Marist has Paxton up nine in Texas; forecast drops to 55-45

A Marist University survey of 1,139 registered voters in Texas, fielded September 17-20, puts Republican Ken Paxton at 52 percent and Democrat James Talarico at 43 percent. That nine-point margin is well outside anything our recent run had been absorbing, and it moved the model.

Our forecast now gives Talarico a 55 in 100 chance of winning the open Texas seat, with Paxton at 45 percent. As of a run earlier on September 23, before the Marist numbers were included, the model had Talarico at 69 percent and Paxton at 31. The mean projected margin fell from D+2.9 to D+0.8. The spread widened in both directions: our 5th-to-95th percentile range is now R+8.7 to D+10.3, against R+6.6 to D+12.4 before.

This is a change, not a confirmation. A single survey is a single survey, and the model does not treat it as the last word — a one-point race remains inside the range it considers likely. But it is the largest single-poll margin in this payload, and with 41 days to the election our average has less room to average it away than it did in mid-September. The practical effect is that Texas is now close to a coin flip in our numbers rather than a race leaning one way.

Nationally, our model gives Democrats a 54 percent chance of Senate control and Republicans 45 percent, with a mean of 50.6 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 that side. Texas sits close enough to even in our numbers to matter at that threshold. Our generic-ballot average stands at D+7.9 across 28 polls in a 45-day window.