Politics

After crushing the previous record set in 2008 on day one of early voting, Travis County voters showed up in droves again on day two, busting even more turnout records along the way.

Travis County voters set a record Monday, casting 46,086 ballots on the first day of early voting. That means more than 6 percent of registered voters in the county cast a ballot.

From the Texas Tribune: Texas Secretary of State Carlos Cascos has said no to Russian officials’ request to watch Texans vote, according to correspondence obtained by The Texas Tribune.

Voters in state House District 46 face an unusual predicament this November — unless they want to flip Republican, most of those casting ballots in the reliably Democratic district will opt for an incumbent Democrat who's already said she won't serve.

DALLAS — Donald Trump's top supporter in Texas said Thursday he expects a "peaceful transition" of power in November as the Republican presidential nominee continued to decline to promise he would accept the outcome of the election.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who chairs Trump's efforts in Texas, told reporters he thinks Trump was "misunderstood" during his debate Wednesday with Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, when he repeatedly ducked the question of whether he would respect the results on Nov. 8.

This week, the Tribune's Jay Root and KUT's Ben Philpott taped before a crowd at KLRU's historic studio 6A, former host of the iconic TV show "Austin City Limits."

As Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump face off in the final presidential debate, follow along with the talk of Texas and, if you want to join the conversation, be sure to tag your tweets and Facebook posts #TXdecides. 

While there's sure to be plenty of chatter during and after the debate, be sure to tune in to our taping of KUT and the Texas Tribune's podcast, The Ticket 2016. It'll be a Facebook Live pre-debate show with Jay Root of the Tribune and our own Ben Philpott. They'll recap the latest news ahead of the final debate, and the event will also feature some comedy from our friends at ColdTowne Theater. The event starts at 7 p.m. on our Facebook page.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton have faced off in the third and final presidential debate at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas. 

Watch the debate below from PBS Newshour and follow along with NPR's full transcript and annotated fact check below. 

As Donald Trump intensifies his claims that widespread voter fraud this November could derail his election, he is finding a sympathetic constituency among some Texas Republicans who have long sounded the alarm about mischief at the ballot box.

Join KUT's Ben Philpott and The Texas Tribune's Jay Root for a live recording of their podcast, The Ticket 2016 – a look at presidential politics from a Texas perspective. Ben and Jay will kick off the evening with a review of the latest news from the campaign trail, including some debate comedy from our friends at 

So, yeah. This year has been a bummer for democracy. Like many of you, I’ve been avoiding political ads like I avoid I-35.

That is, until I saw a new ad from Gerald Daugherty, a moderate Republican running for re-election to the Travis County Commission’s Precinct Three seat. For those that don't know Daugherty, he's the lone conservative on the county commission. His main issue has been getting State Highway 45 Southwest built — which would connect FM 1626 in Hays County to MoPac in southwest Austin.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump leads Democratic rival Hillary Clinton by only 4 percentage points in solidly red Texas, according to a new poll. That's within the margin of error. 

The WFAA/SurveyUSA poll found Trump beating Clinton 47 percent to 43 percent — a remarkably close margin in a state that the last two GOP nominees carried by double digits. The poll's margin of error is 4 percent.