With exactly two weeks to go before the November 3 midterm elections, the Texas Senate race has tightened into a genuine dead heat, with two new polls showing Democrat James Talarico essentially tied with Republican Ken Paxton — the closest a Democrat has come to flipping a Texas Senate seat in nearly four decades.
A CBS News/YouGov survey of 1,492 registered Texas voters, conducted October 8–16, puts Talarico at 51 percent and Paxton at 49 percent — well inside the poll’s plus-or-minus 3.5-point margin of error. A separate University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs poll of 2,000 likely voters, conducted October 10–14 and released Sunday night, tells the same story: Talarico 48, Paxton 46, with the Democrat’s two-point edge inside the 2.19-point margin of error.
The numbers land as early voting gets underway across Texas and both campaigns pour national money and celebrity firepower into the final fortnight. For Democrats, the Texas Senate race is now the clearest path to the four-seat net gain they need to retake the chamber from its current 53–47 Republican majority — and for Republicans, it is a five-alarm fire in a state Donald Trump carried by 14 points just two years ago.
- The CBS Poll: Talarico 51, Paxton 49
- The Houston Poll Confirms the Trend
- Prediction Markets Put Talarico Ahead
- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Rides to Paxton’s Rescue
- Star Power for Talarico: ‘Clear Eyes, Full Hearts’
- RFK Jr. Campaigns for Paxton as Trump Blames Gas Prices
- The $158 Million Money Flood
- Paxton’s Favorability Problem
- Early Voting Is Underway
- Extra Knowledge: The 2018 Beto Blueprint (and Why It Failed)
- Extra Knowledge: Three Ways Pollsters Could Still Be Wrong
- What’s Next
- Additional Details
The CBS Poll: Talarico 51, Paxton 49 in the Texas Senate Race
The CBS News/YouGov findings, released as part of the network’s midterm coverage, frame the Texas Senate race as one of the closest contests in the country. Among likely voters, Talarico’s two-point advantage is statistically meaningless — pollsters caution that a race within the margin of error is effectively a dead heat, meaning the contest could turn on turnout and late-deciding voters in the final fortnight.
CBS News reports that Paxton benefits from the state’s long-standing Republican advantage, while Talarico is helped by stronger Democratic enthusiasm and voters’ concerns about everyday costs — the same cost-of-living pressures that have dragged down the president’s approval ratings nationally. That combination has left both campaigns with a narrow path to victory and almost no room for error.
The poll result arrives at a moment of maximum leverage: early voting has begun, both candidates are blanketing the state, and outside money is pouring in at record levels. As StateLineDaily’s midterm predictions analysis noted, forecasters already agree Democrats are heavily favored to take the House — but the Senate has been too close to call. A Texas flip would change that math overnight.
The Houston Poll Confirms the Trend
One poll can be an outlier. Two, taken days apart by different pollsters with different methods, start to look like a trend. The University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs surveyed 2,000 likely voters — people screened as the most likely to actually cast a ballot — from October 10 to 14, and found Talarico at 48 percent, Paxton at 46 percent, Libertarian Ted Brown at 3 percent, and 3 percent unsure.
Notably, the Houston survey was released Sunday night, one day before polls opened for early voting in Texas — a deliberate bit of timing that put the race’s competitiveness on every voter’s radar just as ballots started being cast. In a state that has not handed a Senate seat to a Democrat since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988, a Democrat leading — however narrowly — in back-to-back polls is genuinely historic.
The Houston poll also underscores the stakes of the Libertarian vote: with Brown at 3 percent and another 3 percent undecided, the combined 6 percent outside the two major candidates is larger than either candidate’s margin. Whichever campaign wins the late deciders could win Texas.
Prediction Markets Put Talarico Ahead
The betting markets are even more bullish on the Democrat. Kalshi’s Texas Senate market now gives Talarico a 63 percent chance of winning to Paxton’s 37 percent — a far wider gap than the polls imply. Decision Desk HQ, a partner of The Hill, has designated the contest a coin flip that narrowly favors Democrats, giving Talarico a 54 percent probability of flipping the seat.
Markets are not polls, and bettors can be wrong — but the direction of the money matters because it reflects where professional forecasters think the race is heading. A polling average compiled by FiftyPlusOne across 12 surveys puts Talarico’s favorability 6.6 points ahead of Paxton’s, the kind of underlying metric that tends to move late money and campaign strategy alike.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce Rides to Paxton’s Rescue
Sensing danger, the business establishment is rallying to Paxton. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce formally endorsed the Texas attorney general, with executive vice president and chief policy officer Neil Bradley declaring: “The choice is clear in Texas. Attorney General Ken Paxton has been a defender of free enterprise and the pro-growth policies that empower American businesses to thrive.”
Bradley praised Paxton for pushing back “against federal overreach,” helping “preserve a low-tax environment,” and defending “the energy sector from burdensome mandates” — and added that “Paxton understands that true economic prosperity relies on a fair and predictable justice system.”
The endorsement is a notable intervention: the Chamber is the country’s most powerful business lobby, and its backing brings donor networks and advertising muscle at the exact moment Paxton needs to close a favorability gap. It also signals that corporate America still sees the Texas Senate race as winnable for the GOP establishment — despite the polls.
Star Power for Talarico: ‘Clear Eyes, Full Hearts’
If Paxton has the Chamber, Talarico has Hollywood — or at least, the most Texas-flavored corner of it. On Sunday, the Democrat launched his closing “Clear Eyes, Full Hearts Tour” in Plano, borrowing the famous motto from Friday Night Lights, the beloved drama about a Texas high school football team. The statewide tour runs through November 2, the day before Election Day.
A campaign video released Sunday shows Talarico crisscrossing the state, intercut with clips from the series. Three of the show’s stars narrate it: Connie Britton, Adrianne Palicki, and Jesse Plemons, urging Texans to vote before closing with the show’s signature line: “Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.” Fans noticed one notable absence: Kyle Chandler, who played Coach Eric Taylor and lives in Dripping Springs, Texas.
“Texans are tired of being divided into teams — red versus blue, left versus right, rural versus urban,” Talarico said in announcing the tour. “That’s why we’re traveling across the state to unite working people onto one team.”
The celebrity cavalry doesn’t stop there. Country trio The Chicks, formed in Dallas, brought Talarico onstage at a recent San Antonio concert, where lead singer Natalie Maines introduced him as “a man with a plan” — and joked about the $1,000 pen Paxton was filmed pocketing, a story Talarico’s campaign has turned into attack ads and merchandise. Earlier this month, the band posed in shirts reading “I’m a Talafreako,” gleefully embracing a nickname Paxton coined to mock his opponent. Talarico returned the love, calling the band “the best of country music, the best of Texas, and the best of us.”
RFK Jr. Campaigns for Paxton as Trump Blames Gas Prices
Paxton’s camp is countering with its own heavy hitters. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has hit the campaign trail for the Republican — an unusual deployment of a Cabinet secretary for a Senate race, and a sign of how seriously the White House takes the threat.
President Trump himself has weighed in, dismissing suggestions that Republicans face a difficult year. Asked about the party’s prospects as he campaigned in Kansas, Trump told reporters that “at the end of the day, if there’s any Republican losses, it’s going to be because of gas prices” — pinning the party’s fate on the same fuel-cost backlash that has fueled his sagging approval numbers.
The remark is telling: internal GOP anxiety about the Texas Senate race is no longer deniable, and the White House’s own messaging now concedes that the map has shifted. It also hands Talarico a clean closing argument — that even the president sees everyday costs, not culture wars, deciding this election.
The $158 Million Money Flood
Behind the celebrity tours sits an ocean of cash. Elon Musk has donated $158 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, which passed that amount to Texas PAC, an outside group supporting Paxton — a staggering sum for a single Senate race. Read StateLineDaily’s full account of Musk’s $276 million GOP rescue mission for the broader spending picture.
NPR’s Stephen Fowler reports that the 2026 midterms are set to become the most expensive elections on record, with more than $15 billion raised to influence the outcome and control of Congress. Democratic nominees in House and Senate races are raking in extraordinary sums even though the Democratic Party itself remains unpopular — and the Texas Senate race is absorbing an outsized share of it.
The money race mirrors the polling: national Republicans are spending like a party defending a firewall, while Democrats are spending like a party that smells blood. In Texas media markets, where a week of statewide television can cost seven figures, the cash advantage in the final two weeks could decide who defines whom.
Paxton’s Favorability Problem
Beneath the horse-race numbers lies Paxton’s deeper problem: voters don’t like him. The FiftyPlusOne polling average of 12 surveys gives Paxton a net favorability rating of minus 14 percent — 51.7 percent of Texans view him unfavorably against just 37.5 percent favorably, the worst favorability rating of any Republican Senate nominee tracked. Talarico, by contrast, sits at 46.6 percent positive and 40.0 percent negative.
The baggage is well documented. The Republican-controlled Texas House impeached Paxton in 2023 on charges including bribery and abuse of office; the Texas Senate acquitted him. Read StateLineDaily’s full timeline of the Dubai fugitive revelations surrounding the Texas attorney general for the latest chapter.
In audio shared by The New York Times, Paxton himself recently conceded damage, contending that his appearance at the GOP’s midterm convention “dropped our numbers.” When a candidate admits his own party’s events are hurting him, the favorability crisis is not a media narrative — it’s the campaign’s internal reality.
Talarico’s profile is the mirror image: a state representative from Austin, a former public school teacher, and a Presbyterian seminarian running as a candidate who can win voters from both parties. He beat U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the March Democratic primary; Paxton won the GOP nomination in May by knocking out four-term Sen. John Cornyn with Trump’s endorsement.
Early Voting Is Underway in the Texas Senate Race
The Houston poll’s Sunday-night release was timed for maximum impact: Texas early voting opened Monday, meaning the dead-heat numbers are fresh in voters’ minds as the first ballots are cast. In a race this close, the early-vote margin could set the tone for everything that follows — and both campaigns are treating the in-person early vote as the true battleground.
The Cook Political Report shifted the race from Republican-leaning to a pure “toss-up” back in August, and nothing since has clarified it. With 3 percent of Houston poll respondents parked with Libertarian Ted Brown and another 3 percent undecided, the persuadable universe is bigger than the gap between the frontrunners. Expect both campaigns to spend the final two weeks hunting those voters block by block — Talarico’s 21-city tour is built for exactly that.
One more number to watch: turnout. Texas midterm turnout has historically lagged presidential years, but competitive top-of-ticket races change the equation. If early-voting totals in the big urban counties — Harris, Dallas, Tarrant, Bexar, Travis — surge past 2022 levels, that is the Democrat’s path. If rural early voting holds its own, Paxton’s structural advantage survives.
Extra Knowledge: The 2018 Beto Blueprint (and Why It Failed)
This is not the first time Texas Democrats have dreamed of a Senate upset. In 2018, Beto O’Rourke came within 2.6 points of beating Ted Cruz — 50.9 to 48.3 percent — the closest a Texas Democrat had come to the Senate in decades. O’Rourke raised an astonishing $80 million, drew national celebrity attention, and turned out young voters at unprecedented rates. He still lost.
Why? Political scientists who studied 2018 point to three factors Talarico’s team has clearly internalized. First, O’Rourke’s money came overwhelmingly from out of state, which let Cruz paint him as a national liberal import. Talarico is running a deliberately Texan cultural campaign — Friday Night Lights, The Chicks, a seminarian’s biography — that is harder to caricature as coastal.
Second, O’Rourke faced a disciplined incumbent in Cruz who had the full weight of the Texas GOP machine. Paxton, by contrast, is a historically unpopular nominee carrying impeachment baggage and a minus-14 favorability rating; the Texas Republican establishment that once rallied around Cruz is openly split over Paxton, with even the candidate admitting his own convention appearance hurt him.
Third — and this is the number Talarico’s strategists surely have taped to the wall — the 2018 midterms were a blue wave nationally, and Texas still didn’t flip. But 2026 is different in one crucial respect: the national environment is now defined by the incumbent party’s weakness. Trump’s approval sits at record lows, voters blame the White House for everyday costs, and the president himself is preemptively blaming gas prices for potential losses. A blue ripple that couldn’t flip Texas in 2018 could become a red-state crack in 2026.
Extra Knowledge: Three Ways Pollsters Could Still Be Wrong
Before anyone engraves Talarico’s name on the office door, a note of caution: Texas polling has a history of humbling the confident. Here are three ways the current numbers could mislead.
1. The “likely voter” screen may miss the surge. Both the CBS and Houston polls screen for likely voters using past voting history — the standard, defensible method. But the most competitive Texas races have drawn in surge voters with thin or no voting records: first-time young voters, newly registered suburban women, Latino voters who sat out 2022. Screens built on 2022 turnout patterns systematically undercount these groups. If the surge is real, the polls may be understating the Democrat. If it’s a mirage, they may be overstating him.
2. Texas Republicans have outperformed their polls before. In 2020 and 2022, several Texas polls underestimated GOP support by 2–4 points — the familiar “shy” or hard-to-reach Republican voter problem, compounded by lower response rates among rural conservatives. A 51–49 Talarico lead within a 3.5-point margin of error is, statistically, a coin flip that a 3-point polling miss would hand to Paxton.
3. The Libertarian factor cuts both ways. Ted Brown’s 3 percent plus 3 percent undecided is a larger pool than the margin. Conventional wisdom says Libertarians draw more from Republicans — but in a race where the Republican is historically unpopular, anti-Paxton conservatives may park with Brown rather than cross to a Democrat. Late deciders also tend to break against the party in power when the national mood is sour — and the national mood, by every measure, is sour on the incumbent party.
The honest summary: the Texas Senate race is a genuine toss-up, the polls agree on that much, and the only poll that matters opens early in Texas right now.
What’s Next for the Texas Senate Race?
Q: When do Texans vote?
A: Early voting is underway now. Talarico’s closing tour runs through November 2, and Election Day is Tuesday, November 3, 2026.
Q: What would a Talarico win mean for Senate control?
A: Democrats need a net gain of four seats to flip the 53–47 chamber. Texas would be the biggest single prize on the map — and combined with other competitive races, it could put the majority in play even if Democrats fall short elsewhere.
Q: Will Trump campaign in Texas for Paxton?
A: Trump endorsed Paxton in the primary and is running a 32-day rally blitz through the midterms, but no Texas stop has been announced. His comment blaming potential losses on gas prices suggests the White House sees the race as an uphill fight it can’t fully control.
Q: How much money is left to spend?
A: With Musk’s $158 million flowing through the Senate Leadership Fund to Texas PAC and Democratic small donors surging nationally, expect the final two weeks to be among the most expensive in Senate history. Watch the Texas media markets — whoever dominates the airwaves in Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio likely dominates the race.
Q: Could the polls be wrong?
A: Yes — in either direction. Texas polling has underestimated Republicans before, and likely-voter screens can miss surge turnout. Treat 51–49 as what it is: a dead heat with everything still to play for.
Additional Details
Description: The Texas Senate race is a dead heat two weeks before the 2026 midterms: CBS News/YouGov has James Talarico at 51% and Ken Paxton at 49%, the University of Houston shows Talarico 48-46, and prediction markets favor the Democrat. Early voting is underway as the U.S. Chamber endorses Paxton, Friday Night Lights stars and The Chicks rally to Talarico, RFK Jr. campaigns for Paxton, and $158 million in Musk money floods the race.
Category: Politics | Tags: Texas Senate race, Ken Paxton, James Talarico, Texas midterm elections, 2026 midterms, CBS News poll, early voting Texas, US Chamber of Commerce, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Texas Senate poll