Talarico's Texas Senate Odds Hit a New High of 70 Percent as Early Voting Ends

Prediction market-implied odds of Democrat James Talarico winning the Texas Senate race reached a new high of 70 percent on Thursday afternoon, according to Kalshi's news report on its own market, read in full this cycle — a 10-percentage-point increase from one month ago. Republican nominee Ken Paxton trailed at 30 percent, his lowest probability in the market, down from 81 percent at the start of the event contract in December 2024. Kalshi traders forecast Talarico winning by 2.7 points. A prediction market is a trading forecast, not a vote count, and this story carries it as exactly that.

The market move landed alongside three late-October polls that all found Talarico ahead. A CNN poll conducted by SSRS from October 20 to 27 found 49 percent of likely voters leaning toward Talarico against Paxton's 43 percent, a six-point gap larger than the survey's four-point margin of error; the same poll found 63 percent of likely Latino voters and 64 percent of likely voters of color supporting Talarico. An ActiVote poll fielded October 22 to 28 put Talarico 4.2 points ahead, inside its 4.9-point average expected error, and a Texas Southern University Barbara Jordan Center poll found Talarico at 49 percent to Paxton's 47 percent, with a margin of error near 2.2 points. Only the CNN/SSRS lead exceeded its margin of error.

The numbers arrive as early voting winds down: Friday, October 30 is the final day of in-person early voting in Texas, and more than 6 million of the state's 18.8 million registered voters had already cast an early ballot, according to NBC News data provided by TargetSmart and cited in the Kalshi report. Republican voter-data specialist Derek Ryan told the Texas Tribune, as quoted in that report, that voters with previous Democratic primary history outnumbering Republican primary voters at this point is new territory. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3.