Some Texans who want to give Republican Governor Greg Abbott a fourth term plan to split their ballots, supporting Democrat James Talarico in the U.S. Senate race, according to three statewide polls released this week.
Talarico, a state representative from the Austin area, is doing better in his Senate race against Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton than Democratic state Representative Gina Hinojosa is doing against Abbott. Paxton, in turn, is running behind Abbott's numbers at the top of the Republican ticket.
The divergence hands Democrats their best opening in decades in a state that last elected a Democrat to the Senate in 1988. It also points to a problem particular for Paxton. Among the same voters, Abbott is competitive or slightly ahead at the top of the ticket while Paxton trails.
A Marist poll, released Wednesday, has Talarico leading Paxton 47 percent to 45 percent among likely voters. In the governor's race, those same voters favor Abbott over Hinojosa 49 percent to 45 percent, a six-point shift between the two contests on the same ballot. Marist surveyed 1,196 registered likely voters October 8-11, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.
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Who Are the Talarico-Abbott Voters?
Marist did not publish a breakdown of the Senate survey among Abbott supporters, but by comparing the two races group by group, the poll shows Paxton coming up short of Abbott almost everywhere.
Republicans are where the crossover shows most clearly. Talarico drew 8 percent of likely Republican voters in the Senate race, while Hinojosa drew 5 percent in the governor's race. Paxton had 87 percent of Republicans, compared with Abbott's 91 percent. Republicans were 42 percent of the likely electorate in the poll, so the small slippage explained most of why Talarico's numbers ran ahead of the Democratic numbers for governor.
White women with college degrees moved further. Talarico led Paxton 62 percent to 37 percent with the group, a margin about 9 points wider than Hinojosa's over Abbott. Suburban voters tilted Talarico's way, as well.
Independents behaved differently. Paxton received 30 percent, 6 points below Abbott, and Talarico didn't collect the difference; his 52 percent with independents is close to the 53 percent Hinojosa received in the governor's race. Those voters parked somewhere else. Ten percent of independents were undecided in the Senate race, against 4 percent for governor, while 5 percent backed a third-party candidate.
Non-white voters drifted in a similar way, with Paxton 5 points behind Abbott while Talarico and Hinojosa each drew 52 percent in their races.
Voters who back Abbott but haven't settled on a Senate candidate could end up deciding the race.
Paxton's Image Problem
Paxton's favorability numbers go a long way toward explaining the gap.
Thirty-four percent of likely voters view him favorably and 56 percent unfavorably, a net rating 18 points worse than Abbott's. One in five Republicans saw him in a negative light. With independents, he stood at 22 percent favorable and 69 percent unfavorable.
His worst numbers come from Dallas-Fort Worth, which takes in his political base of Collin County. Three-quarters of likely voters there viewed Paxton unfavorably, and his share of the Senate vote in the region fell 5 points below Abbott's.
Paxton's support also ran soft. About one-third of his voters, 34 percent, said they only somewhat support him, while 84 percent of Talarico voters and 76 percent of Abbott voters called their support strong.
Few of the Republicans drifting from Paxton seemed drawn by Talarico as just 6 percent of likely Republican voters viewed the Democrat favorably.
Paxton was impeached by the Texas House in 2023 and acquitted by the state Senate. After being endorsed by President Donald Trump, he beat Senator John Cornyn for the Republican nomination this year after Cornyn and his allies argued for months that Paxton could put the seat in danger in the November 3 midterm elections.
Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican strategist in Texas, pointed to two forces dragging on the Republican nominee. The national economic and political climate is "weighing heavily on Texas Republicans, especially Ken Paxton," he told Newsweek, and "Paxton's troubles and obstacles along the way in his political career are also weighing him down."
Abbott, meanwhile, has numbers that "have been stronger over the long term," according to Steinhauser.
Voters still expect Paxton to win. Fifty-three percent of likely voters, whatever their own pick, said Paxton will take the seat, while 42 percent said Talarico will.
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Republican Undervote
While polling has been encouraging for Talarico and other Texas Democrats, many political strategists are watching to see whether 2026 will finally be the year the state turns blue. Steinhauser believes that many Republicans will still vote for their party's candidate in the governor's race but leave the Senate race blank.
"There are some Abbott voters that are not necessarily going to vote for Talarico, but they're not going to vote for Paxton, either," Steinhauser said. "So we call that an undervote, and I think that is likely what you're seeing reflected in the polling."
He described how that could look on the ballot.
"There are Republican voters that are going to vote for Abbott, and then they're going to skip the race for Senate, perhaps, and then vote down ballot for Republicans, as well," he said. He sees "some small percentage" backing both Abbott and Talarico, but added: "I think this Republican undervote is a greater concern for Republican strategists."
Steinhauser warned against reading the numbers as a realignment.
"This doesn't necessarily mean that a bunch of Republicans have become Democrats in Texas," he said. "It's more that Republican voters might not be as enthusiastic to vote this year as they have been in the past."
He noted that Democrats turned out in larger numbers than Republicans in the primaries, which he said still worries him. Even so, he believes Republicans can hold the Senate seat.
"I just think it might be closer than we all expected," he said.
What Other Polls Show
ReconMR/Siena surveyed 617 likely voters October 5-8 and had Talarico ahead 48 percent to 44 percent, while Abbott edged Hinojosa 48 percent to 47 percent. Paxton won 87 percent of Republicans in that poll to Talarico's 7 percent. Talarico spent that survey period off the campaign with the flu, he said.
The UT/Texas Politics Project poll, which reached 861 likely voters September 25-October 5, showed less separation. Talarico led 50 percent to 47 percent and Hinojosa led 49 percent to 48 percent, both inside the 3.34-point margin of error. Talarico held a 54 percent to 41 percent edge with Hispanic voters, a group Hinojosa also carried.
Signs of the split were there in August. The Texas Politics Project's poll that month found 91 percent of Democrats behind Talarico and just 79 percent of Republicans committed to Paxton, and it credited Abbott's stronger position to his standing with Republicans and independents.
Texas has entered "the most competitive cycle that we've seen in the state in a long time," Jim Henson, the project's director, told Axios.
The split has also grown over the past month, mostly because the governor's race moved: Abbott recovered and Paxton stayed put.
In September, Marist had Talarico up 6 points among registered voters and Hinojosa up 3. Now Talarico leads by 4 and Abbott by 1. ReconMR's numbers shifted almost the same way: Talarico slipped from plus 6 to plus 4, while the governor's race flipped from a 4-point Hinojosa lead to a 1-point Abbott edge.
No single poll settles the question, however, since the gaps between the two races mostly fall inside each survey's margin of error. Early voting starts in the coming days. The general election is November 3.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Dave Siminoff.