Texas Senate Polls in the Final Weekend: One Poll Puts Paxton Ahead 48.7 to 47.6, the Average Still Puts Talarico in Front
The last polls disagree the way this race has all fall: Quantus Insights (Oct. 26–28, 1,221 likely voters) has Ken Paxton 48.7 percent to James Talarico's 47.6 — inside its 3.2-point margin of error — while CNN/SSRS and Texas Southern put Talarico ahead, and TexPolls' 27-poll average reads Talarico 48.2, Paxton 46.0.
Texas's Senate race goes into its final weekend as a statistical tie in its newest poll and a narrow Democratic lead in its average — both statements true at once, which is the honest summary of the polling. A Quantus Insights poll fielded October 26–28 among 1,221 likely voters, reported by FOX 7 Austin on October 30, found Republican Ken Paxton at 48.7 percent and Democrat James Talarico at 47.6 percent, with Libertarian Ted Brown at 1.4 and 2.2 percent undecided; with leaners pushed, it read 49.4 to 48.4. The poll's margin of error is 3.2 points for the full sample — and about 6.4 points for the gap between the two candidates — so the 1.1-point spread is a tie by the pollster's own arithmetic, a caution the coverage of the poll itself carried.
The other late polls point the other way. CNN/SSRS, fielded in late October, put Talarico ahead 49 to 43; Texas Southern University's survey put him ahead 49 to 47; Emerson and a University of Houston poll each had him up two, and Univision/YouGov five, according to the Texas Politics Project tracker as reported this cycle. TexPolls' equally weighted average of 27 qualifying likely-voter polls completed between June 27 and October 27 reads Talarico 48.2 percent, Paxton 46.0. Inside the Quantus numbers, Paxton held 93 percent of Republicans — up from 87 percent in the firm's October 9–11 survey — while Talarico held 96 percent of Democrats; FOX 7 reported Talarico leading among women, independents and Hispanic voters and Paxton among men, suburban and rural voters.
What the split means is narrower than either campaign's claim. This station's earlier files carried Talarico's prediction-market high of 70 percent (SQ-20261030-047, a market, not a poll) and his leads in the UT and earlier surveys; the Quantus result cuts against that run without overturning it, because a single poll inside its own margin of error does not move an average built from 27. Polls are snapshots with stated error, not results — the result arrives Tuesday, November 3, when the roughly two-thirds of Texas voters who did not vote early cast theirs.
