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Talarico Up by 13 in Final Texas Primary Poll
as Abbott Works to Beat Trump Team Mates
Capitol Inside
March 2, 2026
The Texas Republican primary erupted into a proxy fight for kingmakers on Monday night as Democratic State Rep. James Talarico of Austin appeared to have a shot to win the party primary in the U.S. Senate race after the final poll before the vote showed him with a 13-point lead heading into election day.
After trailing Crockett in polls on the Senate race during the first two months of the year, Talarico scored support from 53 percent of 2,427 likely Democratic voters in the survey that YouGov conducted on the Senate competition in Texas over the course of five days that ended on the eve of the primary election here. The second-term congressional member from Dallas had her worst showing in independent polling on the race since January - with 40 percent of the Democrats in the YouGov sample expressing plans to back her at the polls this week if they hadn't already voted.
The YouGov poll marked the second time in two days that Talarico has come out on top in polling on the Senate race - having been up on Crockett by 5 points in an Emerson College survey that was in the field Thursday and Friday and made public on Sunday in what appeared to be the last poll on the most expensive Senate primary contest by far in the nation's history.
The YouGov results on the GOP competition in the race atop the Texas ticket seat marked the second day in a row that an independent poll found Attorney General Ken Paxton up on U.S. Senator John Cornyn by 4 points as the candidates barreled toward the finish line for round one on Tuesday. Paxton has led the incumbent in five of six independent surveys on the Texas Senate contest in the past two months.
State Rep. Gina Hinojosa of Austin received support from 55 percent of the Texas Democrats in the YouGov sample in the battle for the nomination in the governor's race in a field with nine contenders. Bobby Cole and Chris Bell were second and third with 5 percent and 4 percent respectively while none of the other contenders in the gubernatorial sweepstakes had more than 3 percent. Twenty-five percent of the Democrats in the survey were undecided on the governor's race.
Governor Greg Abbott was favored by 72 percent of 1,688 likely GOP voters in a field of nine in the YouGov poll in the closing days before the vote. Pete "Doc" Chambers received support from 11 percent of the Republicans who participated in the poll. None of the other GOP challengers for governor had more than 1 percent.
The GOP's voters in Texas found themselves caught between competing and conflicting slates that President Donald Trump and Abbott are pushing in several key statewide races here. Abbott got the competition with the president under way early Monday afternoon when he posted a display ad on social media that introduced Team Abbott with a four-star cast that featured Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, Comptroller Kelly Hancock, state farm chief contender Nate Sheets and the state's top leader himself in a pitch for primary votes.
But Trump countered less than 45 minutes later - unveiling an advertisement that touted the Texas Trump Team with Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller and state comptroller challenger Don Huffines
as the president's choices for the statewide contests that the governor wants Sheets and Hancock to win. The Texas Trump Team also includes Abbott, Patrick and Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham, who might not have qualified for a photo on the ad for the governor's slate because she's running unopposed in round one.
So Abbott is teammates on the Trump squad for the upcoming Texas primary election with the state farm boss he's portrayed as corrupt and the former state senator who tried to oust him in the primary election in 2022. But Abbott is not the team player that Trump may have envisioned and expected as he urges Republicans to reject the candidates who the president wants to win in the fights for agriculture commissioner and comptroller on his A-team slate for statewide officers on Tuesday's Texas ballot.
Abbott's attempt to defeat key Trump team players in the Texas primary could be the proverbial tit-for-tat at play after the president waited until the final weekend before the election to endorse the opponents for the candidates who accompanied the governor on his Let's Roll tour across the state in the past week or two. Instead of deferring to the president, Abbott has ramped up the push for Hancock and Sheets in a frantic bid to save them while avoiding the embarrassment that wins by his two biggest enemies on the Texas GOP map would guarantee in the wake of Tuesday's vote.
As an official member of the Texas Trump Team, the governor runs the risk of alienating the president if he causes some of his teammates to lose by campaigning so hard at the end for their opponents. .
Paxton was in front of Cornyn by 3.6 points on average in the five surveys that found him with the lead while the incumbent had a 6-point advantage in a University of Texas at Tyler last month. Crockett was ahead of Talarico by nearly 13 points on average in three polls during a span of month before the state representative from the Capitol City finished first in the surveys that were made public in the final two days before the election this week.
While Talarico appeared to have a monopoly on the momentum as the first round wound to a close, the wild gyrations in polling on the Democratic primary has made the fight with Crockett impossible to predict with any real degree of confidence. But Capitol Inside rolled the dice on Talarico during the weekend for the sake of sport while admitting that the race was too close to call from the view here.
The GOP primary fight between Cornyn and Paxton appears destined for a runoff on May 26. Talarico and Crockett could be headed for overtime as well if a third candidate for the Democrats gets two or three percent on Tuesday and the frontrunners are close at the final bell.
more to come ...
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