Paxton Back on Top by a Point in New Poll
after Trailing Dem for 2 Months in Tight Race
Texas General Election Polls
General Election Rankings
Capitol Inside
August 13, 2026
Republican Ken Paxton's campaign that's been struggling received a small but significant boost on Thursday when the latest poll on the U.S. Senate race in Texas found him ahead of James Talarico for the first time in nearly two months after trailing the Democrat in seven consecutive surveys of voters here statewide.
The Emerson College poll showed the state attorney general up on Talarico by one point with support from 47 percent of 1,000 likely Texas voters who were tested here. Governor Greg Abbott led Democrat Gina Hinojosa by 3 points with 48 percent support in the Emerson poll that was taken on Monday and Tuesday with Nexstar as a sponsor.
Emerson College - one of nation's premier pollsters in recent years - had found Paxton and Talarico knotted at 46 percent apiece in the second week of January when both were still in the midst of highly-competitive primary fights. Emerson showed Paxton with a 4-point lead over veteran U.S. Senator John Cornyn in polling it conducted in Texas in February the week before the primary election when the incumbent finished almost two points higher than Paxton in a pack of eight contenders.
Emerson was on the mark with its poling on the Democratic primary in the U.S. Senate sweepstakes in Texas where it found Talarico leading Jasmine Crocket by 6 points in the survey in the stretch before the primary election that the state representative from Austin won when he beat her by almost 6 percentage points. Crockett had double-digit advantages in polls that were taken for the University of Texas at Tyler and the University of Texas in Austin the first three weeks of February after leading Talarico by 8 points in a University of Houston poll in the second half of January.
The latest Emerson poll here marked the first time Paxton was in front in an independent, non-partisan survey on the Texas Senate race since the first half of June. Paxton had surged from behind to pull even with Talarico for several weeks after eliminating Cornyn from the contest in a primary runoff vote in May. Paxton was ahead by 2 points in two polls that Republicans pollsters conducted here in June while he was up by 1 point on Talarico in a UT survey a week after the overtime election that the AG won with 64 percent of the vote.
But Paxton fell behind after taking off for European vacation during the Fourth of July weekend - and Talarico vaulted into the lead that he held from the final week of June until the Emerson College survey that was released today had back in front by a single point. The Emerson poll has a margin of error of 3 percent - which means the Texas Senate race is close to being dead even for all practical purposes like it's been throughout the summer. Talarico led Paxton by more than 3 points on average in six polls on the Texas Senate contest in July.
Talarico led Paxton by 37 points among independent voters in the Emerson survey in August while faring 19 points higher among Hispanics and leading the AG by 69 points among Blacks. But Paxton was able to close the gap when he had a six-point lead among men while Talarico was ahead by only 1 point with women. Talarico's leads among female voters had been wider than those Paxton has enjoyed among voters who are men before the Emerson poll. Paxton was ahead of Talarico by 23 points among white voters in the new Emerson College survey.
Hinojosa revealed on Thursday that a GBAO poll for her campaign in August showed her trailing Abbott by only one point. A Cyngal survey for Abbott's campaign this month found him leading the Democrat by 3.
more to come ...
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