As the night lengthened on Tuesday, the real contest, it seemed, was to find a fitting description as to how thoroughly Democrats were taken to the woodshed both in Texas and nationally.

Voters go to the polls today with much at stake, as in the wholesale turnover at the top of state government, but seemingly little in the way of suspense about the outcome of those races.

The raw number of voters is up slightly but is not keeping pace with population growth.

Questions continue to be raised about a giant water pipeline project that would pump roughly 16 billion gallons of groundwater annually from Burleson County to San Antonio.

Monday night was a big one for a pair of Texas politicos who were both given a national stage from which to galvanize support among their respective voter bases.

Border security and immigration top the list of concerns in Texas, according to the most recent University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.

GOP statewide candidates uniformly hold sizeable advantages over their Democratic rivals.

Criticism by state leaders of the Obama administration for failures in the response to the Ebola virus omits mention of the tools at the state's disposal that were not used.

Voters can cast ballots today for the Nov. 4 general election as the two-week early voting period commences.

A lingering fight over a failed petition drive aimed at the city of Houston's equal rights ordinance boiled over this week as subpoenas issued against area pastors allied with the petition effort drew the ire of conservative leaders.

Tuesday turned into a topsy turvy day in the federal courts for the state of Texas with the voter ID law conserved for the Nov. 4 general election but a new delay placed on enforcing the new abortion law.

Gov. Rick Perry will have to spend part of his Halloween in an Austin courtroom. Perry was excused from a pre-trial hearing on Monday, but he must be at the next one, the presiding judge in the case determined.

A federal district judge in Corpus Christi ruled against the state's voter ID law, injecting a note of drama into the run-up to the general elections.

A sad chapter was marked Wednesday in the story of Ebola in Texas with the death of Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian man who flew to Dallas to join family only to be diagnosed with the deadly disease after arriving.

New abortion restrictions passed by the Legislature could lead to one unexpected result: more abortions performed in doctors' offices as the number of abortion clinics in the state drops to single digits.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott's tenure as attorney general was the focus of news coverage this weekend. And it wasn't the sort of coverage craved by campaigns.

On the day after the country's first case of an Ebola infection appeared in Dallas, the focus has turned to the hospital where the patient was initially sent home with antibiotics before being admitted a second time for treatment.

An airline passenger who was traveling to Dallas to visit relatives has become the first case of an Ebola infection in the U.S. The diagnosis, which was announced Tuesday afternoon, had federal and state officials trying to allay fears of an outbreak of the disease in this country.