Talarico edges Paxton in new Texas Senate poll as our forecast shifts to 61-39

A University of Texas/Texas Politics Project survey of 1,200 registered voters, fielded August 5-13, puts Democrat James Talarico at 42% and Republican Ken Paxton at 39%. The three-point gap is narrow enough that the poll is best read as a close race rather than a lead, and roughly a fifth of respondents are not recorded for either candidate.

Our model now gives Talarico a 61 in 100 chance of winning the seat, with a mean margin of D+1.8 and a 5th-to-95th percentile range running from R+9.0 to D+12.5. That is a move: the previous run, at 8:30 AM ET on August 25, had the Democrat at 54% with a mean margin of D+0.6 and a range of R+10.2 to D+11.6. The new poll shifted the central estimate by a bit more than a point and left the width of the distribution close to where it was. Both runs describe a race our model treats as genuinely competitive.

This is an open seat. Republican incumbent John Cornyn is not among the candidates; Paxton and Talarico are.

Nationally, our average on the generic congressional ballot is D+6.5 across 27 polls over the past 45 days. In the Senate, our model gives Democrats a 45% chance of winning control and Republicans 55%, with a mean of 50.0 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 their side. A seat with a mean margin under two points, in either direction, is close to the margin that decides which side of that threshold the chamber lands on, which is why a single Texas survey moved the race number as much as it did.