Polls close as Texas awaits results in U.S. Senate race

We have reporters across Texas in multiple, at multiple races, following multiple races. We want to start with Peyton Yeager, who is live in Austin at the Tallarico campaign. Peyton, what are the vibes right now? Hello, Stephen. Hi, Sean Rabb and Matthew Wilson in the flesh. I'm in beautiful Austin. Beautiful skyline behind me. We are outside of the Long Center. I expect it to be a long night. But this is the lawn behind me, outside of the Long Center, where supporters, the public... Voters will be here and watch those results come in. This is the official James Tallarico watch party. I have this HEB stage behind me where speakers will be on stage, musical performers, but James Tallarico himself, he will take the stage inside the Long Center way later on into the evening at an unspecified time. But James Tallarico, we know, One, he does have a few election day traditions and one of those is to get Round Rock donuts. So, he did get that today and got it for his campaign staff. That is a tradition that he wants to keep going. So, we saw that on social media and we also saw on social media he wanted to thank all of his supporters and voters during this election cycle who came out on the Clear Eyes Full Hearts Tour that he has been traveling all over the state of Texas for the past few weeks gearing up to election night tonight and something that's important for our viewers to Take note that, again, we're outside of this watch party, which just shows the magnitude of this watch party and how many eyes are on this race. So many news outlets RSVP'd for this watch party, close to 200, that they just could not accommodate all of us inside, therefore everybody's outside. So when James Tallarico does speak later on this evening, there will be a pool camera inside that will pull to all of us out here. And we'll be on those screens, but there's some flat screens behind us that supporters will be able to watch the results come in. For right now, it was 7 p.m. here in Austin, really more vendors setting up, volunteers moseying around. The general public and supporters have not been let into the security gates, but I'm told That there is a long line outside waiting to go through those security gates as we speak but we know it's going to be a long evening and we are here for it all. Back to you guys in the studio. Peyton, I know you are familiar with the Austin area. Tell us about, like you said, people are waiting outside the gates to get in. What has what has been the feeling amongst just regular people out there waiting? Do you do you sense an energy? For sure. And I did sense that. We were here last night for the ending of James Tallarico's Clear Eyes, Full Hearts tour. That was at Stubbs Barbecue in downtown Austin. Classic spot. Close to 2,000 people were there. Gina Hinojosa was there, introduced James Tallarico with his final message to voters, really trying to energize them, fire them up for election day today. And you know, that final message, it's a message he has been saying for weeks now. David, going up against Goliath, the Republicans and Ken Paxson in this race, he's really embracing that underdog status. But we haven't heard much from the Tallarico campaign today, speaking one-on-one, only that they are confident in this race and they are ready for the long haul this evening. We'll be here. All right, Peyton, we're going to be coming back to you as the results come in. And so Peyton's in Austin covering the Tallarico campaign here in North Texas, not too far from his backyard. Ken Paxton is at the Galleria or near the Galleria in Dallas. For that, we want to go live to Fox Sports Davis and Tindrey. David. Hey, Steven and the rest of the crew. Yeah, I can tell you I have been at Ken Paxton's watch parties throughout this process. I was at the primary watch party, the primary runoff, and here we are tonight. And I can tell you there's probably more tension in this room than at any other of those watch parties. Everything got started a bit late, so we haven't really had time for a large majority of the crowd to trickle in. It's still pretty thin right now. I would say more people were at the watch party during the runoff at this time of the hour than there are here. And you don't see a whole lot of laughter, you don't see a lot of smiles, it's not a celebration necessarily right now, it's just a lot of people on the tip of their toes just watching the screen behind me to see when those results start to roll in, at least the early voting numbers, and see how their candidate is going to do. Of course, this has been a race that's just not talked about in the Lone Star State, but across the country, we keep talking about President Donald Trump's endorsement of Ken Paxton, how that might help him or might not moving toward that finish line. The president and J.D. Vance have both been in Texas in the past few weeks campaigning for him. President Trump has said that Ken Paxton is the best attorney general in the entire country. But the question is, do voters here in Texas believe he is the best candidate for U.S. Senate? Obviously, people here behind me are supporters of his. You would expect that at any sort of event like this. And I was able to talk to a couple of them just trying to get their reaction and maybe predictions as to how the evening is going to go. Has a good guess. Everyone just kind of shrugs their shoulders and is like, well, we'll see what plays out throughout the evening. They're not even really taking any sort of guesses. I did speak to one person who is a member of the Iranian American community of North Texas. That's a nonprofit group in town and she's out here tonight. It's a nonpartisan group, but some of its members obviously have certain political stances and a good bit of them are out here. And I was asking, you know, what's your reason for supporting Ken Paxton? And they believe that He will work well with Ted Cruz and other Republicans in trying to accomplish their goals as Iranian Americans who have family members back home in Iran. They want a regime change, at least people in this group. Obviously, the war, not necessarily favorable for a lot of people in this country, but that's just one person I spoke with a few moments ago explaining to me why they are out here tonight. As far as the logistics of the evening go... You know, normally we get an idea about how many speakers are going to be in line to talk before the candidate would come out. Maybe how many of them or some specific names. I know last time during the runoff we saw Roseanne Barr, of all people, who was out here talking in support of Ken Paxton. But his campaign tonight has been really tight-lipped. I mean, they're not giving us any names of people who are going to be out here. They're not giving us a rough head count of how many speakers there might be before him. We're even asking, you know, is there a time when anyone will just be addressing the crowd? And they're like, eh, you know, we'll wait and see. We'll update you when you can. So a whole lot of, you know, unanswered questions right now. And again, I just want to stress that. There is a lot of uncertainty in this room right now, but obviously that's expected. You know, during the primary and a primary runoff, there's not as much to lose as at a time like this when we're talking about hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent on this race. You don't want to come out the loser of that race, Stephen. David Centendri, thank you so much. David, before I let you go, I was messing with you because I saw a picture on Twitter of a cannon. You confirmed there is a cannon behind you. Yeah, so to my left shoulder, I don't know if you guys are able to see it, but way over there toward the stage, there is a cannon in front of one of the Texas flags. I haven't been up close to it. They're keeping us far back here. But yes, I can confirm there is a cannon here at the watch party.