Texas Senate Race Is a Coin Flip With Four Days Left

Early voting ends today in Texas, and the last poll from Quantus Insights says the Senate race is too close to call. The survey of 1,221 likely voters, taken October 26 to 28, has Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton at 48.7 percent and Democratic state Rep. James Talarico at 47.6 percent. Libertarian Ted Brown has 1.4 percent and 2.2 percent are undecided. More than half of those surveyed had already voted.

A one-point lead means little here. The poll’s margin of error is 3.2 points, and Quantus says the margin on the gap between the two candidates is closer to 6.4. Counting voters who lean toward a candidate moves the numbers to 49.4 and 48.4, the same one-point spread.

Other surveys have Talarico ahead. The PollCheck average puts him up about 2.6 points, and the University of Houston’s Hobby School had him ahead 48 to 46 in mid-October. Cook Political Report moved the race to a toss-up in August, and RealClearPolling lists it the same way.

No Democrat has won statewide office in Texas since 1994. The state’s last Democratic senator, Bob Krueger, served five months in 1993 and lost a special election to Kay Bailey Hutchison. Republicans hold 53 Senate seats, so Democrats need a net gain of four for a majority, and Texas is one of the seats they are counting on.

How the race took shape

Paxton, the three-term attorney general, beat four-term Sen. John Cornyn in the May 26 Republican runoff after President Trump endorsed him. Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian and former public school teacher, beat Rep. Jasmine Crockett for the Democratic nomination in March.

The money

Ad spending has reached nearly $340 million since the nominations were settled, according to AdImpact. Talarico raised $64 million in the third quarter, reported as the largest on record for a Senate candidate in that period, and his campaign says 97 percent of the gifts were under $100. He has cast the race as David against Goliath.

Talarico also spent part of the fall off the trail. He held no in-person public events for nearly two weeks before appearing at the Austin City Limits festival, a gap his campaign blamed on the flu, and Paxton’s campaign made the absence a daily talking point.

Turnout

Texans cast more than 4.2 million ballots in the first six days of early voting, about 22 percent of the state’s 19 million registered voters. Through the first week the rate was 23.4 percent, slightly behind 2018, when Beto O’Rourke ran against Ted Cruz. Texas does not register voters by party, so early totals do not show who is ahead. In the Quantus survey, 54.3 percent of likely voters said they had already voted, including 59 percent of Democrats and 49 percent of Republicans, and Quantus says the vote still to come leans more Republican than the vote already in. One analyst expects as many as 10 million Texans to vote, and at that size one percentage point is roughly 100,000 votes.

Musk’s closing argument

On Friday morning Elon Musk, the Texas-based billionaire, posted on X that a Democratic sweep of the House, Senate and presidency in 2028 would let the party make D.C. and Puerto Rico states, legalize people living in the country illegally, and add seats to the Supreme Court. He called that outcome a “permanent one-party state” and wrote that 51 Republican senators in 2029 would prevent it, which is why he said voters should back Republican senators now.

Some Democrats have floated versions of the first and third items. James Carville, a longtime party strategist who holds no office, has said Democrats should add both states and expand the court to 13 seats if they win everything.

The candidates’ records

Paxton’s record is the center of Talarico’s campaign. The Texas House impeached him in 2023 on accusations that he abused his office to help a donor, Austin real estate investor Nate Paul, and the state Senate acquitted him on all 16 articles it considered. Eight aides who reported him to the FBI in 2020 were fired or quit, and four of them sued under the state whistleblower law. A separate felony securities fraud case from 2015 ended when Paxton completed a pretrial diversion agreement that required restitution, community service and ethics training. It was dismissed in 2025, and his lawyer said the deal was not an admission of guilt.

Talarico has faced his own questions. A ProPublica and Texas Tribune investigation found that he voted in five elections using his parents’ address after buying a home nearby in June 2022, and he did not update his registration until September 2024. The reporting said the practice may have violated state voting law. His campaign provided records showing he registered at his parents’ address in November 2021, and it turned the question back on Paxton, whom Talarico had accused weeks earlier of voting from the wrong address in six elections. Paxton’s campaign says he is a lawful registered voter.

What happens next

Election Day is Tuesday, November 3. Paxton’s campaign has maintained that Texas will stay Republican, and Talarico’s has promised to end 30 years of one-party rule. The result will help decide whether Republicans keep their 53-seat Senate majority, and no poll has settled it.

Sources

•           Fox 7 Austin, Paxton slips past Talarico in latest poll as Senate race enters final days (Oct. 30, 2026)

•           Quantus Insights, final Texas poll, toplines and crosstabs (report text checked Oct. 30, 2026)

•           PollCheck, Texas Senate polling average (updated Oct. 27, 2026)

•           Fox 7 Austin, Talarico holds razor-thin lead over Paxton in latest poll (Oct. 21, 2026, Hobby School poll)

•           WJLA, Texas and Iowa elections become tossups, according to Cook Political Report (Aug. 20, 2026)

•           RealClearPolling, Texas Senate: Paxton vs. Talarico vs. Brown and Paxton vs. Talarico

•           Fox 4, No Democrat has won a statewide office in Texas since 1994

•           Texas Tribune, Bob Krueger, the last Texas Democrat to serve in the U.S. Senate, dies at 86 (May 7, 2022)

•           Bloomberg Government via KDH News, Senate races in Texas, Iowa are toss-ups, Cook report says (Aug. 2026)

•           U.S. Senate, Party division

•           Texas Tribune, Talarico raises $6.2 million in first three weeks of Senate run (Oct. 1, 2025)

•           Anchorage Daily News, Fear and hope in Texas: Paxton vs. Talarico in an expensive US Senate showdown (Oct. 23, 2026)

•           Texas Tribune, James Talarico raises $64 million (Oct. 15, 2026)

•           WDBO, Talarico compares his campaign to the biblical David (Oct. 2026)

•           Texas Tribune via KBTX, Talarico returns to campaign trail at ACL festival (Oct. 9, 2026)

•           AP via NEWS10, Trump wants Talarico and Paxton to debate (Oct. 2026)

•           Texas Secretary of State, More than 4.2 million Texans cast ballots in first half of early voting (Oct. 26, 2026)

•           Texas Tribune via Click2Houston, Texas early voting rate is slightly behind 2018 (Oct. 27, 2026)

•           Elon Musk on X, post of Oct. 30, 2026

•           Yahoo News, Carville: Democrats have to add states, expand Supreme Court

•           CNN via KEZI, Texas AG Ken Paxton acquitted on 16 charges in state Senate impeachment trial (Sept. 16, 2023)

•           Texas Tribune, Ken Paxton acquitted on all 16 articles of impeachment (Sept. 16, 2023)

•           NBC DFW, Timeline leading to Paxton’s acquittal in his impeachment trial

•           Fox 26 Houston, Ken Paxton’s felony case dismissed after completing pretrial diversion program (June 18, 2025)

•           ProPublica and Texas Tribune, James Talarico accused Ken Paxton of voter fraud. His own voter registration is raising questions. (Aug. 5, 2026)