Paxton Sounds Alarm on Latest Odds Drop
after Senate and Gov Race Shift Toward D's
Texas General Election Polls
General Election Rankings
Capitol Inside
August 20, 2026
Texas Republican Ken Paxton - seeking to turn bad news into a campaign asset - moved swiftly on Thursday to spread the word that his odds had gone down again in a bid for the U.S. Senate in a sign that he's decided that the time had come to run like he's losing to Democrat James Talarico.
Paxton repost a message from the Cook Political Report an hour after it announced that it had shifted the Texas Senate race from leans Republican to the toss up column in its projections for the general election on November 3.
The Cook report - one of the nation's most seasoned and respected forecasters of major political contests in the U.S. - also moved the bout that pits Texas Governor Greg Abbott against Democrat Gina Hinojosa from solid Republican to likely GOP in the revised outlook for the 2026 midterm vote. The Texas Senate race had been ranked for months as likely Republican in the CPR projections before a shift to leans R in the first part of the summer.
But the Cook report hadn't viewed Abbott's re-election race as competitive by the analysts at the Cook report until the shuffling to the likely Republican category today. Another prominent political analyst - Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia - still had the Texas governor's race and the Senate fight here rated safe Republican and leans GOP respectively on Thursday in his projections for the fall. That could change any day.
The fight between Abbott and Hinojosa appears much closer in the polling - with the battle for governor here inside the margin of error in six of the eight most recent surveys on the race. Capitol Inside has the governor's race on the list of races that lean Republican while the Senate contest has been ranked leans Democrat here for the past week.
Texas Republicans had been in denial for months about the accuracy of polls that showed Talarico pull ahead of Paxton two months ago and hold a slim lead throughout July. Talarico led Paxton by nearly 3 points on average in eight polls that were taken on the Texas Senate race during the second half of July and August. Paxton had pulled even fin the polling or several weeks after a primary runoff victory over longtime incumbent John Cornyn in late May. But Paxton fell behind again after a vacation in Europe while Americans were celebrating the Fourth of July back in the states.
Paxton has been no match for Talarico in the fundraising arena where the Republican had taken $9 million from donors by the end of July compared to the Democrat's jaw-dropping $69 million in a shorter period of time with a record $30 million in the second quarter alone. Paxton is banking on President Donald Trump to be his salvation with trips to Houston next week for a high-dollar fundraiser and Dallas in September for a first-ever national midterm convention that has the Texas attorney general as its top supporting character.
Paxton made an appeal for fundraising help on Fox News earlier this month in a move that was widely viewed as a sign of some perceived as desperation. With the clock quickly becoming an enemy, Paxton saw the Cook report downgrading as an opportunity he could not afford to miss.
"BREAKING: Cook Political Report has moved our state to a “toss-up” we need your help," Paxton said in a post on X with a ring of urgency.
Paxton's probability of winning actually got a bump up this week on the prediction platform Kalshi - which had him ranked as a 51 percent favorite on Tuesday and Wednesday before dropping him to 50 percent with the Democrat. Paxton's odds on Kalshi had been as high as 58 percent a month ago before Talarico caught up and moved ahead as high as 52 percent there last week. Talarico's probability of prevailing has been steady on the competitor site Polymarket at 52 percent for a week after trailing there as well.
But Abbott has barely acknowledged Hinojosa's existence as an obstacle this year - focusing his wrath exclusively on Talarico as the Democrat at the top of the ticket in a fight with a baggage-laden GOP foe with money-raising woes and the potential to hurt the GOP's candidates in competitive contests up and down the ballot. Abbott's ignoring of the Democratic challenger in his own race could be a highly risky wager based on the fact that the Texas governor's race has been inside the margins of error in a half-dozen recent polls.
Abbott has led Hinojosa, a state representative from Austin, by an average of 3 points in eight surveys on the contest here in July and August. But campaign cash hasn't been an issue for a governor who'd raised $71 million in 18 months before ending June with $67 million in cash on hand. Hinojosa had $3 million in the campaign bank on June 30 after raising nearly $9 million since she entered the fight.
The incumbent's monstrous advantage in the money department could be rendered all but irrelevant, however, in the event of a wave that hits the Republicans here harder in November than a blue monsoon in Trump's first midterm election in 2018.
more to come ...
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