Leading Election Expert Calls Dem Talarico
Great Candidate while Ripping AG as Awful
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General Election Polls
Capitol Inside
July 31, 2026
The nation's most seasoned elections analyst revealed on Thursday night that he thinks Texas Democrat James Talarico has a good chance to win a U.S. Senate seat in November because he's a vastly superior candidate when sized up against the GOP nominee Ken Paxton who's one of the all-time worst. .
As Capitol Inside shifted all the Texas statewide races from likely to leans GOP in the rankings for the 2026 midterm election, University of Virginia political director Larry Sabato told CNN that he wasn't surprised that Talarico led Paxton with 51 percent support in a Fox News poll on Thursday.
“Since 1994, I’ve gotten call after call virtually every day from Texans in politics on the Democratic side, saying, ‘This is the year. We’re finally gonna do it'," Sabato said in an interview with Erin Burnett. “But you know what? I’m starting to believe it’s actually possible this year.”
Sabato argued that Talarico is a "great candidate" compared to the baggage-laden Republican in the race was "so awful" in comparison. Sabato cited Paxton's legal problems from his impeachment on the part of House Republicans on more than 20 charges of corruption to a felony indictment for securities fraud to marital infidelity that prompted his wife to sue him for divorce.
"Paxton is so awful," Sabato said. “A lot of these donors won’t touch him. He’s not doing well at all raising money. It’s because they have family and friends and businesses to protect, and they really don’t want to identify themselves publicly with a candidate who has Paxton’s record.”
A Texas Public Opinion Research poll that was released on Tuesday with Talarico leading Paxton by 5 points. The TPOR survey was the first test of voter preferences on the Texas Senate race that's been made public since June. The TPOR poll gave the impression that Paxton could be hurting down-ballot Republicans considerably when it showed Governor Greg Abbott ahead of Democrat Gina Hinojosa by only 3 points in a race that was tied statistically with the gap between the two inside the margin of error.
Republicans found it easy to dismiss the nonpartisan TPOR poll as fake news by virtue of the fact the firm's chief pollster had been associated with Democrats in the past. But the Fox News poll that showed the disparity between the Senate nominees just two points smaller had alarms going off in GOP ranks here two days later was harder to downplay when considering the source.
The bipartisan Fox News survey showed Abbott leading Hinojosa by a single point with 50 percent support in his bid for a fourth term. After leading the Democrat by 6 points on average in polls on the gubernatorial competition after Abbott and Hinojosa emerged from the March primary election as the nominee, the incumbent has been mum so far on the back-to-back polls that shows him in serious danger of losing for the first time in a long political career.
But Paxton's camp asserted that Democrats were delusional if they really think that Talarico is on track to snap a losing streak for the Texas minority party in a state where Republicans haven't lost a statewide race since 1994.
“The only poll that matters is November 3rd," Paxton adviser Nick Maddux said in response to the polls that found Talarico beating the Texas AG by 4 points on average. "When Texans get a look at James Talarico's actual record including endorsing reparations, voting against protecting kids from irreversible transition procedures, attacking oil and gas jobs, and backing the largest tax increase in Texas history, there is no amount of panicked flip-flopping that is going to save him. Talarico’s campaign will end up exactly where every Democrat before him has ended up in Texas: a pipe dream."
The problem with the Paxton strategist's logic is the fact that Texas voters have been hearing the same characterizations and criticism about Talarico for months and his stock has gone up in the polling instead of collapsing like the attorney general's campaign keeps saying it will before the vote on November 3.
Talarico has run circles around the Republican opponent in the fundraising competition - having raised $66 million in 10 months compared to $9 million that Paxton has rounded up in more than a year as a Senate candidate. The GOP's big money interests have stayed on the sidelines in the Texas Senate contest after supporting the incumbent John Cornyn in the primary election and runoff that Paxton won. The longer Paxton is forced to go without a sufficient amount to compete with a fundraising juggernaut like the Democrat he's dueling, the more it looks like the Republicans at the national level may be on the verge of writing off the Texas Senate race as a lost cause that would be a waste if they started pouring money into it.
Capitol Inside had the other statewide races for posts outside the judiciary ranked as likely Republican for months. But they've all been moved in the Democrats' director to the leans GOP list as a result of the adverse effect Paxton could have for Republicans up and down the ballot this fall.
Capitol Inside has been one or two steps ahead of the most distinguished and experienced national experts like Sabato and the Cook Political Report when it comes to assessing the Texas Senate contest. The Paxton-Talarico clash is currently rated as a toss up here while the Cook Report and Sabato have it ranked as leans Republican after months of being on their likely GOP lists.
But the Republicans on the statewide ticket here have little going for them now beyond the fact that they're the GOP nominees in a state where Democrats haven't won at that level in 32 years. The fate of Abbott and the Republicans in statewide fights on the ballot below him is tied inextricably to President Donald Trump at a time when he's historically unpopular with the voters here. But a Talarico victory at the top of the ticket could put all of them in peril.
more to come ...
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