According to a new poll, state Rep. James Talarico (D-Austin) leads Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton by just half a percentage point in the race for U.S. Senate, while Gov. Greg Abbott holds a narrow one-point lead over state Rep. Gina Hinojosa (D-Austin) in his quest for a fourth term.
The survey of 1,167 likely Texas voters, which has a margin of error of 2.9 percent, found that 44 percent would vote for Talarico if the election were held today, while 43.6 percent would vote for Paxton and 12.6 percent were undecided. Of the undecided, 53 percent said they leaned toward Paxton and 47 percent toward Talarico.
Conducted between August 24–26 by Overton Insights in partnership with the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), the poll mirrors other recent surveys indicating a very close contest, with the Cook Political Report recently calling the race a toss-up.
In the gubernatorial race, Abbott led Hinojosa 47 percent to 46 percent, with 7 percent undecided, but if the election were held today, undecided voters preferred Abbott by nearly 59 percent.
In recent election cycles, Republicans have often been underestimated in polls, and in 2024, incumbent U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) outperformed the RealClearPolitics average by about 4 percent. Democrats’ hopes for defeating Cruz with former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke were thwarted in 2018, but in those elections Cruz was the incumbent and never actually trailed in the polling, unlike Paxton.
Democrats are hoping this year will give them their first statewide electoral victory since 1994, and Republican President Donald Trump’s low approval numbers may help them with that.
The Overton Insights/TPPF poll found that 55 percent of respondents either somewhat or strongly disapproved of Trump’s handling of his job as president, and 54 percent somewhat or strongly disapproved of his tariff policies. They were evenly split on approval and disapproval of the administration’s handling of immigration issues.
Republicans still held a slight lead on a generic congressional ballot at 46 percent, but 10 percent of those polled said they would choose someone other than the Democratic or Republican candidate.
On more specific issues, the Texans who were surveyed expressed strong opposition to automatic license plate readers such as those provided by Flock Safety, and nearly 64 percent said they opposed placing the cameras at public intersections.
More than half of respondents supported local bans on construction of data centers in their own communities. Even if safeguards were added to restrict water usage and noise pollution while requiring the centers to provide their own power, 54 percent remained opposed.
Data centers have become a flashpoint in the 2026 elections, with Hinojosa criticizing Abbott for supposedly bringing them to the state over the past few years, while the governor directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to require data centers to pay for their own electric infrastructure costs.
Paxton and Talarico have both weighed in on the centers as well, and last week Paxton unveiled his plan to further regulate data centers and artificial intelligence.
A copy of the Overton Insights/TPPF survey can be found below.