A new poll suggests that the outcome of the hotly contested Texas Senate race may be in Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R-TX) hands.
Fox News’s latest survey of the state found Democrat James Talarico and his Republican opponent, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, tied at 49% apiece in their bids to succeed Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).
The same poll found Abbott winning an absolute majority of the vote and beating Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa 52% to 47%.
That’s better for both Republicans than many recent polls have shown. Paxton has mostly trailed Talarico and was running 1.9 points behind him in the RealClearPolitics polling average before the latest Fox numbers dropped. Abbott was below 50%, taking 48.6% of the vote, in the same website’s average of polls pre-Fox. He is currently leading in this average by just 2.2 points.
The bigger Abbott’s margin of victory, the better Paxton’s chance of winning might be.
Contrary to a popular misunderstanding, Fox News polls survey the general electorate rather than their viewing audience. Their polls don’t particularly favor Republicans. The network’s Ohio poll, released the same day, shows Democrats leading both the Senate and gubernatorial races.
Abbott is running for a fourth term as Democrats eye their first winning Senate campaign in Texas since 1988, when Lloyd Bentsen was last elected.
Democrats have had high hopes for Texas before, only to see them dashed. But Talarico hasn’t just been competitive. Unlike Beto O’Rourke or Colin Allred in their failed quests to unseat Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Talarico has actually led in the vast majority of reputable polls and has been ahead in the polling aggregates for weeks.
Much has been written about Paxton’s struggles and flaws as a candidate, which were widely predicted and pointed out before he defeated the incumbent Cornyn in the Texas GOP primary runoff over the objections of the party establishment in Washington, D.C., and Austin.
President Donald Trump endorsed Paxton, but only after an extended dalliance with Cornyn as the runoff started to look like a fait accompli. While Cornyn finished first in the initial round of voting, Paxton opened up a double-digit lead in the polls ahead of the runoff, and ultimately won by 27.6 points.
But the Texas Republican ticket has struggled as a whole this year. Abbott has generally posted leads in the low single digits. A handful of surveys have even found Hinojosa ahead, including the respected New York Times-Siena poll. National Democrats have faced pressure to invest money in the race despite past Texas disappointments.
Talarico was also polling competitively with Cornyn before Texas Republican primary voters settled on Paxton, a fact that did not help the incumbent’s electability argument. While Cornyn would have been a better fundraiser than Paxton and national Republicans would have been more eager to help him, he might have suffered from a base enthusiasm problem. Cornyn actually trailed Talarico by 0.5 points in the RealClearPolitics average (though an April University of Texas poll did a lot of that work).
There has been leftward movement among Texas whites and some younger voters in recent election cycles, while Hispanics have shifted back toward the Democrats since Trump carried the state by nearly 14 points in 2024. Cruz won by 8.4 points that year and by just 2.6 points in the blue wave year of 2018.
Polling this year has shown Talarico doing a better job of consolidating Democratic support, despite concerns about black voters following a contentious primary against Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), who protests that she has endorsed the man who defeated her “100 times,” than Paxton has done with Republicans. Yet most, though not all, of these polls have shown Paxton can still win if enough Republicans come home.
It’s possible, however, that the important polls to watch here are those testing the governor’s race. If Abbott wins by at least 5-7 points, Paxton’s look good. If Abbott’s margin of victory is closer to 2-3 points, ticket-splitters and ballot-blankers will make it tough on Paxton. If Abbott’s numbers are worse than that, Talarico is probably elected senator.
Texas isn’t the only red state where Republicans look weak this year. Trump has had to campaign in Kansas, Nebraska, Alaska, and South Carolina, with future rallies planned for Iowa. He will be in Lubbock, Texas, on Tuesday.
But Texas does have a high number of both Hispanic voters, with Spanish speakers possibly undersampled in some polls, and rural voters, who are either ready to revolt against the GOP or may be missing from the polls themselves.
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Former Democratic strategist and Nothing Left author Evan Barker has repeatedly argued that rural vote is what will sink Talarico in the end.
Even so, Paxton could need the longtime incumbent governor’s help to make it across the finish line.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
