Ted Cruz Defeats Beto O’Rourke, Winning Second Senate Term

Republican incumbent Ted Cruz won a second term in his Texas Senate seat on Tuesday, foiling a tough challenge from rising Democratic star Representative Beto O’Rourke.

With 30 percent of precincts reporting, Cruz had secured 50.9 percent of the vote, just a sliver over O’Rourke’s 48.5 percent.

The Democrat presented the most ominous challenge to a Republican senator from Texas in years, but polls consistently showed Cruz, who came close to winning the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, ahead of O’Rourke.

Final analyses just before polls opened showed Cruz polling at 52 percent, a few points ahead of O’Rourke at 43 percent.

Cruz, 47, easily won the Republican nomination in March with 85 percent of the vote. He made a name for himself in 2012 as a tea-party conservative, leading a government shutdown in September over the the federal budget’s funding for Obamacare.