Dueling polls paint different pictures of Texas Senate race

A new internal poll released by Attorney General Ken Paxton’s U.S. Senate campaign shows the Texas Republican leading Democratic state Rep. James Talarico 48% to 45% among likely voters, the campaign announced this week, even as independent polls continue to show a closer race or a Talarico advantage.

Nick Maddux, Paxton’s senior campaign advisor, said the numbers reflect voters souring on Talarico as they learn more about his record. 

“Texans are learning more about James Talarico’s radical record every day, and undecided voters continue to break toward General Paxton,” Maddux said. 

In Maddux’s view, Talarico’s record is why Paxton is “leading and will win this race no matter how much the mainstream media attempts to depress the Republican base with misleading public polls designed to usher in a nonexistent blue wave in Texas.”

The survey, conducted by Pulse Decision Science for the Paxton campaign, found Paxton’s ballot share has climbed four points since the March primary, while the undecided share has fallen from 11% in a May internal survey to 4% today. Pulse Decision Science polled 800 likely Texas voters by live telephone interview from Sept. 24-27, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points, using a stratified random sample of the state’s voter file.

The survey is an internal poll commissioned by Paxton’s own campaign, and its results diverge from most publicly released polling in the race. The RealClearPolitics average of nine public polls shows Talarico leading by 2.9 percentage points, 47.6% to 44.7%, as of this week, with a Big Data Poll finding that around 12% of likely voters remain undecided. 

Paxton, a three-term state attorney general, defeated incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the Republican primary after President Donald Trump endorsed his campaign, calling Paxton “one of the best state attorneys general in the entire country” who would “go down as one of the best ever.” Talarico, a state representative and seminary student, defeated U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the Democratic primary.

Zeale News has previously reported on Talarico’s shifting positions on transgender issues during the campaign. He recently said he now supports a national ban on transgender surgery for minors and walked back a 2021 claim that “modern science” recognizes more than two sexes, saying, “There are two,” with rare genetic exceptions. 

Kelsey Reinhardt, president and CEO of CatholicVote, urged voters to take a clear-eyed view of gender ideology. 

“This is no longer an obscure conservative objection that progressive politicians can dismiss as ignorance or bigotry,” she said, as Zeale News reported. “The public has watched the consequences of these policies, and the political price has become obvious.”

Reinhardt said politicians who previously supported such policies should be pressed to explain precisely which positions they have changed and what legislation they would now support, instead of being permitted “simply to walk away” by declaring “that they ‘missed the mark.’”