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Well, this just made the final days of the Texas Senate race even more interesting.
A brand-new statewide survey has Republican Ken Paxton back on top of Democrat James Talarico — a result that cuts directly against the run of late polling that has fueled weeks of Democratic celebration.
The race is still a statistical toss-up. But the movement inside the numbers gives Republicans a very real reason to believe the closing stretch may be breaking their way.
According to the new Quantus Insights survey, Paxton leads Talarico 48.7% to 47.6% among 1,221 likely Texas voters. Libertarian Ted Brown takes 1.4%, while only 2.2% remain undecided.
Once voters who lean toward a candidate are included, the race lands at 49.4% for Paxton and 48.4% for Talarico.
The 1.1-point spread sits comfortably inside the poll’s margin of error, so the honest reading is a statistical tie. Even so, Paxton being the candidate with his nose in front matters because so many of the other public polls released this month have shown Talarico holding a narrow advantage.
Quantus conducted the survey from October 26 through October 28, making it one of the final snapshots Texas voters will see before Election Day. The pollster’s previous October survey had Paxton ahead by only half a point, with nearly twice as many voters still undecided.
Paxton entered the final week drawing a sharp contrast between his record in office and Talarico’s campaign pitch:
The most important change may be inside the Republican coalition.
Quantus found Paxton winning 93% of Republican voters, up from 87% in the firm’s October 9-11 survey. Talarico takes 96% of Democrats.
In other words, both sides have largely come home. Paxton’s improvement came as the undecided share fell from 3.9% earlier this month to just 2.2% in the new survey.
That helps explain why his edge grew from half a point in the prior Quantus poll to 1.1 points now.
There is also a turnout wrinkle that could loom large.
Among respondents who said they had already voted, Democrats were further along: 59% of Democrats reported casting a ballot, compared with 49% of Republicans and 41% of independents.
But one-quarter of Republicans and independents said they planned to vote on Election Day. Quantus reported that the pool of voters still left to cast ballots leans more Republican than the votes respondents said were already banked.
Paxton has been campaigning as if the stakes could not be higher:
There is an obvious warning label here, and it should not be buried.
The poll’s overall margin of error is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points. Quantus says the approximate margin of error for the difference between the two Senate candidates is plus or minus 6.4 points.
So this survey does not prove Paxton is winning. It shows a dead heat with the Republican slightly ahead in this particular sample.
It also stands apart from most of the other recent results.
The Texas Politics Project’s nonpartisan polling tracker lists Talarico ahead by two points in a Texas Southern University survey, six in CNN/SSRS, two in Emerson, five in Univision/YouGov and two in a University of Houston poll. A Fox News survey had the race tied.
That broader picture is precisely why this new result is so striking.
Quantus is not showing a Republican running away with Texas. It is showing a race that has tightened to the point where a modest late shift in party consolidation and turnout could decide everything.
Talarico still has a major strength among independents. The new poll gives him a 57% to 33% advantage with that group, expanding his lead there from 15 points earlier in October to 24 points now.
Paxton counters with a massive 66% to 31% advantage among rural voters and a slim 49% to 47% edge in the suburbs. Talarico leads urban voters 61% to 36%.
Those competing coalitions have turned what once looked like a safe Republican seat into one of the most consequential battles on the map.
The Associated Press described the contest as one of the biggest tests of Republican dominance in Texas and the Democrats’ best Senate opportunity there in decades. Texas has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1988, and President Donald Trump carried the state in 2024 by more than 10 points.
The money pouring into this race shows how seriously both parties are taking it. By mid-October, Talarico had raised more than $146 million to Paxton’s roughly $22 million, although massive independent spending gave Paxton an advantage in total outside support.
The winner will replace longtime Senator John Cornyn after Paxton defeated him in a tight Republican runoff. What once looked like a safe Republican succession fight has become a national battle over Senate control.
Paxton’s final message has focused on the country and the future Texas voters will leave their children:
Now the campaigns have only days left to turn those numbers into actual ballots.
If the remaining Republican vote arrives the way Quantus expects, Paxton may have found the late surge he needed.
If Talarico’s independent advantage holds and Democratic early voting is as strong as it looks, Texas could still deliver a political earthquake.
Either way, nobody can call this race settled.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
The post JUST IN: Stunning New Texas Senate Poll Upends the Race in the Final Stretch appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.
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[H/T 100PercentFedUp]
