{"id":470061,"date":"2026-10-18T23:20:22","date_gmt":"2026-10-18T23:20:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/470061\/"},"modified":"2026-10-18T23:20:22","modified_gmt":"2026-10-18T23:20:22","slug":"cbs-news-poll-shows-key-texas-races-remain-tight-as-early-voting-looms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/470061\/","title":{"rendered":"CBS News poll shows key Texas races remain tight as early voting looms"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Democratic <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonchronicle.com\/news\/houston-texas\/religion\/article\/talarico-paxton-test-christian-faith-22406724.php\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Senate candidate James Talarico<\/a> has a slight lead over state Attorney General Ken Paxton in a new CBS News poll that also has Gov. Greg Abbott back on top in his re-election bid.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The CBS News survey of 1,492 registered Texas voters was conducted Oct. 8-16, comes days after a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.houstonchronicle.com\/politics\/texas\/article\/poll-talarico-paxton-abbott-22475114.php\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">University of Texas at Austin poll<\/a> showed nearly all Democrats in statewide contests having a narrow lead over their Republican opponents. It also closed just three days before early voting in Texas begins on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>The latest poll gives Abbott a slight lead over his challenger, state Rep. Gina\u00a0Hinojosa, 52% to 48%. Just a little over half of those polled, 51%, said they disapproved of Abbott\u2019s performance as governor.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In the closely watched Senate race, Talarico leads\u00a0Paxton 51% to 49%. Talarico held a three point lead in the UT-Austin poll.\u00a0The CBS News poll didn\u2019t ask voters about the\u00a0Lieutenant Governor&#8217;s race between incumbent Dan Patrick and Democratic challenger state Rep. Vikki Goodwin.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The poll&#8217;s margin of error was plus or minus 3.4 percentage points, essentially putting the races up for grabs in a state where no Democrat has won statewide office since 1994.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The poll also took the voters&#8217; pulse on general questions. For example, only 15% of those surveyed said they felt that things were going well in Texas. The largest share of voters, 33%, said things are going somewhat well. A quarter said things were going somewhat badly, and another quarter said things are going very badly.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>More voters in the CBS News poll were dismayed with the way Trump is handling his job as president, with 55% of those surveyed saying they disapproved of his performance. The majority of those surveyed also said they believe Trump\u2019s policies have hurt Texas\u2019 economy. A little over a third said Trump\u2019s policies have helped Texas\u2019 economy, and 17% they felt he hadn\u2019t made much of a difference either way.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico has a slight lead over state Attorney General Ken Paxton in a new&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-470061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470061","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=470061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}