Rep. James Talarico
Democrat James Talarico leads both Republicans vying to face him in the November U.S. Senate contest, according to a new poll released Wednesday.
Talarico led U.S. Sen. John Cornyn 40% to 33% in a potential matchup, and held a 42% to 34% advantage over Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Politics Project survey found. In both cases, 19% of voters said they were still undecided.
The results come as Paxton and Cornyn remain locked in a bitter primary runoff, and the pollsters said Talarico’s lead is likely due, at least partially, to the ongoing GOP battle. No Democrat has won a statewide election in Texas in three decades.
“While the Democratic candidate leading two established Republicans in these match-ups is sure to raise some eyebrows,” they wrote, the results “reveal a Republican electorate still registering the effects of the months-long, bruising, negative campaigning by Paxton and Cornyn, and the GOP divisions the race has exacerbated.”
It is the second poll this week to find Talarico with a lead in the U.S. Senate race, which has drawn national attention as Democrats hope to capitalize on what many expect to be a bruising midterm election for the GOP. A survey released Tuesday by Texas Public Opinion Research, a group run by Democratic strategists, found Talarico with similar leads over both Republicans. The GOP runoff election is May 26.
Beto O’Rourke never led U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in UT’s polling of the 2018 contest, the most recent high-water mark for a Democrat in a statewide race. O’Rourke finished within 3 percentage points of Cruz that year.
Add this to the TPOR poll from this week and two others before it. The full poll data is here and it contains approval data, other races, and various issue items. Some quick notes:
– Greg Abbott leads Gina Hinojosa 44-38 and Dan Patrick leads Vikki Goodwin 35-31; they only polled that matchup, make of it what you will. Republicans led the generic Congressional ballot 43-41 and the generic Legislative ballot 44-40.
– I commented before on how weird it was seeing Paxton and Cornyn at only 41% support in the TPOR polls. There are even smaller numbers here, and much larger “don’t know/other” numbers along with them. That’s more or less the norm for the UT polling outfit, which also powers the Texas Tribune polls. If you click on the link in the story for 2018 Senate poll results, they had Ted Cruz up over Beto by a 41-36 mark. I don’t know what it is about their samples – they survey registered voters – but that’s the history.
– Trump’s overall approval is 45-50, Abbott’s is 46-44, Dan Patrick is 34-36, and Paxton is 33-42. Trump’s approval on the economy is broken out by party, and only 59% of Republicans approve of him on that. That is, in a word, bad.
– In the previous post there was a comment about how Abbott would perform in November relative to Paxton or Cornyn, with the thesis that partisanship would narrow the gap one way or the other. I’ve said before I think part of the reason why Paxton and Cornyn are doing as poorly as they are in these polls is because of the unresolved primary, but Talarico is outperforming other Dems right now as well. That’s partly due to name recognition, I think, but I do think he may draw some one-race crossovers. How big that gap might be, and how consequential it might be, I’m not sure. But I do think there will be a gap between how he does and how other Dems do.