Poll Finds Senate Race as Potential Thriller
while GOP Leads Other Statewide Contests
Texas General Election Polls
Capitol Inside
June 23, 2026
The University of Texas gave Democrats a glimpse of their standing with voters in the countdown to their state party convention in a poll that it unveiled on Tuesday with Ken Paxton and James Talarico running neck-and-neck in the U.S. Senate race and President Donald Trump more unpopular than ever here.
The Texas Politics Project survey found the Republican attorney general up by a single point on the Democratic state representative in the competition to replace John Cornyn in the wake of his ousting in a primary runoff election late last month. Paxton had support from 43 percent of 1,200 registered Texas voters in a statistical tie with Talarico inside the poll's adjusted margin of error of 3.47 percent.
Conducted by YouGov over a weeklong period ending June 12, the UT poll showed Governor Greg Abbott leading Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa by 7 points with 47 percent support from the voters in the sample.
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick had a 7-point advantage over Democrat Vikki Goodwin in the UT survey while Republicans Mayes Middleton and Don Huffines led Democrats Nathan Johnson and Sarah Eckhardt by 5 points and 6 points respectively in races for attorney general and state comptroller.
The poll found Talarico with less support from Cornyn Republicans than he'd had in three other surveys that have been conducted since Paxton unseated the senator with 64 percent of the vote in a bitter primary runoff election in May after scoring an endorsement from Trump a week before the vote. The new UT survey found that 84 percent of the Republicans were backing Paxton while only 5 percent of the GOP voters in the sample favored Talarico. A poll that was released on Monday by the arch-conservative Red Eagle Politics found that one of every Cornyn voters in the first election supported Talarico for the Senate seat now.
The poll showed the statewide races that it gauged shaping up to be closer than they'd been in 2022 when Abbott, Patrick and Paxton beat Democrats by 10 points on average in re-election races. But the UT poll did not detect the significant Talarico coattails on which Democrats are depending for success in competitive down-ballot races that the Republicans led by 6 points on average in the Texas Politics Project survey for June.
Talarico defeated Jasmine Crockett by 6 percentage points in the March primary election after running throughout most of the race as the underdog in the polling. The Democratic Senate contender found significant cause for optimism in the new UT survey - which showed ahead of Paxton by 22 points among independents with 40 percent support compared to 12 percent for the GOP nominee.
Talarico's odds for winning would go up if he could capture a large majority of the independent voters who remain undecided on the fight at the top of the Texas ballot in the general election this fall. The independents who are still on the fence in the Senate battle could be the ultimate swing factor in a close race at the finish line.
But the Democrats who are rallying in Corpus Christi for a convention that convenes on Thursday may be concerned that their candidates in the hottest races aren't getting as much of a benefit as they'd anticipated from the president's sinking popularity ratings that have fallen to record lows in recent months.
The University of Texas pollsters found Trump with a 43 percent approval rate compared to a disapproval mark at 51 percent among the voters who they surveyed in June. Trump was under water in nine of 11 categories - with a double-digit disparity in eight of those.
Only 34 percent of the Texas voters in the UT survey gave the president positive marks for his handling of the economy compared to 55 percent who approved. But a mere 28 percent approved of his work on inflation and prices while 58 percent disapproved - a gap of 30 percent.
Trump was above water in one category - border security - with a 47 percent approval mark and disapproval rate of 44 percent. Forty-six percent approved of Trump's work on immigration while 46 percent gave him a thumbs down in that department.
Barring a rebound in popularity in the next few months, Paxton could be playing with fire if he continues to lean as heavily on Trump as he did in the runoff win against Cornyn and has suggested he would continue to do as the general election campaign unfolded.
But a substantial number of Texas voters don't appear to be punishing Republicans on the Texas ballot for their association with the president as much as the Democratic adversaries have been hoping. The GOP led Democrats by 6 points in generic ballot tests for Congress and the Texas Legislature - as examples - in the new UT poll.
more to come ...
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