Talarico 10 to 15 Points Ahead of O'Rourke
2018 Average in Terms of Polling Margins
Capitol Inside
April 30, 2026
Texas Democrat James Talarico is running substantially stronger in the polling on the current U.S. Senate race than Beto O'Rourke had at any point as a juggernaut nominee who came within three points of ousting U.S. Senator U.S. Ted Cruz in the general election during President Donald Trump's first term in 2018.
The state representative from Austin led U.S. Senator John Cornyn by 5 percentage points on average in a pair of polls on the Texas Senate competition in the past two days. Talarico was up on Attorney General Ken Paxton by 6.5 points on average in the surveys of voters that the University of Texas and Texas Public Opinion Research made public this week.
O'Rourke - a congressional member from El Paso when he took aim at the Senate seat - emerged from the Democratic primary as a double-digit underdog in his first statewide quest eight years ago. A Quinnipiac poll in found Cruz ahead by 11 points in May of 2018 before a CBS News survey pegged the incumbent's lead at 10 points a month later.
O'Rourke trailed Cruz in all but one of several dozen polls that were conducted on the Texas Senate fight in 2018. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found the Democrat in front by 2 points in September. Cruz led O'Rourke by 7 points on average in polls on the Texas battle for the Senate by the time the votes were cast that year. Cruz dodged a bullet when he defeated O'Rourke in the 2018 general election by 2.56 points with less than 51 percent of the vote.
Cruz portrayed O'Rourke as the toughest challenger that an incumbent like himself would ever have to face in a general election. O'Rourke raised historic sums of campaign cash for the Senate bid - which broke the record at the time for a fundraising haul in a single quarter with $38 million that he rounded up from July through September in 2018.
Talarico is no slouch in the fundraising arena himself - having set a new all-time mark for the first quarter of an election year in a U.S. Senate bid with a $27 million haul in the first three months of 2026. But the Texas Democrat has Republicans here sweating record levels even more with his showings in the polls on the Senate race that have been revealed this week.
The TPOR poll, which was conducted by Slingshot Strategies, showed Talarico leading Cornyn by 3 points with 44 percent support from the likely voters in the survey. Talarico was up on Paxton by 5 points in the TPOR poll that came out on Tuesday with support from 46 percent of the participants. Republicans dismissed the TPOR poll because the surveys for the firm are directed by a former Democratic Party officer and candidate.
But the Texas Politics Project poll on Wednesday made it look even worse for the GOP when Talarico led Paxton by 8 percentage points and Cornyn by 7 in the fight for a Senate seat that the incumbent has held for almost two dozen years. The University of Texas pollsters had underestimated Talarico a month before the March primary election when they found U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett leading him by 12 points in a fight between the Texas party's top two stars for the Senate nomination.
Texas Public Opinion Research found Talarico trailing Crockett by 1 point in January when a University of Houston poll about the same time had Crockett winning by 8. A University of Texas at Tyler showed Crockett up by 18 points several weeks before the primary vote.Talarico was a slight favorite in the polls in the closing stretch before the initial Texas election in 2026. He beat Crockett by slightly more than 6 percentage points in the election March 3.
Talarico's support from independents and moderate Republicans is all the more apparent in the polling on the Texas governor's race in the UT and TPOR polls this week. Governor Greg Abbott led Austin State Rep. Gina Hinojosa by 6 points in the Texas Politics Project survey after being 5 points up on the Democratic challenger in the poll for TPOR. Talarico's polled 10 to 15 points higher than the Democrats' gubernatorial nominee, who was in the same basic position in which O'Rourke found himself in the Texas Senate contest in 2018, if Hinojosa wasn't faring slighly better than he had been then.
The Republicans thought their opposition research efforts had uncovered enough on Talarico to prevent him from ever being elected again much less statewide. President Donald Trump gave voters a preview of what to expect on Talarico on March 22 in a Truth Social post that ended as an attack on California Governor Gavin Newsom.
"The Democrat running in Texas, James Talarico, turns out to be a FRAUD!," the president proclaimed. "It showed after the Election when he beat Low IQ Candidate Jasmine Crockett (No relation to Davy Crockett!). He’s got six Genders, insults to Jesus, only vegan food, was wearing a mask in 2023 and 2024, and is a weak, ineffective guy who we “allowed” to win prior to releasing the avalanche of information we had on him because, as bad as Crockett was as a Candidate, this guy is worse! I believe that any human being running against him, sick, incompetent, close to death or, even a child, would win. He may be the Worst Candidate I have ever seen, other than, of course, Gavin Newscum who admitted that he suffers from mental incapacity, is unable to read a speech, and is dumb but, in saying “the dumb comment,” referred to his audience, and therefore became, in the eyes of African Americans, A TOTAL RACIST — which is probably true! Gavin admits that he’s a Low IQ individual, which typically is not good for winning the Presidency. His interview may have been the worst ever given by a “professional” politician. I believe, it takes him OUT OF THE RACE. Kamala is back! President DONALD J. TRUMP"
But Talarico's strong showings in the recent polls give the impression that Trump's ripping gave his Senate campaign inadvertent boosts in both fundraising and polling on the race.
more to come ...
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