In Gambling Industry, No Election Looms Larger This November Than Texas Lieutenant Governor

We’re all sick and tired at this point of being told an upcoming election is the most important election of our lifetime. But if you live in Texas, and if being able to gamble legally in your state is a high-priority issue to you, well, sorry to have to say it, but: This may just be the most important election of your lifetime.

Dan Patrick has been lieutenant governor of Texas since 2015, and he’s made no secret of his intention to block any efforts to expand legal gambling. In 2021, Patrick, who has the power in his role as state Senate president to determine what bills are heard, said a Texas casino proposal was “not even an issue that’s going to see the light of day this session” and spelled out that reports saying he was open to legalizing sports betting were “just absolutely not true.”

Patrick is now running for a fourth term, and although Texans have access to a form of sports betting (or “trading”) via prediction markets as well as to offshore-operated and sweepstakes-style online casinos, there’s every reason to expect that if Patrick is reelected as lieutenant governor, neither casinos nor state-regulated sports betting will come to Texas before 2031.

But as media outlet The Lines observed over the weekend, a recent poll conducted by ReconMR for Texas Pulse and Texas A&M Bush School shows Patrick’s seat in some jeopardy. According to the poll, Republican Patrick is trailing Democratic nominee Vikki Goodwin, 48% to 46%.

It’s important to note that the poll has a margin of error of +/- 4.7%, and that it’s a modest sample size, with 619 “likely Texas voters” surveyed.

And as we all know, polls are sometimes way off. Famously, there was Ann Seltzer’s presidential election poll in Iowa in 2024 that missed by 16 points, and more recently, polls in the Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan differed from the final numbers by double digits.

So, nobody should be concluding based on one poll that Patrick will be unseated. On Monday morning, Kalshi still had Patrick at 86% to win in November. All logic suggests he is more likely than not to still be the lieutenant governor of Texas in 2027.

But Patrick is down from a high mark on Kalshi of nearly 98%. And Goodwin is now at her own high mark of 21%.

And if the upset comes in three months from now, it would alter the legal gambling landscape in the U.S. as much as anyone or anything else on the ballot this fall.

Everything’s bigger …

There certainly are other elections in November with gambling industry implications. For example, if Amy Acton becomes the next governor of Ohio, that could begin to open the doors for online casino legalization. The South Carolina gubernatorial election could similarly impact legalizing sports betting or commercial casinos. In Nebraska, an online sports betting question could appear on the ballot. There are also races worth watching in Georgia and Hawaii.

But given what an enormous state Texas is (population of 32.1 million at last estimate, second only to California), its lieutenant governor race may be the most meaningful in terms of people’s access to regulated gambling.

There is no ambiguity regarding Patrick’s stance on gambling expansion. Gambling bills have passed the House on his watch and he has flatly refused to take them up in the Senate, most notably one in 2023 that received its needed two-thirds support in the House, only for Patrick to block it, claiming it didn’t have the votes in the Senate to pass. (There would have been a rather straight-forward way to find out if that was true, of course.)

Goodwin’s position on gambling is not quite that clearly defined, but she has certainly shown an openness. Last year, she said she wants to see casinos and sports betting on the ballot so the people of Texas can decide whether to legalize the activities.

Is there a path to victory for Goodwin? In the Texas Pulse/Texas A&M Bush School poll, she was preferred by independent or third-party voters 54% to 36%, and by 18-34-year-olds 64% to 22%. She’d certainly need that latter demographic to turn out in force.

Her chances would also be bolstered if anti-Donald-Trump sentiment produces something akin to a “blue wave.” While polls vary, Trump’s approval rating has consistently been below 40% lately in most of them. Even in Texas, he has dipped into the low 40s recently.

Texas has long been a decidedly conservative state, and no Democrat has won a statewide election there since 1994. Every election cycle since George W. Bush left office, supporters of the left grow optimistic about the possibility of flipping the state blue, and every election, it remains red.

The Texas race that more of the country will be watching in November is the one for a U.S. Senate seat, pitting Democrat James Talarico against ethically-challenged Republican Ken Paxton. At Kalshi, the odds Monday were in coin-flip territory, with Paxton favored just 51%-49%.

If Talarico generates the enthusiasm from Democrats and independents to win that race, it could spill over into an upset win for Goodwin as well.

A lot depends on whether Trump’s approval rating sinks even lower. And on whether legalizing gambling is an issue that matters much to Texans.