Voters in central Texas head to an active polling station at the Ben Hur Shriners Ballroom in north Austin on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, to cast their votes and take part in the democratic process.
Ricardo B. Brazziell/Austin American-Statesman
If the political truism that anyone trying to get elected to public office had best run scared — or run unopposed — still holds true, two recent polls in the Texas race for U.S. Senate suggest that both candidates are entering the final four months of the 2026 campaign with much trepidation.
Both the Times/Siena Poll and one by the Texas Politics Project show Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat James Talarico in a dead heat. The Times shows the race tied at 47-47, and the Politics Project, an arm of the University of Texas, gives Paxton the edge by just 1 percentage point. Those numbers should worry any Texas Republican.
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Two years ago, Donald Trump carried Texas by 14 percentage points en route to his return to the White House. Two years before that, Paxton buried his Democratic opponent in his bid for a third term as Texas attorney general by a comfortable 10 points as Republicans kept alive their winning streak in statewide elections that began in 1998.
Adding to Paxton’s nail-biting is the nosedive in Trump’s approval rating in the nation’s most reliably Republican large state. In 2024, Trump beat Democratic nominee Kamala Harris 56% to 42% in Texas. The Politics Project poll that came out in late June shows Trump less popular in Texas now than Harris was 18 months ago.
READ MORE: The key takeaways from the Texas Democratic Party convention in Corpus Christi
Trump announced last week that he plans to come to Dallas in September for an unusual midterm meeting of the Republican National Committee. No doubt that will excite Republicans, which would likely help Paxton. But because Trump is sitting at 43% approval and 51% disapproval in Texas, his appearance in Dallas could end up energizing more Democrats than Republicans.
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The polls show that Talarico, even though he’s outperforming nearly every Texas Democrat who has run statewide this century, is carrying some heavy baggage on the campaign trail. The heaviest might be the capital “D” that will be next to his name on the November ballot. The fact is, Texans don’t much like Democrats. Only 3 in 10 respondents in the Times poll said they consider themselves members of that party. And fully 50% said they want Republicans to keep control of the Senate after the election.
Put another way, a Talarico victory would go a long way toward erasing the Republicans’ current 53-47 advantage in the upper chamber. It’s easy to foresee late-campaign messaging from national Republicans warning Texans that a vote for Talarico would mean handing Democrats a Senate majority.
The polls also hold undeniably good news for both candidates. Recall that during the bitter GOP runoff, incumbent John Cornyn predicted that a Paxton victory would drive a swath of Republican voters into the arms of Talarico, given the attorney general’s much-publicized legal and marital challenges.
Pre-runoff polling reinforced that message. The Politics Project poll in April found that 63% of GOP voters would vote for the Democrat if Paxton was the nominee. But with the Republican slate now set, Paxton enjoys the support of 84% in his own party.
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Two upsides for Talarico are that nearly 90% of his party is in his corner and, more importantly, he leads Paxton by 28 points among independents, the Politics Project poll found.
READ MORE: The key takeaways from the Texas Republican Party convention in Houston
Another positive for the Democrat is that all the Republican handwringing over Talarico’s “six sexes” remark, false allegations of veganism and even questions about his love life doesn’t seem to have moved the needle, given that he and Paxton are all but tied. The same is true of Paxton’s now-settled legal problems and his own love life, including divorce proceedings suggesting marital infidelity. Voters have heard about all of that, and they appear to be yawning. As one Paxton supporter told the Times, “Nobody’s perfect.”
Actually, a number of the once-upon-a-time red-meat issues seem to have lost their sizzle this cycle. “Election integrity” was the top issue for 2% of the Times poll respondents. Abortion drew only 1%. Gun policy, which has divided the left from the right for a generation or more, registered a big zero when respondents were asked what was motivating their vote.
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It was the same for crime, climate policy, racism and terrorism. Much higher on the list were the economy, jobs, inflation and the twin issues of competence and character.
So, getting back to the “running scared” observation that started this discussion, perhaps the biggest question for candidates up and down the ballots and across the partisan divide is whether they’re campaigning on the issues worrying most voters.