Talarico Leads Paxton 49-43 in a CNN Poll as Texas Republicans Sweat the Early Vote
Democrat James Talarico heads into the final weekend with a six-point lead over Republican Ken Paxton in the CNN/SSRS poll of the Texas Senate race — and Republican officials are publicly worried about their side's early-vote pace.
The Texas Senate race — the contest to replace outgoing Sen. John Cornyn, and by the BBC's account a $500 million race that may be the most closely watched in the midterms — enters its final weekend with the Democrat ahead in the newest public polling. A CNN poll of 923 likely Texas voters, conducted by SSRS online and by telephone from October 20 to 27, found state Rep. James Talarico at 49 percent and Attorney General Ken Paxton at 43 percent, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.
The anxiety on the Republican side is about the early vote itself. Early voting closed Friday with record midterm turnout in the state's largest counties, and State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, a Houston Republican, said publicly that GOP voters are lagging. Nonpartisan analyst Steven David, who has tracked gains for Democrats in urban areas and some conservative rural counties, estimated Republicans need about 54 percent of independents statewide to win — a number that now depends on an Election Day surge, with a cold front expected to bring rain statewide on Tuesday, as this station's weather file also shows.
The context is three decades long: no Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas in 30 years. The governor's race runs on the same ballot, with incumbent Gov. Greg Abbott facing Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa. Polls measure the race as it stood in late October; Tuesday's turnout — in Dallas and Tarrant Counties as much as anywhere — is what will settle it.
