Paxton and Crockett Surge in US Senate Poll
that Finds Hunt as Strongest for GOP in Fall
Capitol Inside
February 9, 2026
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton pulled ahead for the first time in months in a bid to oust U.S. Senator John Cornyn in the GOP primary election three weeks from now in a University of Houston poll that was released on Monday with U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett with her biggest lead in a while in a quest for the Democratic nomination in the senatorial battle.
But the survey that the Hobby School of Public Affairs conducted during the final third of January contained an intriguing twist when it found U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt up on both of the major Democratic contenders by wider margins than Cornyn and Paxton in hypothetical pairings for the fall.
Paxton had been running neck-and-neck with Cornyn in recent polling before the UH poll showed the state lawyer with 38 percent support compared to 31 percent for the incumbent and 17 percent for Hunt in the GOP primary sweepstakes in the fight at the top of the ballot in Texas in 2026.
Paxton holds on 11-point edge over Cornyn in a possible GOP runoff clash with 51 percent in the UH survey. The AG led Hunt by 23 points in a hypothetical overtime pairing with 56 percent.
Crockett, a second-term congressional member who's based in Dallas, led State Rep. James Talarico by a surprising 8 points with 47 percent support in the UH survey that polled 550 likely voters from both major parties in an overall sample with a total of 1,502 participants. Talarico, a representative in Austin, appeared to have surged ahead last month when an Emerson College poll found him up on Crockett by 9 points while Paxton and Cornyn were locked in a statistical tie with the Texas AG ahead by 1.
The Hobby School pollsters were in the field in Texas for 11 days until the final day of January. The competition for the Senate between the Democrats turned ugly a couple days later when former U.S. Senate nominee Colin Allred accused Talarico of calling him a "mediocre Black man" in a TikTok post. The Capitol City lawmaker insisted that the remark was taken out context.
It's still unclear if the dispute will have a significant impact on the Democratic primary battle in light of the fact that Crockett already had the lion's share of Black voters in her corner while Talarico has been running strongest with Hispanics and voters who are white.
But the UH poll painted a substantially different picture of the Democrats' support from a demographic vantage - with Crockett leading Talarico by 9 point among Hispanic voters in the sample. A majority of likely Democratic voters who are white backed Talarico in the UH poll. Paxton was ahead of both Talarico and Crockett by 2 points in a hypothetical general election match-up in the the UH poll. Cornyn led Talarico by 1 point and Crockett by 2 points in possible duels on the November ballot in the federal race that will crown it.
But Hunt emerged as the GOP's strongest candidate for the fall in the U.S. Senate race with a 4 point advantage over Crockett and 3 point lead over Talarico in hypothetical November pairings. Hunt has claimed that his own polling shows him running close to Cornyn and Paxton, who both have substantially higher name identification than the congressman from the Houston area where he's giving up a safe seat in the U.S. House for a shot at the job the incumbent won initially in 2002.
more to come ...
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