Texas Senate Race Shuffled to Leans Dem
after Endorsement Projection on the Mark
U.S. Senate General Election Polls
Capitol Inside
May 19, 2026
Capitol Inside shifted the U.S. Senate race in Texas to leans Democrat on Tuesday after President Donald Trump threw his massive muscle behind challenger Ken Paxton a week before a GOP runoff election after teasing an endorsement for incumbent John Cornyn off and on for the past three months.
The prediction markets Kalshi and Polymarket both vaulted Democrat James Talarico into the favorite's role in the Texas Senate fight in the immediate wake of the endorsement that the president dished out to Paxton in a move that appeared to kill Cornyn's hopes for a win in overtime a week from now.
The veteran Texas solon responded to the news by cancelling the campaign events that he'd scheduled for Wednesday so he could return to Washington D.C. for votes on funding for ICE and the Border Patrol in a Senate committee and on the chamber floor. But Cornyn suggested he would persevere with the re-election campaign despite Trump's initial claim that he expected the loser in the Texas Senate endorsement scramble to drop out of the race without delay after he announced his choice for the runoff.
"We're not giving up the fight," Cornyn said. "I know who gets to choose our senators, and it's the people of Texas. And there's no substitute for that."
Cornyn was mocked and berated on social media throughout the day for the extremes to which he'd gone in an attempt to impress the president in a quest for an endorsement that he believed he desperately needed to overcome the threat the Texas AG posed as a darling with MAGA loyalists on the far right.
Trump gave the impression that he was poised to endorse the 24-year Senate veteran when he promised to intervene in the fight here initially on the day after the March 3 primary election. When the president revealed late this morning that he'd been revealing his pick for the Texas race at noon, Paxton's odds on the federally-regulated site Kalshi plunged from an all-time high of 66 percent into single digits amid a flurry of speculation that Cornyn would be the eventual beneficiary.
Paxton's odds skyrocketed beyond 90 percent after Trump issued his "complete and total endorsement" to the attorney general despite Senate Republican leaders' fears that Talarico will emerge victorious in the general election as a consequence of immense baggage that the state's top lawyer brings to the contest.
But the eleventh-hour endorsement that Paxton received from Trump on the second day of early voting for the runoff sent a message to Republicans that he isn't worried about the threat of losing the Texas Senate seat with the Texas AG as the nominee. The candidate who Trump is backing was impeached by members of his own party amid allegations of corruption and adultery in connection with an alleged mistress and a campaign donor. The president's choice for the Texas endorsement has been charged in the past with felony securities fraud and investigated by the FBI for bribery in a case that was initiated by former staff members including several who won a $6.6 million judgment in a whistleblowers lawsuit.
Paxton was acquitted by the Texas Senate in September 2023 after 60 House Republicans voted to impeach him after a secret committee investigation near the end of the regular session that year. The attorney general's wife - GOP State Senator Angela Paxton of McKinney - filed for divorce on "biblical" grounds the following year as rumors about romantic interests swirled from the statehouse to their home base in Collin County.
Trump suggested that he believed that Paxton was the superior candidate despite the checkered and controversial past and warnings on the loss of the Texas seat to Talarico and the Democrats if Cornyn isn't on the ballot in the fall. The president said in a Truth Social post that Cornyn hadn't always been there for him when times were tough and that he'd waited too long before getting behind his campaign in 2024.
When Trump vowed immediately after the primary vote to pick the candidate to carry the torch for the Republicans in the Senate race this fall, Capitol Inside predicted that the president would dangle the endorsement for several months before awarding it to Paxton in the final stretch of the runoff if he didn't stay on the fence. The theory here was that Trump would only back Cornyn for the Texas seat if he'd felt certain he would beat Paxton in overtime. But Paxton has led Cornyn by nearly 5 points on average in polling on the runoff - and he appears to be a lock for the nomination now.
Capitol Inside moved the Texas Senate race to the toss up category last month based on the projection of an eventual Trump endorsement for Paxton if he entered the ring. Some Republicans will argue that Beto O'Rourke had been up on U.S. Senator Ted Cruz in polling on the fight at the top of the Texas ticket in 2018. But that isn't true. Cruz led O'Rourke in all but one of several dozens polls on the Senate fight here that year.
Cruz was up by almost 7 points on average in the polling on the race - and he won by less than 3 point in the general election when Democrats flipped a dozen Texas House seats, two state senator districts and two seats in Congress in a down-ballot disaster for the GOP. .
Polls have found Talarico leading both of his potential GOP foes - with slightly larger advantages over Paxton in hypothetical pairing. A significant number of Cornyn voters have said they would either vote for the Democrat in the Texas Senate or skip the contest entirely if Paxton is the nominee for the Republicans.
Cornyn pulled the plug on the campaign events after a meeting in Lubbock with local leaders and lawmakers including GOP State Rep. Carl Tepper and State Senator Charles Perry.
"I am cancelling my campaign events for tomorrow and heading back to D.C. tonight," the senator said. "As a member of @BudgetGOP and on behalf of the nearly 32 million Texans that I am honored to represent, I will vote tomorrow AM to end the absurd and irresponsible Democratic defunding of @ICEgov and@CBP and fund their important work first in committee and then on the Senate floor."
more to come ...
|
|
DATE |
SAMPLE |
CORNYN |
TALARCIO |
LEADER |
|
4/22-5/06 |
1,223 LV |
45% |
44% |
Cornyn +1 |
|
4/10-20 |
1,200 RV |
33% |
40% |
Talarico +7 |
|
4/17-20 |
1,018 LV |
41% |
44% |
Talarico +3 |
|
3/12-17 |
900 LV |
41% |
43% |
Talarico +2 |
|
3/04-05 |
576 RV |
43% |
44% |
Talarico +1 |
Average |
|
|
|
|
Talarico +3 |
POLL |
DATE |
SAMPLE |
PAXTON |
TALARCIO |
LEADER |
|
4/22-5/06 |
1,223 LV |
45% |
45% |
Even |
|
4/10-20 |
1,200 RV |
34% |
42% |
Talarico +8 |
|
4/17-20 |
1,018 LV |
41% |
46% |
Talarico +5 |
|
3/12-17 |
900 LV |
43% |
44% |
Talarico +1 |
|
3/04-05 |
576 RV |
45% |
47% |
Talarico +2 |
Average |
|
|
|
|
Talarico +4 |
|
| 
