said, but making it the only message, with trans issues as the closing argument, didn’t work. He added that Greg Abbott “sort of saw it coming.”
Craig said there was no real enthusiasm on the Republican side and the turnout was Democratic. He also thinks some voters simply wanted to be part of history after hearing for months how long it had been since a Democrat won statewide, much like he saw in Chicago when Barack Obama won in 2008. He said people who try to copy Trump, like JD Vance and Vivek Ramaswamy, aren’t good at it, and that once Republicans are in power the message has to shift to “here’s what we’re going to do to keep the winning going,” not “here’s the people we still hate.” Wayne agreed that people are tired of the nastiness: “There are conservative solutions and there are left-wing freak-show solutions,” he said. “This is a frustration election.”
What the exit polls show
Craig said Democrats won by multiple points in many places, with Gina Hinojosa’s margin over Greg Abbott looking like five to seven points, and the top of the ticket mattered all the way down. In the exit polls, roughly three in four voters aged 18 to 29 went for Talarico, and even voters 65 and over backed Paxton by only about 10 to 15 points. Independents also went overwhelmingly Democratic. “That’s gotta change,” Craig said. “You gotta find a way to reach them.”
Later in the hour Craig read NBC’s Texas exit poll, which Wayne sent him: white men went Republican by 23 points and white women by 13, Latino men went Democratic by 19, Black men by 77 and Black women by 80, with 79% of 18- to 29-year-olds and 64% of 30- to 44-year-olds voting for Talarico. Craig said the inroads Trump made with Latino voters in 2024 went away “fairly jarringly” here in Texas, and that Republicans have to figure out how to reach those voters again.
Callers: knock on doors, and the gas pump
Frederick in Richmond said the money went to things that didn’t motivate the base, and that the people who sat home are what lost the race for Republicans. His advice: “You got to knock on doors. … This is Texas. People only vote for who they know.”
Dale, a Democrat, said a guy who can’t afford to fill up his truck at the pump probably isn’t worried about transgender high school athletes, and that this time the cultural-issues script was flipped. Craig said the social issues did work in 2024, especially with Latinos and young men, but that who is in power matters: “When you’re in power, if you’re selling me the good, then I’m going to be happier with you.” He pushed back on Dale’s point that the economy was decent in 2024, saying the poor economy and high gas prices under Biden were a big part of why Trump won. Craig’s bottom line: the loss is “complicated” and “multifaceted,” and Republicans didn’t sell Texas voters on what they should have.
Mark closed the hour with a question for anyone who voted on gas and grocery prices: what specifically is someone like Talarico going to do about that over the next two years?
Hear Craig and Wayne live weekdays from 7–9 AM Central on AM 700 KSEV, The Voice of Texas. Visit the KSEV Mornings show page for live-listening controls and more episodes. Listen live weekdays 7-9 AM CT on the KSEV app.
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