Our Texas Senate forecast moves eight points toward Talarico in a week

Our model now gives Democrat James Talarico a 66 in 100 chance of winning the open Texas Senate seat, up from 58% in our run of August 23. That is a move of 8.1 points of win probability toward the Democrat over seven days. Ken Paxton's estimated chance is 34%.

The underlying margin moved less. Our mean margin in the race is D+2.6, against D+1.2 a week ago, and our 5th-to-95th percentile range runs from R+8.1 to D+13.0, narrower on the Republican side than the R+9.7 to D+12.1 range of the previous run. The distribution still covers outcomes on both sides comfortably.

One poll in our data was fielded after the August 23 run: a Texas Public Opinion Research survey of 1,000 likely voters, fielded August 21-24, put Talarico at 48% and Paxton at 42%. The other recent statewide number in our file, a University of Texas/Texas Politics Project survey of 1,200 registered voters fielded August 5-13, had Talarico at 42% and Paxton at 39%, close enough to be read as a tight race. Both were already reflected in the intermediate updates we published on August 25 and August 27; the remaining drift since then comes from the model rather than from any new survey in the payload.

Nationally, our average of 22 generic-ballot polls over the past 45 days stands at D+6.6. Our model gives Democrats a 43% chance of winning Senate control and Republicans 57%, with a mean of 49.9 Democratic seats. Democrats need 51 seats for control and Republicans 50, because the vice president is a Republican and a 50-50 tie goes to the Republicans. Texas is one of the seats inside that margin, 65 days from the November 3 election.