Photo credit: newsfromthestates.com
Regarding the highest-profile U.S. Senate race in the nation this year, a University of Houston poll which was released on February 9 shows Attorney General Ken Paxton with a 7-point lead (38% to 31%) over incumbent Senator John Cornyn in the GOP primary, with congressman Wesley Hunt third at 17%. The primary, which will be held on March 3, is certain to result in a runoff between the top two finishers because no candidate is going to achieve 50% of the vote. The runoff election takes place on May 26.
On the Democrat side, far-left state rep. James Talarico trails far-left Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett by 8 points (47% to 39%). Nearly 15% of likely primary voters are still undecided between the two repugnant Democrat candidates; the Republican trio have their faults too (see below) and nearly as many Republican voters are as undecided as Democrats.
Republicans currently lead in all six possible general election matchups for the U.S. Senate in Texas. However the margins are so small as to be practically non-existent, and that is the key takeaway from this poll.
- Paxton (45%), Crockett (43%)
- Paxton (46%), Talarico (44%)
- Cornyn (45%), Crockett (43%)
- Cornyn (44%), Talarico (43%)
- Hunt (46%), Crockett (43%)
- Hunt (46%), Talarico (42%)
With the Senate so closely divided between the parties -- and it will almost certainly be even more closely divided starting in 2027 -- Texas is a state which Republicans can hardly afford to lose. Prominent left-leaning prognosticators Charlie Cook and Larry Sabato and other leftist forecasters who are lesser-known but who are spammed all over sites like Wikipedia anyway aren't giving into their wishful thinking just yet, and they still rate the 2026 Senate election in Texas as favoring the GOP to at least a slight degree. For now.
1994 House races in Texas
GOP won the votes (55.7% to 42.1%) but Democrats won the seats (19 of 30)
You have to go all the way back to the 1990s to find the last time any Democrat won a statewide election in Texas. The major shift to the right also became apparent at the U.S. House level in 1994, however due to the extreme Democrat gerrymander which was in place at the time (and which persisted through the early 2000s), Democrats continued to win a majority of seats in Congress; the same trend applied at the state legislative level which was also Ratmandered heavily. Only in 2002 did Republicans finally acquire a number of state legislative seats commensurate with the large total of votes they were receiving.
The Lone Star State was super-solid Republican from about 2006-2014. These days however, Texas remains a relentlessly "purpling" state. The 2022-24 blip to the right notwithstanding, it's still a lot more closely divided than many on the right want to admit. Even so, the notion that a couple of outrageous leftists like Holy James Talarico and Queen Latifah Crockett could even crack 45% in a general election in Texas should be ludicrous. But it's not.
The GOP Senate candidates in 2026 aren't great either: there's "RINO Cornyn", "Damaged Paxton" and "Wesley (Who?) Hunt". Paxton is of course a great conservative and has been the best AG in the country. But you haven't seen a negative campaign like the one coming up against Paxton if he wins the runoff in May. The Cornyn campaign is in full panic mode and is frantically faking towards the right in order to try to win over some of Paxton's supporters. So far, Hunt is just along for the ride.
Yet Hunt fares the best, so says this one poll anyway, against either of the two reprehensible Rats in the general election; that's because few even know who he is. It's sufficient for some Republican voters that Hunt is simply "Not John Cornyn" and "Not Ken Paxton". Hunt is actually a decent conservative with a fine background and he would make at least as good a Senator as Cornyn (not that we mean to damn Hunt with faint praise there).
Given the prevailing conditions this year, the outcome of this Texas Senate race in November will be closer to the one from 2018, with the GOP on top probably by less than 5 points but hopefully on the right side of 50% in order to avert a runoff, than it will be to Donald Trump's resounding 13-point win over Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
The best thing that could happen between now and November is for the Democrats to somehow find themselves in a runoff -- the March primary is supposed to be THAT close all of a sudden on their side (probably it really isn't). That would force the two Rats to keep chewing on each other for three more months instead of spewing all of their bile on the GOP. If one of the Democrats does win without a runoff -- as is still quite likely -- then whoever emerges will have a three-month head start on general election campaigning. The fact that the Democrat won't know until late May exactly which Republican will be the nominee is irrelevant.
Tags:
2026
Texas
Senate
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