Texas · Senate

Who is running?

James Talarico (Democratic), Ken Paxton (Republican), Ted Brown (Libertarian). The margin below is James Talarico minus the other candidate in the main contest; the rest are on the ballot and not in it.

The race, in brief

Texas elects a U.S. senator on November 3, 2026. The state profile on file records a non-Hispanic white share of 0.4, a Hispanic share of 0.4 and a median age of 35.5. In the text, Donald Trump won the state by nearly 14 points in 2024 and Ted Cruz by over 8; Democrats have not won a Senate election in Texas since 1988.

The seat is open in effect: four-term Republican John Cornyn lost renomination. He led the March 3 first round with 42.0% to Ken Paxton's 40.5% and Wesley Hunt's 13.5%, but Paxton, endorsed by Trump on May 19, won the May 26 runoff with 63.8%. Paxton has been attorney general since 2015 and was impeached by the Texas House in 2023 before the Senate acquitted him. The Democratic nominee is state representative James Talarico, who beat Jasmine Crockett 52.4% to 46.2%. Cornyn will vote for Paxton but not campaign for him; Crockett backs Talarico but declined to campaign. Libertarian Ted Brown is also running. As of June 30, 2026 Talarico had raised $68,560,930 with $21,548,155 on hand, Paxton $9,248,699 with $1,755,783; the Senate Leadership Fund committed over $100 million to support Paxton.

Most raters call the race a Tossup; FiftyPlusOne, Silver Bulletin and Split Ticket list it as a flip, and Inside Elections rates it R. The average of six poll aggregates is Talarico 47.9%, Paxton 44.6%. Late-September polls range from Paxton 48%, Talarico 45% (Pulse Decision Science, R) to Talarico 50%, Paxton 44% (Marist University).

A paragraph quoting a model forecast from the day this brief was written is omitted; the current forecast is at the top of this page.

The facts, each beside its sentence

Not in the source: facts.forecast carries no basis field, so the dossier cannot say whether the model uses the state polls reported here.; The text's prose gives Cornyn 41.9% and Paxton 40.7% in the first round, while its results table gives 42.0% and 40.5%; the table figures are used.; The runoff results table itself is not in the text; only the 63.8% figure is.; 'flip' ratings (FiftyPlusOne, Silver Bulletin, Split Ticket) do not say Lean/Likely; no rating carries a Safe/Likely/Lean grade.; No endorsement lists are included (the endorsement sections are empty in the text).

Read from the district's section of Wikipedia's state page (CC BY-SA), archived as 4fdac9453771; written by claude-fable-5-1 (batch reader) on 2026-09-30 and checked mechanically: every quote occurs verbatim in the archived text, every number in the brief occurs in the inputs. No probability here is the reader's.

Who holds the seat now

John Cornyn (Republican), in this chamber since 2002, 5 terms, class 2 (term ends 2027). Committees: Senate Committee on Finance; Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; Senate Committee on the Budget; Senate Committee on the Judiciary; Joint Committee on Taxation; Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; United States Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control (Chairman).

Ted Cruz (Republican), in this chamber since 2013, 3 terms, class 1 (term ends 2031). Committees: Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation (Chairman); Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; Senate Committee on Rules and Administration; Senate Committee on the Judiciary.

From the congress-legislators dataset (CC0), archived as ae8cb9477c48. For a Senate race this lists both of the state's senators; the one whose term ends in the election year holds the seat on the ballot. For a House district redrawn for 2026 it is the member elected under the old lines with this number, who may be running elsewhere; the dossier above names who is running here.

The money

FEC bulk candidate summaries through August 13, 2026; $63,535,772 of independent expenditures for or against these candidates this cycle (FEC Schedule E, types 24E and 24A), which is the parties' and outside groups' own revealed view of whether this seat is in play.

How it has voted for president

A shift of 4.5 points toward the Republicans from 2016 to 2024. county returns summed; MEDSL county file (2016), an MIT-licensed county file (2020, checked against certified state results) and MEDSL precinct returns (2024). For a district split across counties this is an estimate, and where the state published the exact 2024 figure for these lines, that exact figure is the one the model uses.

The state in numbers

ACS 5-year state tables; BLS county unemployment and BEA county income, transfers and jobs summed to the state. Every figure is a named column of a named public-domain table, archived before it was read.

Who is ahead, and by how much?

Two numbers because they answer two questions. The nowcast is where opinion stands; the election-day forecast is where it is likely to end up.

How likely is each to win?

Monte Carlo error is ±0.2 points. A change smaller than that is simulation noise rather than news, and this page will not describe it as movement.

How wide is the range?

Nowcast: 90% of simulations fall between -8.5 and +9.0 points. Election day: -11.9 to +9.8. The election-day interval is 4.2 points wider, which is the 33 days of movement still to come.

What is the uncertainty made of?

Total sd 6.93 points, made of race-specific polling error 52%, drift to election day 34%, correlated polling error 12%, latent opinion 2%. The decomposition is stored with the forecast rather than reconstructed, so a probability whose dominant input is a placeholder is visibly that.

What evidence is this built on?

41 polls, most recent 2026-09-29. 37% verified against a primary source.

What changed since the last run?

Shaded band is the 90% interval, line is the central estimate, positive is James Talarico ahead of Ken Paxton. Over 18 stored forecasts the central estimate moved -3.4 points. There were 7 specification changes (marked on the axis) and 4 new polls arrived over this window — so the movement mixes new evidence with changes to the model.

Since 2026-10-01: margin +0.00 points, win probability +0.0 points, on +0 polls.

Not answered here: why it changed. Splitting a move into new polls, time and specification means re-running the earlier model against the later inputs -- two extra posterior fits -- so it is computed on a cadence (scripts/attribute_forecasts.py) rather than while you wait. This pair of runs has not been decomposed yet. The size of the move is shown; the cause is not guessed at.

How has this model done before?

Measured on 230 forecasts across 230 races in cycles 2016,2018,2020,2022,2024: mean absolute error 4.56 points, Brier score 0.0543. The nominal 90% interval contained the result 94% of the time, the 80% interval 84%, and the 50% interval 47%. Read that with care: a national polling miss moves every race in a cycle at once, so the sample size for a question about the intervals is 5 cycle(s), not 230 forecasts. Per cycle -- bias +1.644 pts; 2016: n=43 bias=+4.68 cov90=0.860; 2018: n=63 bias=-0.52 cov90=1.000; 2020: n=35 bias=+5.44 cov90=0.886; 2022: n=54 bias=-0.60 cov90=0.944; 2024: n=35 bias=+1.48 cov90=1.000.

Where did every number come from?

Nowcast run 0ccca77f-4fb2-4ce9-bb3b-294ceb6c2817 and election-day run 8d39f3cd-55e3-432e-bcb6-bc291cc79b3a, model single_race_latent/0.8.1 at commit bdf7e83107c17a2399efe61a44ef1bbee48f9284, seeds 20260924 and 20260924.