Texas Dems Take or Match Largest Leads
in Senate and Governor Races in NYT Poll
Texas General Election Polls
General Election Rankings
Capitol Inside
October 3, 2026
The New York Times ruined the weekend for Texas Republicans on Friday night when it released a new poll that found Democrat Gina Hinojosa with her largest lead yet in a bid to oust Governor Greg Abbott while James Talarico was up 6 points on the GOP's Ken Paxton in the U.S. Senate race here.
The New York Times/Siena survey showed Hinojosa in front of the third-term governor by almost 4 points as Talarico matched his biggest advantage to date in the Texas Senate race with support from 51 percent of 800 likely voters who were tested over the course of the last 10 days in September.
The NYT survey was the second consecutive poll on the Senate fight in the Lone Star State that found Talarico with support from a majority of the voters in the sample. The newspaper's poll marked the third time that Hinojosa was in front of Abbott in a race that the prediction market Kalshi gave her an 8 percent chance to win at the outset of summer.
Kalshi and rival trading platform Polymarket both listed Hinojosa's probability of victory at 26 percent on Saturday when Talarico's chances of winning jumped to all-time highs on both sites at 65 percent and 67 percent respectively.
Abbott's camp sought to discredit the New York Times/Siena poll after the governor assured voters this week that he was on track to win in November. "Why would anyone do a real survey in TX of voters where only 7+ '24 Trump unless they were trying to boost the left?" Abbott consultant Dave Carney argued in a post on X on Saturday. "@nytimes poll is garbage."
Talarico and Paxton had been tied at 47 percent in the last New York Times/Siena poll on the Texas Senate contest in June. Abbott led Hinojosa by 6 points in the paper's June survey here. Talarico has been ahead in every poll on the Senate race in the past two months with the exception of an internal Paxton poll that showed him in front of the Democrat by 3 points when it was taken last week.
The NYT poll indicated that the Republicans' attempt to paint as a radical extremists had bombed so far. "While GOP is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to try to bring down Mr. Talarico, his candidacy appears essentially undamaged. His favorable ratings actually ticked up since the last NYT poll in June,:" the pollsters pointed out. "Only 40 percent say he’s “too far to the left,” barely changed from 39 percent in June and less than the 47 percent who say Mr. Paxton is “too far to the right.”
While Paxton had a 20-point advantage among white voters in the NYT poll at 59 percent support, Talarico was crushing the state attorney general among Hispanic, Black and other voters who are not white. Talarico led Paxton by 32 points among Latinos with 62 percent support from that critical voting bloc. The Democrat was up 84 points on Paxton among Black voters in the new Times poll.
President Donald Trump was more unpopular in the New York Times/Siena survey for September than he's ever been in the nation's largest state up to now. Sixty percent of the voters disapproved of the president's work on the economy compared to 38 percent who gave him a thumbs up. The poll found that 70 percent are unhappy with Trump over gasoline prices compared to 28 percent who have no problem with the president on that issue.
Sixty-four percent expressed disapproval with Trump's war in Iran of which 35 percent approved. Trump was even underwater on immigration with a 46 percent approval rate compared to a disapproval mark of 54 percent.
Talarico led Paxton by 2.6 points on average in 14 polls that were conducted on the Texas Senate race in September. Abbott was up on Hinojosa by 1.9 points on average in the September polling on the governor's race.
more to come ...
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