Talarico leads Paxton by 2 points in tightening Texas Senate race: Survey

Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D) is leading state Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) by just 2 points among likely voters, according to a new Fox News poll .

The Democrat’s lead is within the poll’s 3-point margin of error and shows a tight race in the Lone Star State. Among likely voters polled, 51 percent said they support Talarico while 49 percent sided with Paxton.

The Texas Senate race is important to both parties’ efforts to control the upper chamber, with Democrats attempting to win a state-wide race in Texas for the first time in decades. The poll shows 49 percent of likely voters said they would prefer a Democratic-controlled Senate, while 50 percent favored Republicans.

“Democrats in Texas will walk across broken glass to vote against [President] Trump, so the question is whether the average Republican will vote in an election without Trump and where the Senate race features a controversial GOP candidate,” pollster Daron Shaw said in the poll’s online release.

Talarico has garnered solid support from Black voters at 79 percent, moderate voters at 65 percent and Hispanic voters at 64 percent. Paxton’s key demographic support comes from White evangelical Christians, 74 percent, white men without a college degree at 65 percent, rural voters at 57 percent and voters over the age of 65 at 55 percent.

There’s an even wider gap in likely voters’ favorability ratings of the two candidates, with Talarico earning an 8-point net positive rating while Paxton comes in at 18 points underwater.

The poll found Republicans are more than six times more likely to hold an unfavorable view of Paxton than Democrats do of Talarico.

While the race is narrow among likely voters, Talarico holds a wider 7-point lead — outside the margin of error — among the larger pool of registered voters. The poll also found more MAGA Republicans are extremely interested in the election compared with non-MAGA Republicans, while voters identified with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are nearly equally as likely to be interested in the midterms as their non-DSA counterparts.

Seventy percent of likely voters reported that the cost of living will be important to their Senate vote, with Talarico leading Paxton by 32 points among those who said they are falling behind economically. Respondents who said they are getting ahead economically support Paxton by a 48-point advantage, and those who said they are holding steady economically backed Paxton by 3 points.

A majority of likely voters said Talarico was too liberal, 53 percent, and that Paxton was too close to Trump, 51 percent. Nearly half of respondents said Trump will be extremely important to their vote.

Fox News also polled the race for Texas governor between incumbent Greg Abbott (R) and state Rep. Gina Hinojosa (D). Abbott leads Hinojosa 52 percent to 47 percent with a 52 percent approval rating for the sitting governor. The poll found 10 percent of Talarico supporters are backing Abbott for reelection.

“Ironically, Paxton may owe his political life to Abbott, who is doing most of the get-out-the-vote work for the Republicans,” Shaw said.

The poll surveyed 1,203 randomly selected registered voters fielded through phone-call interviews or online surveys sent by text message Sept. 24-28. The poll surveyed likely voters and registered voters with margins of error of 3 points and 2.5 points, respectively.