This is a slightly weird one.
Rep. James Talarico
Texas Public Opinion Research (TPOR) today released a new poll of likely Texas general election voters, surveying their attitudes on the 2026 races for U.S. Senate, Governor, and Attorney General.
The survey of 1,670 likely voters was conducted from May 27 to May 28, 2026, and has a margin of error of ±2.8 percentage points. The full topline is available here, and crosstabs are available upon request.
[…]
James Talarico (47%) leads Ken Paxton (44%) by 3 points in the race for U.S. Senate. Seven percent of voters remain undecided. Among those undecided voters pushed to choose today, 19% lean toward Paxton and 17% toward Talarico with 13% leaning toward Libertarian Ted Brown and 50% still not sure.
Almost a third of Cornyn runoff voters say that they would vote for Talarico over Paxton in November. Among voters who supported John Cornyn in the Republican Senate runoff, only 44% say that they now plan to vote for Ken Paxton in the general election. 30% say they would vote for Talarico and 23% are either undecided or would not vote in the race.
Black voters opt for Talarico, white and Latino voters are split. Talarico leads Paxton with Black voters by a 38-point margin (64% to 26%). When it comes to Latino voters however, the race is currently within the margin of error—42% say they would support Talarico, while 46% say they would support Paxton. 10% of Latino voters are still undecided. Among white voters, the race is a dead heat. 46% say they plan to vote for Paxton compared to 45% for Talarico.
Moderate voters in Texas break decisively for Talarico. Talarico leads Paxton among voters who identify as moderate by a 57-point margin (72% to 15%). Among voters who identify as “somewhat conservative” 66% intend to vote for Paxton while 18% plan to vote for Talarico. When asked which candidate is closer to their own political views, voters pick Talarico 43% to 41%. Talarico leads on this measure with moderates (64% to 13%) and independents (57% to 19%), and pulls 11% of somewhat conservative voters. 24% of voters describe Talarico as a “moderate” while 75% of voters view Paxton as very or somewhat conservative.
Talarico leads Paxton by 43 points with independents. Among independent voters in Texas, Talarico leads Paxton 64% to 21% with 11% undecided.
Affordability and cost of living ranks as the top issue voters want elected officials to prioritize, and they trust Talarico to help. With 23% of voters citing it as their first priority, more than double any other issue, affordability is the defining concern in the state. Voters say Talarico better understands the economic challenges facing working Texans than Paxton (45% to 40%), and that he will do more to lower costs and improve the financial situation of everyday Texans than Paxton (44% to 40%).
The educational divide is one of the sharpest splits in the race. Talarico leads college-educated voters by 30 points while Paxton holds a 21-point advantage among non-college voters in Texas.
Paxton is the second most unpopular major political figure tested… after John Cornyn. Paxton’s net favorability stands at -19 (38% favorable, 57% unfavorable). He trails Donald Trump (-3 net), Greg Abbott (-6 net), and even a generic “Republican candidate running for office” (+6 net) by wide margins. Talarico holds the second highest net favorability rating of all figures tested at net +7 (47% favorable, 40% unfavorable). Notably, Gina Hinojosa leads all figures tested at +16 net favorability, though 38% of voters remain unfamiliar with her.
The poll also finds Greg Abbott leading Gina Hinojosa 46-41, and Mayes Middleton leading Nathan Johnson for AG by 44-39. I appreciate the inclusion of other statewide races and hope other polls do that going forward. The insights highlighted above are mostly about the Talarico-Paxton matchup, with the exception of noting that Abbott leads Hinojosa among Latinos by 2, and Hinojosa leads Abbott among Black voters by 32.
The numbers among the different racial groups are hard to understand. The finding that Paxton and Abbott are leading among Latino voters flies in the face of other polls and pretty much everything we know about the state of the electorate today. Black voters going nearly thirty percent for a Republican candidate would be a five-alarm fire nationwide for Democrats – we would be talking about a massive red wave this November if that were a true reflection of how things are. I assume this is a small sample matter, perhaps for both subsamples but surely for the Black subsample, and we are highly unlikely to see anything like it in other polls.
By the same token, for white voters to support Dems at the same level as Republicans would be a massive catastrophe for the GOP, and would also be in stark contrast with national polling. In my writeup of the previous TPOR poll, I talked about how Talarico trailing by 12-15 points among white voters was already an improvement worth noting. (Note how Talarico was leading by over 50 points among Black voters against both Paxton and Cornyn in that poll, too.) Democrats are doing better among white voters these days in part because of gains among college-educated voters and in part because of overall Trump revulsion, but an even split is a lot more than I’d expect. I have to wonder what the Governor and AG results would look like if the crosstabs were less wonky.
It’s wild to end up with a result that’s in line with others when the subsamples are that out of whack, but over the course of many years and however many dozens of polls, I’ve seen it before. As we say, it’s one data point and we try to see the bigger picture where we can. This is the first poll to be done entirely after May 26, and I expect there to be more of those rolling in. I’ll be looking for the numbers among Cornyn primary voters, among other things, to get a sense of the direction we’re going. At some point we’ll see if all of the unhinged ranting about Talarico’s gender and sexuality and girlfriend and diet preferences take a toll or are seen as weird and a desperate attempt to avoid talking about issues, not to mention Paxton’s many sins. I’m sure we’ll have plenty more polls to talk about.