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A new poll of Texas’ Senate primaries shows state Rep. James Talarico leading U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett by 9 percentage points among likely Democratic voters, marking a significant shift from a December survey that found Crockett leading by a similar margin.
In a sample of 413 statewide voters conducted earlier this week, Talarico, D-Austin, led Crockett, D-Dallas, with 47% to 38%. Another 15% were undecided ahead of the March 3 primary.
The poll, conducted by Emerson College, comes about a month after a Texas Southern University survey found Crockett leading by an 8-point margin. The TSU poll was conducted in the days after Crockett’s last-minute entry into the Democratic primary.
In both polls, Talarico leads among Latino and white voters, while Crockett has overwhelming support among Black voters.
Talarico had a 34-point lead among Latino voters and a 29-point lead among white voters in the Emerson poll. But Crockett had the support of 80% of Black voters surveyed.
The 17-point swing toward Talarico between the TSU and Emerson polls largely stemmed from his expanded lead with men, Latino voters and white voters, and from Crockett’s narrower lead with women and older Democratic voters.
On the Republican side, the poll shows Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn locked in a close race that is likely to head to a runoff, with neither able to garner even 30% of the vote. If no candidate reaches 50% in the March election, the contest will be decided by a May runoff between the top two finishers.
No Senate GOP candidate has come close to majority support in recent public polls.
The Emerson survey found the two front-runners essentially in a dead heat, with Paxton at 27% and Cornyn at 26%. Houston U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt trailed with 16% support. The poll included 550 voters and has a margin of error of 4.1 percentage points.
The result is largely unchanged from when Emerson polled the Senate GOP primary in August, before Hunt entered the race, and found Cornyn leading Paxton, 30% to 29%. In between those two surveys, Cornyn allies have poured over $40 million into advertising to bolster the senior senator’s image. Paxton, meanwhile, has barely spent.
Democrats have hotly debated whether Crockett or Talarico would be better positioned to break their party’s three-decade losing streak in Texas statewide elections. The Emerson poll found Talarico performing marginally better against the Republican field.
In head-to-head matchups measured by the poll, both Cornyn and Hunt lead Crockett by 5 percentage points and Talarico by 3 points.
The Emerson poll also adds fuel to the longstanding argument, advanced by Cornyn and his allies, that Paxton would put Texas’ Senate seat in danger for Republicans — or, at the very least, force the party to spend money in Texas that would otherwise be used in traditional battleground states.
Paxton is tied with either Democrat, 46% to 46%, in hypothetical matchups polled by Emerson.
Elsewhere on the ballot, the survey found Texas Gov. Greg Abbott leading Democratic state Rep. Gina Hinojosa, 50% to 42%, in his bid for a fourth term.
The Emerson poll also found Texans’ top issues are shifting. As in August, the economy remained voters’ top concern, with 28% calling it the most important issue facing the state. But immigration has fallen out of the No. 2 spot, down to 14%, with threats to democracy overtaking it at 17%.
Additionally, President Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen in Texas since Emerson’s August poll. That month, 49% of Texas voters approved of the job Trump was doing, and 42% disapproved. But his 7-point net approval rating has shrunk to 2, with 48% approving and 46% disapproving of his job performance.
