Texas Senate forecast up ten points on the week for Talarico

Our forecast of the open Texas Senate race has moved about ten points toward the Democrat in a week. On September 9 the model gave James Talarico a 60 percent chance against Ken Paxton; as of the September 16 run it gives him a 70 in 100 chance. The shift is 9.7 points of Democratic win probability over seven days.

The projected margin moved with it, from a mean of D+1.6 to D+3.1. The spread around that estimate narrowed slightly on the Republican side: our 5th-to-95th percentile range ran from R+8.5 to D+11.8 last week and now runs from R+6.7 to D+12.9. Roughly a third of our simulations still end with Paxton ahead.

Three surveys arrived between the two runs. InsiderAdvantage polled 1,200 likely voters on September 8 and 9 and had Talarico at 47.1 percent and Paxton at 45.6, with 2.2 percent for others — close enough that the poll does not separate them. Mason-Dixon Polling and Research, for Telemundo, polled 625 likely voters September 8 to 10 and had Talarico 46, Paxton 43, with 3 percent other. SoCal Strategies polled 649 likely voters September 12 and 13 and had Talarico 50, Paxton 45. All three put Talarico ahead, which is the direction the model moved.

The race sits inside a national picture our model rates close. Democrats need 51 Senate seats for control and Republicans 50, because the vice president is a Republican and a 50-50 tie goes to the Republicans. Our mean Democratic seat count is 50.1, and we give Democrats a 48 percent chance of Senate control against 52 percent for Republicans. Our generic-ballot average stands at D+6.8 across 24 polls from the last 45 days.