Democratic candidate James Talarico leads in almost all of the Texas Senate general-election polls compiled by The New York Times since the March primaries. The state representative from the Austin area prevailed in hypothetical matchups against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, as well as state Attorney General Ken Paxton, who defeated Cornyn in Tuesday’s primary runoff. “Blue Texas” hopefuls are giddy, but the numbers obscure some important truths about the Texas electorate.
Polls between the March primary and the runoff generally showed Talarico in the low to mid-40s, and Cornyn or Paxton a few points behind in the upper 30s or low 40s. Talarico’s supporters emphasize that he performed slightly better—although mostly within the margins of error—against Paxton.
Paxton does have considerably more baggage, having narrowly escaped getting thrown out of office on corruption charges in 2023, after the state House—with a Republican majority—impeached him. The state Senate acquitted him. Both Paxton and Cornyn, however, performed poorly in the spring polls at least partly because they were stuck in a runoff against each other.
Each man’s supporters were loath to admit they would support the other candidate in the general. Polling conducted by the nonpartisan Texas Politics Project showed that only 50 percent of Republicans said they would vote for both Cornyn and Paxton. Roughly equal numbers defected when they preferred the other candidate, saying they were unsure who they would vote for in November.
Let’s be clear: That does not mean Cornyn voters will refuse to vote for Paxton. Republicans—and Democrats, for that matter—generally get behind flawed nominees at general-election time. Even a candidate accused of sexually assaulting multiple women when they were minors came close to winning a Senate race in Alabama. That’s the strength of partisanship’s gravitational force.
The most important part of these polls is Talarico’s number. The Democratic side of the race has been settled for nearly three months, and Texas Democrats are unified behind their candidate. The challenge for Talarico is that unifying Democrats only gets him to about 45 percent of the vote in Texas.
Texas doesn’t have partisan voter registration, so we must estimate the partisanship of the state based on past election results and polling. By both metrics, Democrats lag Republicans. In the Texas Politics Project polls, about 47-50 percent of registered voters identify as Republicans or independents who lean Republican. The highest Democrats get across the last few polls is 43 percent, including independents who lean Democratic. No Democrat has won a statewide election since 1994.
That makes Talarico’s pathway to 50 percent considerably more difficult. The Democratic candidate has to win more than a majority of independents who vote, plus some Republicans or Republican-leaning independents.
The other clue that this is a more difficult race for Talarico than recent polling indicates comes from the pre-primary general-election polls. Nearly all of the hypothetical polls before the March primaries showed any of the three Republican candidates winning against both Democrats. It’s a sharp contrast, with polling switching to favor Talarico immediately after the primary.
We’re likely to see polls shift again as Republicans come back together, although it might take a little time after such a bruising runoff contest. It’s also likely that polls will vary enough that we don’t have a good read on the race in the coming months.
Texas is a tricky place to poll. It is a massive state with relatively small populations scattered over a wide geography, and the Latino population is a wild card. Many Latino voters swung right to vote for Donald Trump in 2024, but by all measures they have soured on the president and may swing back toward Democrats this year. Yet many polls don’t conduct interviews in Spanish or sample enough Latinos, thereby misjudging this critical voting bloc.
The makeup of the midterm electorate is another x-factor. With no partisan registration in Texas, pollsters lack guidance to help estimate exactly how many Republicans and Democrats will vote this year. If turnout is heavily skewed toward Democrats because of the anti-Trump atmosphere, Talarico’s challenge in earning crossover voters becomes much easier. But polls also have trouble capturing this sort of shift in the electorate before it happens.
Between the political environment and Paxton’s controversies, this year might be the best chance a Democrat has had in Texas in a long time. As always, though, be very careful in reading polls that might be flawed and analysis that might be a little too interested in telling you what you want to hear.
