{"id":269872,"date":"2026-04-28T15:23:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T15:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/269872\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T15:23:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T15:23:11","slug":"texas-senate-race-poll-shows-democrat-talarico-leading-republicans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/269872\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas Senate race poll shows Democrat Talarico leading Republicans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texas’ U.S. Senate seat race<\/a> is heating up, with a new poll showing a Democratic candidate leading Republican primary candidates.<\/p>\n

A new poll from the Texas Public Opinion Research<\/a> showed that Democratic candidate James Talarico<\/a> is pulling ahead of Republican primary runoff candidates Ken Paxton<\/a> and John Cornyn<\/a> \u2014 but only slightly.<\/p>\n

The poll suggests that Talarico leads the two, but within the poll’s margin of error. Additionally, Paxton and Cornyn are in the midst of a heated runoff in May, with the winner set to become the Republican candidate on the November ballot.<\/p>\n

Here’s a deeper dive into the poll and where Texas is in its election process.<\/p>\n

\"James<\/p>\n

James Talarico speaks to his supporters during his election night watch party at Emo\u2019s in Austin, Texas, on March 3, 2026.<\/p>\n

Talarico leads Cornyn, Paxton within the poll’s margin of error<\/p>\n

The poll was conducted from April 17 to 20, polling 1,018 likely general election voters, with<\/p>\n

a margin of error of +\/-3.3 percentage points.<\/p>\n

It found that Texas State Rep. Talarico<\/a> leads incumbent U.S. Sen. Cornyn<\/a> by three percentage points, 44% to 41%, and also leads Texas Attorney General Paxton<\/a> by five percentage points, 46% to 41%.<\/p>\n

The poll also showed<\/a> two scenarios in which Talarico would face off with Cornyn or Paxton in November 2026. The biggest takeaway is that Independents lean heavily towards Democrats in both matchups: Talarico leads 51% to 29% among Independents against Cornyn, and 53% to 28% against Paxton.<\/p>\n

Finally, the poll showed where each candidate finds their strongest support. For Talarico, it’s from Black and Latino voters and college-educated Texans.<\/p>\n

For Cornyn and Paxton, their strongest support comes from white, non-college-educated and rural Texans.<\/p>\n

When are Texas’s primary runoff elections?\"From<\/p>\n

From left: U.S. Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will face off in a runoff.<\/p>\n

Talarico defeated other challengers \u2014 including U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crocke<\/a>t \u2014 during the Texas U.S. Senate Democratic primary race and is the Democratic candidate for the November 2026 General Election.<\/p>\n

However, Cornyn and Paxton were unable to secure the coveted 50% plus one vote to become the Republican general-election candidate and will face off later in May in a runoff election. An earlier TPOR poll<\/a> showed Paxton up by 8 percentage points over Cornyn in the Republican runoff.<\/p>\n

Early voting for Texas’s Democratic and Republican Primary runoff elections is set to begin on May 18, and end on May 22. Election Day is May 26.<\/p>\n

Mateo Rosiles is the Texas Connect reporter for USA TODAY and its regional papers in Texas. Got a news tip for him? Email him:\u00a0mrosiles@usatodayco.com.<\/a><\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on USATNetwork: Talarico leads Cornyn, Paxton in new Texas US Senate race poll<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Texas’ U.S. Senate seat race is heating up, with a new poll showing a Democratic candidate leading Republican…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7583,2135,3309,1967,100505,93049,76848,86879,27,29,28,5131,2134],"class_list":["post-269872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-attorney-general-paxton","tag-james-talarico","tag-john-cornyn","tag-ken-paxton","tag-margin-of-error","tag-percentage-points","tag-primary-runoff","tag-republican-candidate","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-texas-state-rep","tag-u-s-senate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}