Texas Senate poll has Talarico and Paxton within two; forecast eases to 67-33

An InsiderAdvantage survey of 1,200 likely voters in Texas, fielded September 8-9, put Democrat James Talarico at 47.1% and Republican Ken Paxton at 45.6%, with 2.2% for other candidates. The gap is 1.5 points. That is a close race, not a lead.

Our model now gives Talarico a 67 in 100 chance of winning the open Texas seat, with a mean margin of D+2.7 and a 5th-to-95th percentile range running from R+7.3 to D+12.7. Before this poll entered the average, the same run had him at 69% with a mean margin of D+3.1 and a range of R+7.0 to D+13.1. The new number is a shade tighter than what the average was carrying, so the forecast eased by two points and the distribution shifted marginally toward Paxton at both ends.

That is a small adjustment inside a race our model has treated as competitive but tilted for some weeks. Nothing in this survey changes the character of the contest: the central estimate remains a low-single-digit Democratic edge, and the range still spans outcomes on both sides by seven points or more. A one-and-a-half-point margin in a single poll is the kind of reading that nudges an average rather than redirects it.

Texas matters to the chamber arithmetic. Our model puts the Democratic chance of winning Senate control at 49% and the Republican chance at 50%, with a mean of 50.2 Democratic seats. Democrats need 51 seats for control and Republicans need 50, because the vice president is a Republican and a 50-50 tie goes to the Republicans. In the House, our model gives Democrats a 95% chance of a majority, with a mean of 240.8 seats against the 218 needed; that figure is marginally firmer than it should be, because our simulation correlates error nationally, by census division, by state and by district, but has no cluster data to correlate demographically similar districts across state lines.