Kalshi Rates Texas Senate Tilt as Coin Flip
as Trump's Hispanic Support Disintegrates
Capitol Inside
May 17, 2026
The popular betting site Kalshi moved the U.S. Senate race in Texas to toss up before the weekend got under way in a separate but related development to a poll that confirmed that President Donald Trump's support among Latino voters had collapsed across the nation.
As Trump's approval ratings hovered in the mid to low 30s without hint of a rebound, a Pew Research survey found that a mere 22 percent of Hispanic voters viewed the president's work in his second term in a positive light. That's a grand total of 44 points lower than Trump's approval marks with Hispanic voters had been when he was elected again in 2024.
This is awful news for Texas Republicans, who redrew the state's congressional map last summer to give the GOP five new seats that Trump had demanded. But Republicans can expect to have a shot at flipping two or three U.S. House seats here at best if Trump's popularity among Latinos fail to skyrocket back to 2024 levels between now and the general election on November 3.
Kalshi left the most prominent U.S. election forecasters behind last week when it ranked the Texas Senate fight as a coin flip along with races for the upper house of Congress in three other states - Iowa, Ohio and Alaska. But the federally-regulated prediction market sees the GOP with a slight edge in all four toss up contests based on its giving Republicans have a 56 percent of keeping the Senate majority with 51 seats.after the election this fall.
Kalshi Politics gave Texas Democrat James Talarico a 48 percent chance for a victory in the battle for the seat that U.S. Senator John Cornyn is fighting to keep this year. That's apparently close enough for a toss up ranking for the race in the Lone Star State. But the Republicans in Texas have more cause for alarm if they dig beyond the surface of the odds.
The projected share of the Texas vote for Talarico is an average of the odds that the prediction site gives the Democrats depending on who the fall foe turns out to be after a Republican runoff election on May 26 that pits Cornyn against Attorney General Ken Paxton in a brawl that's been a mudbath extravaganza.
Kalshi gives Talarico a 39 percent shot at ousting Cornyn in November. But Kalshi gave the Austin state representative a 64 percent chance of seizing the seat for the Democrats if he faces Paxton in the fall instead. And the prediction market that's specialized in sports betting gave the Texas AG a 62 percent chance of victory over Cornyn in overtime election nine days from now.
Therefore - if Kalshi is right about the GOP runoff election and Paxton advances - then the Democrats would expect to enter the summer as the slight favorite in the Senate race in the country's largest red state. Paxton had led the incumbent by almost 5 points on average in a dozen polls on the Senate runoff in the past two months.
Capitol Inside shifted the Texas Senate race to the toss up category a month ago in a sharp break with the most prominent election forecasters at the national level. The Cook Political Report, University of Virgina professor Larry Sabato and the side Inside Elections all have had the Senate contest here rated as likely Republican from the outset.
Capitol Inside has the GOP favored in two of the five congressional seats that Republican leaders and lawmakers targeted for conversions to red during an epic battle over redistricting in two special sessions in 2025. But the ratings here have the Congressional District 35 seat as a coin flip like the U.S. Senate competition has been here for weeks.
State Rep. John Lujan and Carlos De La Cruz are dueling in OT for the GOP nomination in CD 35 after receiving 33 percent and 27 percent of the March 3 primary vote respectively. Maureen Galindo led the pack in CD 35 in the Democratic primary election with 29 percent of the vote when she led runnerup Johnny C. Garcia by 2 points.
more to come ...
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