New Texas poll has Talarico up four; our forecast ticks to 69-31

A Fabrizio Ward/Impact Research poll of 895 likely voters in Texas, sponsored by AARP and fielded August 30 to September 1, put Democrat James Talarico at 48 percent and Republican Ken Paxton at 44 percent. No margin of error accompanies the result in our data, so the four-point gap is best read as a close race rather than a settled edge.

Our forecast of the open Texas Senate seat now gives Talarico a 69 in 100 chance, with a mean margin of D+3.1 and a 5th-to-95th percentile range running from R+6.9 to D+13.2. The prior run, from 12:32 PM ET on the same day, had 68 percent, a mean margin of D+2.9 and a range of R+7.1 to D+13.1. That is a one-point shift in the win probability and two-tenths of a point in the expected margin. The new poll confirmed the picture already in the model rather than altering it.

The width of that range is the part worth holding onto. Our model still treats outcomes from a mid-single-digit Paxton win to a low-double-digit Talarico win as inside the plausible band 54 days out. A 69 percent chance leaves roughly a three-in-ten path for Paxton.

Nationally, our model gives Democrats a 40 in 100 chance of Senate control and Republicans 59 percent, with a mean of 49.7 Democratic seats. Democrats need 51 seats for control; Republicans need 50, because the vice president is a Republican and a 50-50 tie goes to them. Our generic-ballot average stands at D+6.3 across 24 polls in a 45-day window. Texas is one of the seats that would have to come in for the Democratic side of that Senate distribution, and on current numbers our model treats it as more likely than not to do so, without treating it as safe.