Talarico leads Paxton 50-45 in new Texas poll; our forecast moves to 70-30

A SoCal Strategies survey of 649 likely voters in Texas, fielded September 12-13, put Democrat James Talarico at 50 percent and Republican Ken Paxton at 45 percent. The poll, published at socalstrategies.substack.com, did not come with a stated margin of error in what we have, so the five-point gap is best read alongside the rest of the polling rather than on its own.

Our forecast now gives Talarico a 70 in 100 chance of winning the Texas Senate seat, with a mean margin of D+3.1. That is a small move from the previous run earlier the same evening, which had him at 67 percent and a mean margin of D+2.7. The uncertainty band is close to unchanged: our model's 5th-to-95th percentile range runs from R+6.8 to D+13.1, which is to say outcomes on both sides of a comfortable win remain well inside it.

This is confirmation rather than new information. Our recent coverage has had the same race inside a few points for two weeks, and the forecast has sat in a narrow band in the high 60s. The new number lands where the average already was, and it nudged the average rather than reshaping it. The seat is open; neither candidate is the incumbent, and the current officeholder, Republican John Cornyn, is not on our ballot for this race.

Nationally, our model splits Senate control almost exactly: a 50 percent chance Democrats win a majority against 49 percent for Republicans, with a mean of 50.3 Democratic seats. Democrats need 51 seats and Republicans 50, because the vice president is a Republican and a 50-50 tie goes to the Republicans. Our generic-ballot average, from 22 polls over the last 45 days, is D+6.8. In a chamber this close, a three-point mean margin in Texas is one of the reasons the national number sits where it does.