New polls show Talarico leads Paxton in Texas Senate race

AUSTIN, Texas — Three public polls released in the past month show Democrat James Talarico narrowly leading Republican Ken Paxton in the Texas U.S. Senate race, with the latest survey from Texas Southern University released this morning putting Talarico ahead by two points.

Josh Blank, Research Director for the Texas Politics Project, said the polling underscores how tight the contest appears to be.

"All the polling that we're seeing here in Texas is reflecting the competitiveness of the race," Blank said.

Recent surveys from Fox News, Texas Public Opinion Research and Texas Southern University each show Talarico leading Paxton by five points or fewer. The polling suggests Talarico is performing better at this stage than Beto O'Rourke did in 2018, Blank said.

"Given that Beto only lost by two and a half percentage points, we should expect this to be a really competitive race," Blank said.

Talarico, who is seeking to become the first Democrat elected to the U.S. Senate from Texas in more than 30 years, pointed to what he described as momentum in the state.

Across the three surveys, Talarico topped the 50% mark only once. Paxton did not reach 50% in any of them.

Blank said Talarico supporters have reason to be encouraged by the consistency of the results.

"As we see that consistently it makes it more likely that that is actually a true reflection of the state of the race at this point in time," he said.

Still, Blank cautioned that the margin of error in each poll means the race remains too close to call.

Paxton's campaign was contacted for comment on the latest polls, but no response had been received.