{"id":416522,"date":"2026-08-25T19:40:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T19:40:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/416522\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T19:40:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T19:40:14","slug":"james-talarico-continues-to-edge-out-ken-paxton-in-texas-u-s-senate-race-new-poll-finds-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/416522\/","title":{"rendered":"James Talarico continues to edge out Ken Paxton in Texas\u2019 U.S. Senate race, new poll finds \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"Ken<\/p>\n

AP Photo\/LM Otero and Eric Gay<\/p>\n

At left, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks in McKinney, Texas, May 19, 2026, and at right, Texas state Rep. James Talarico, after voting, in Austin, Texas, Feb. 17, 2026.<\/p>\n

A new poll<\/a> from the University of Texas\/Texas Politics Project shows 42% of registered voters surveyed would vote for Democratic state Rep. James Talarico<\/a> if the election for the U.S. Senate were held today. That compares to 39% who would support Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“James Talarico has a lead which is pretty historic, particularly in the context of other polling that we\u2019ve seen throughout the summer, several of which have also found Talarico ahead by a similar margin \u2014 some a little bigger, some a little smaller,” said James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.<\/p>\n

Critically, the poll showed 14% of respondents had yet to make up their mind between Paxton, Talarico, Libertarian candidate Ted Brown, or any of the other candidates on the ballot.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Hello, Houston!<\/a> daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n

“There are a lot of people that have still not really checked into this race,” Henson said, “and part of the conventional wisdom is that … voters start paying more attention after Labor Day, particularly less-engaged voters. So, we\u2019ll be watching pretty closely to see where those undecided voters start lining up as the fall gets here.”<\/p>\n

The margin of error in the poll was 2.83%.<\/p>\n

“With that margin of error, we can we can suspect that this is a very close race,” Henson said. “But since four of the last five public nonpartisan polls have had Talarico ahead by varying margins, I think it\u2019s fair to consider Talarico probably doing a better job at this point of consolidating his vote than Ken Paxton has done so far.”<\/p>\n

The poll found Republicans with modest leads over Democratic candidates in most of the other major statewide contests.<\/p>\n

Incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott was leading state Rep. Gina Hinojosa 45% to 40%.
\nIncumbent Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was ahead of state Rep. Vikki Goodwin by a wider margin at 42% to 35%.
\nIn the race for attorney general, Sen. Mayes Middleton was leading Sen. Nathan Johnson 40% to 35%.
\nActing Comptroller Don Huffines had the widest lead against state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt polling at 40% to 34%. <\/p>\n

Republicans were also leading in generic ballots for U.S. Congress and the Texas Legislature, according to the poll.<\/p>\n

However, Henson said the margins in favor of Republicans was smaller than previous elections.<\/p>\n

“If you look at all of the statewide races that we polled \u2014 governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller,” Henson said, “Republicans were ahead in all of those races, but the range was between five and seven points, and that is narrower than we typically see, and I think it does show us that we are seeing a more competitive election in what we expected to be a year in which Democrats would have the wind at their backs, because there\u2019s a Republican in the White House, and then in Texas you\u2019ve got Republicans dominating state government.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AP Photo\/LM Otero and Eric Gay At left, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks in McKinney, Texas, May…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416523,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64638,24589,132,134,133,39794,288,4872,223,287,7834,44241,43964,27,13602,2279],"class_list":["post-416522","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-2026-senate-race","tag-attorney-general-ken-paxton","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-election-2026","tag-elections","tag-gov-greg-abbott","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-polls","tag-state-representative-gina-hinojosa","tag-state-representative-james-talarico","tag-texas","tag-texas-senate-race","tag-voting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416522","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=416522"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416522\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416523"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}