Rep. James Talarico
Democratic state Rep. James Talarico is leading both of his prospective Republican opponents in a new poll of Texas’ U.S. Senate race — though the result is within the margin of error in either scenario, suggesting a close contest in November.
The poll, conducted by Texas Public Opinion Research from April 17 to 20, found Talarico leading Sen. John Cornyn by three percentage points, 44% to 41%. The Austin Democrat leads Attorney General Ken Paxton by a margin of five percentage points, 46% to 41%. The survey included 1,865 likely general election voters and had a margin of error of +/-2.5 percentage points.
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Cornyn and Paxton are competing in a May 26 runoff to be the Republican nominee for Senate and take on Talarico, who won a competitive primary of his own in early March. A handful of polls throughout the cycle, some nonpartisan and some sponsored by Democrats, have found Democratic candidates with narrow leads or within the margin of error in hypothetical general election matchups.
Closely watched by politicos around the country, Texas’ Senate contest already features the most expensive primary on record, with most of the money coming on the Republican side in support of Cornyn. The Cook Political Report considers the seat to be “likely Republican,” but the messy Senate Republican runoff, Talarico’s fundraising prowess and a wave of Democratic overperformances in special elections have both parties eyeing the race with heightened interest.
Cornyn and his supporters have argued the longtime senator would be a stronger general election candidate than Paxton in a cycle in which the national environment is expected to be tough for Republicans. The TPOR poll found little variance in how the two Republicans perform in hypothetical matchups with Democrats.
In both scenarios, Talarico’s support is heavily powered by voters of color, college-educated Texans and independents. Among Black voters, Talarico leads Cornyn by 51 percentage points and Paxton by 56 percentage points. Among Latino voters, Talarico leads Cornyn by a 32-point margin and Paxton by a 27-point margin.
Independents broke heavily for the Democrat in both matchups: Talarico leads 51% to 29% among the group against Cornyn, and 53% to 28% with independents against Paxton.
The poll also found that more voters had a favorable impression of Talarico than those with unfavorable views — 41% to 34%, with the rest saying they were unsure. Meanwhile, Paxton and Cornyn are underwater by 10 and 15 percentage points, respectively, the two lowest favorability marks among all candidates in the survey.
Most polling of the Republican runoff has found it to be a neck-and-neck contest or Paxton leading by single digits. A TPOR poll of the runoff, conducted April 6 to 7, found Paxton up by 8 percentage points.
Beyond the Senate race, the TPOR poll found Republicans leading in the high-profile contests for governor and attorney general — though the former race is also within the margin of error.
In the survey, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott led the Democratic nominee, state Rep. Gina Hinojosa of Austin, 48% to 43%.
The poll found that while Hinojosa is leading with both Latinos and independents, Abbott has stronger support than Cornyn and Paxton among those groups.
Paxton’s decision to run for Senate opened up the attorney general seat for the first time in over a decade, drawing crowded Democratic and Republican primaries that are both being decided by runoffs. On the Democratic side, Dallas state Sen. Nathan Johnson is facing former Galveston mayor Joe Jaworski. In the Republican runoff, voters will pick between Galveston state Sen. Mayes Middleton and Austin U.S. Rep. Chip Roy.
The TPOR poll asked voters whom they would pick between the Democrat and the Republican, rather than measuring each hypothetical general election matchup. It found Republicans leading the attorney general race, 45% to 39%.
See here and here for previous polls showing Talarico leading in the November race. More data from this poll is here. My thoughts:
– It was shocking to see both Republicans at just 41% against Talarico in this poll, but that’s not unprecedented, as Talarico led Cornyn 43-41 in the previous poll. The five-point lead over Paxton is the biggest advantage Talarico has had in any poll so far.
– As nice as it is to see these numbers, I continue to believe that both Paxton and Cornyn are held down a little by the voters who oppose them in the runoff, some of whom are unwilling to say they support the other guy in a general election poll but will come home eventually afterwards.
– But not all of them will, and that’s a big problem for Republicans Cornyn (77%) and Paxton (78%) not only haven’t consolidated the Republican vote – Talarico gets 88% of Dems against Cornyn and 89% against Paxton, for comparison – they both lose a non-trivial amount to Talarico, with 7% voting for Talarico against Cornyn and 9% against Paxton. Another 15% are undecided or won’t vote for Cornyn, 13% for Paxton; those numbers are 10% and 8% respectively for Talarico. This is how the normal Republican advantage erodes.
– Much has been written about how Talarico needs to mend fences with Black voters to have a chance to win, and there’s some support for that in this poll, as he leads Cornyn 65-14 and Paxton 69-13 among Black voters. He’ll definitely need to improve those numbers, but 1) this is a small sample, so the error bars are large, and 2) in my experience, voters of color are more likely to be undecided, especially in earlier polls. We should keep an eye on this, of course, but I don’t see any red flags here.
– The flip side of this is that Talarico is more competitive among white voters than we have seen in the past. He trails Cornyn 51-36, and Paxton 50-38. I tried to find some comparative data from past polls, but not all of them publish that data and quite a few links to old polls no longer work, but I did find these two, both from Presidential races: A July 2, 2020 UT/Texas Politics Project poll that had Donald Trump with 59% of the white vote against Joe Biden in a result that had Trump leading 48-44 (I couldn’t find what Biden’s number would be, but most likely it would be in the 36-38 range, possibly a bit lower), and this September 2012 Wilson Perkins Allen Opinion Research that had Mitt Romney up by a ludicrous 77-17 margin among white voters over President Barack Obama; Romney led 55-40 in the poll, which wasn’t far off from the final 57-41 result.
Again, I want to strongly caution against any broad reading of these numbers, which are sure to be volatile, but the big-picture point is that white voters have given Republicans commanding margins in statewide races for many years now, and any dip in that support is going to cost them. As above, we’ll keep an eye on this.
– We don’t have any further data about the Governor’s race, but I’d bet Abbott has a wider lead among white voters than either Republican Senate candidate. Of note, in re: the earlier point about Talarico and Black voters, is that Gina Hinojosa leads Abbott by 57 among Black voters, which is six points better than Talarico against Cornyn and one point better than Talarico against Paxton. Talarico does better than Hinojosa in this poll with Latino voters, having leads of 32 against Cornyn and 27 against Paxton, compared to Hinojosa’s +22.
– Finally, the approval numbers for Trump (48/50) and Abbott (48/46) are similar to the most recent UT/Texas Politics Project approval numbers. We should be getting an update on those soon.
That’s what we have for now. Let me know what you think.
I think politics has become so polarized, so tribal, that the results for Abbott are unlikely to be more than one or two points higher than for Cornyn/Paxton. This is shaping up to be a rough year for Republicans,related to affordability, tariffs, war. Abbott has a ton of money to try to change that. Unclear whether gender helps or hurts Hinojosa in her match up with Abbott. Historically in Harris County, female candidates do a point or two better when matched with males, but there may an issue with machismo of some male voters.