Two months after a bruising Texas GOP primary set off a scramble between Sen. John Cornyn and former Attorney General Ken Paxton, new polling suggests Democrats’ chances aren’t just surviving the chaos—they’re improving. Surveys show either Republican matchup
For a moment in this Texas Senate race, Democrats watched a complicated question hang in the air: which Republican nominee would make it easiest to flip the seat come November. The answer, it turned out, might depend less on strategy than on damage.
After the initial March 3 primary—when Ken Paxton and John Cornyn faced off and state Rep. James Talarico beat Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas—the focus shifted to the GOP runoff. But the stakes for the winner don’t look as clear-cut as they did early in the campaign. New polling suggests both Republicans are stuck in the same place against Talarico.
In a matchup against Talarico. Cornyn would lead by 45% to 44%. according to a poll from the Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center and Texas Southern University. In the same poll, Paxton would be tied with Talarico at 45% each. Both results fall inside the poll’s plus or minus 2.8% margin of error.
Another survey from the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston found Republican primary voters see little difference between Paxton and Cornyn when imagining the general election. When asked which candidate they believed would be the stronger nominee for the general election. 43% picked Paxton. 43% picked Cornyn. and 14% said neither one was stronger than the other.
That matters because the early cycle looked different. A January Emerson College poll had Cornyn leading Talarico by 3 points, 47% to 44%. It also found Paxton and Talarico tied at 46% support.
Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist working on Talarico’s campaign, said the change is tied to two forces: a national environment that has become less favorable for Republicans since the initial primary, and a GOP contest that has wounded both men.
Rocha pointed to the shift in the generic ballot. At the beginning of March, Democrats led by about 5 points in the polling average compiled by DecisionDeskHQ. Now the lead is 7 points, and growing.
But he also laid the blame closer to home—on the runoff itself, and on the way the primary fight has spilled over into persuasion.
“They both have exposed each other’s Achilles heel … There’s nobody in the state who doesn’t know the rampant faults of both of these candidates, because the other Republican has told all of us.”
Rocha said the mutual attacks hurt because the campaign research that Republicans used against one another is the same kind of material Democrats would have deployed if they’d had a freer choice of nominee.
The broader fight has been anything but contained. The Texas GOP Senate primary has become the most expensive Senate primary in U.S. history, with more than $122 million spent just ahead of the initial March 3 primary. AdImpact, an ad spending tracking firm, put $95 million of that spending on the GOP side. Another $21 million has been spent on the GOP runoff.
The advertising has grown personal and overwhelmingly negative. Anti-Paxton ads have painted him as an incompetent and corrupt adulterer. Anti-Cornyn ads have portrayed him as a failed candidate and a Republican in name only. or “RINO.” The result. from a Democratic perspective. is straightforward: Republicans have poured resources into tearing down both potential nominees. which gives Democrats a head start when it’s their turn to make the case.
Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, said those intraparty attacks likely carry more weight with voters than the same attacks would coming from Democrats.
He also pointed to an asymmetry in party unity. “Democratic support is much more unified behind Talarico at this point in time than Republican support is unified behind either of those candidates,” Blank said. “That’s translated into the trial ballots showing Talarico in some cases in the lead.”
Blank linked the difference to what Democrats already know about their own nominee and what the national political environment has done to turnout. He said Democrats know who their candidate is and added that Democrats are “also largely unified in this election cycle because of [President Donald] Trump.”.
The metric Blank said could matter most is whether the Republican primary voters who like one man are unwilling to back the other if he loses. In survey data from the Texas Politics Project poll from May. 10% of Republicans said they would support Cornyn over Talarico but not Paxton. Thirteen percent said they would support Paxton versus Talarico, but not Cornyn.
If that pattern holds, Blank argued it suggests Paxton may be the stronger general election candidate rather than Cornyn, despite the usual assumption that Cornyn would be the more palatable option.
Blank tied that to the question of who can activate Trump’s base of infrequent voters. He said Paxton has positioned himself as a diehard Trump loyalist and has pitched his own impeachments and legal troubles using a frame similar to Trump’s portrayal of his own impeachments as political persecution.
Blank pointed out that the vast majority of Texas state House Republicans voted to impeach Paxton. But he argued Paxton’s Trump appeal has been underscored by Trump’s late-in-the-race endorsement of Paxton.
“I think there’s a case to be made that Paxton is closer to the modern-day Republican party. and may be the better vessel to generate mobilization among base voters that Republicans will desperately need in order to maintain their advantage in this cycle. ” Blank said. “Most elections in the modern era are not about persuasion; they’re about mobilization. Democrats don’t have enough voters in the state to mobilize all their voters and rely on that alone. They need an election cycle like this. in which they can count on a significant share of independent support. but also some share of Republicans staying home.”.
For Democrats. the immediate takeaway is hard to miss: the runoff winner may not get the clean. decisive path into the general election that the early arguments promised. With polling showing Cornyn and Paxton performing statistically the same against Talarico—while Democratic support appears steadier going into November—the bruising GOP civil war could end up doing the one thing it never was supposed to accomplish: making the Texas Senate map a little less difficult to flip.
Texas Senate John Cornyn Ken Paxton James Talarico Jasmine Crockett GOP runoff generic ballot Trump endorsement Texas Politics Project polling