Best Democratic Texas Senate Poll In The 21st Century

Red state, blue math.

Texas Republicans have spent two decades telling themselves this is a red state. Every cycle, some overeager Democrat shows up promising this is the year, and every November the promise dies.

A Univision/YouGov poll out of the Aug. 27–Sept. 4 window has James Talarico up five points on Ken Paxton statewide. CNN’s Harry Enten said it’s the best polling a Democrat has produced in a Texas Senate race in the entire 21st century.

Talarico is up 36 points with independent voters in a state Donald Trump carried by exactly one point with that same group less than two years ago. That’s a 37-point swing in a bloc that decided the last presidential election here. Just a little more than the swing we saw in Taylor Rehmet’s election.

The floor is dropping out from under Trump nationally in the exact demographic his 2024 coalition depended on. CNN’s polling shows his net approval among Hispanic men at -41, a 51-point collapse from the +10 he won them by less than two years ago. On the generic congressional ballot, that same group has gone from favoring Republicans by 8 points to favoring Democrats by 20, a 28-point swing in a bloc Republicans spent a decade insisting was realigning permanently in their favor. Whatever’s happening in Texas isn’t a local anomaly. It’s what a national collapse looks like when it shows up on the ground in a state Republicans thought they’d gerrymandered into safety.

Texas is Republicans’ white rhino.

By the time the 2030 census rolls around, Texas is expected to have 44 electoral seats. If Republicans lose that, they lose the game. They know this. That’s why billionaires and Fortune 500 corporations set money on fire in Republican politicians’ pockets, while children in border counties struggle with hunger.

Of course, if Democrats win Texas, we could move beyond those pesky electoral seats. Listen to Congressman Jamie Raskin talk about the National Popular Vote:

“Abolishing the Electoral College” and “Joining the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact” are both on the 2026 Texas Democratic Party Platform (page 33).

Here are some of the previous actions taken in Texas:

If Republicans lose Texas, they won’t be able to win the presidency ever again. Now, without some serious rebranding, which will undoubtedly take a generation or more.

Even with that fresh gerrymander in place, the map isn’t built for a real wave. Run the numbers district by district and the “safe” Republican seats mostly cluster in the high teens and low twenties. If we see a double-digit statewide environment, which is exactly what Talarico and Hinojosa are currently polling into, that carefully drawn map starts giving back seats almost as fast as it was designed to create them.

So how many seats, exactly?

Take each district’s baseline partisan lean and shift every single one by the same number of points.

First, Texas comes in at R+7.5. Not R+14; that’s Trump’s 2024 number, and it’s not the same thing. This composite blends in other recent statewide races, so it’s a few points less red than the top of the ticket. Useful to know, because it means the ground isn’t quite as scorched as Republicans have insisted for two decades.

Now line current polling up against that R+7.5 baseline. In the governor’s race, Abbott and Hinojosa are trading leads across pollsters. Abbott +7 with Mason-Dixon, Hinojosa +4 with ReconMR. Which nets out to roughly a low-single-digit Abbott edge. Against a R+7.5 baseline, that’s 4 to 6 points of Democratic overperformance. In the Senate race, Talarico hasn’t trailed in a public poll in months, averaging something like D+3 or D+4. Against the same baseline, that’s 10 to 12 points of overperformance.

Call it a 5-to-15-point band. Here’s what each level of statewide swing actually does to the map:

The congressional dominoes fall in this order:

• TX35 (R+4.3), then TX9 (R+5.1), then TX23 (R+8.5),

• Then TX32 (R+13.9), then TX25 (R+17.6)

• With TX10, TX17, TX5, TX24, and TX36 close behind.

In the State House:

• At the 10-point mark, three seats flip. HD112 (R+7.8), HD52 (R+8.8), HD121 (R+9.5).

• Push to 12 points. HD133 (R+10.2), HD138 (R+10.4), HD108 (R+10.5), HD54 (R+10.6).

• At 15 points. HD63 (R+12.2), HD67 (R+14.5), HD65 (R+14.8), HD31 (R+14.8), H-55 (R+14.9).

• And if the environment gets all the way to 20 points. HD61 (R+15.1), HD66 (R+15.1), HD14 (R+15.2), HD28 (R+15.5), HD97 (R+15.6), HD96 (R+15.6), HD94 (R+15.7), HD122 (R+17.0), HD89 (R+17.5), HD129 (R+17.8), HD20 (R+18.3), HD26 (R+18.3), HD132 (R+18.7), HD84 (R+18.8), HD57 (R+19.0), HD93 (R+19.4), HD43 (R+19.6), HD150 (R+19.8).

Two caveats. First, TX15, TX34 and TX35 already are Democratic-favored. The Rio Grande Valley broke hard for Trump in 2024, and is expected to swing back hard.

Second, this is the new map. The one Trump personally strong-armed through in 2025 to manufacture five extra congressional seats, now in use for 2026 after the Supreme Court stayed a lower court ruling against it. Look at what they actually built. It will be a dummymander, like I said.

Could Dems really overperform that much in November?

A better question would be, have they already?

Since Trump’s inauguration, Democrats have run in 45 special elections. They’ve overperformed the prior baseline in every single one of them, by an average of about 16 points. In Iowa, a Democrat flipped a state Senate seat Trump had carried by 21 points three months earlier. In Virginia’s 11th, a district Harris already won by 34, the Democrat won it by 50. Abigail Spanberger turned Virginia’s 5.8-point Harris margin into a 15-point governor’s race blowout. Mikie Sherrill widened New Jersey’s margin in the same direction. So a 5-to-15-point ask for Texas is below the national trend line Democrats have already been running on for a year.

Now, the obvious objection, because I already raised it myself a few sections ago. Texas polls have a track record of overshooting Democrats. Except that’s not what happened in 2025. Polling in Virginia and New Jersey actually underestimated Democrats. Sherrill beat her own polling average by double digits, and all three Virginia statewide races ran ahead of what the polls showed. The historical pattern of Texas polls lowballing Republicans’ actual strength assumed a normal environment.

So no, this is Republicans hoping that the one state where they gerrymandered themselves is also the one state where voters somehow decline to show up.

Texas Republicans built a machine that manufactures a red state and machines only work as long as the inputs stay the same.

Every part of this piece is a different way of saying the inputs changed. Hispanic men didn’t stay put. Independents didn’t stay put. The map they drew last year for a normal midterm is sitting there in a political environment that hasn’t been normal since the day Trump was inaugurated.

That’s the part Republicans can’t rig their way out of. They can pack five Democratic seats into oblivion. They can crack the rest into a map that looks safe on paper.

So no, this isn’t the same promise Texas Democrats have made and broken every cycle for twenty years. Every previous “this is the year” was Democrats hoping Texas would move first. This year is Texas being asked to catch up to a wave that already broke everywhere else.

And if it does, if Talarico wins, if Hinojosa wins, if even a handful of those State House seats flip, the damage doesn’t stay in Austin. Take away 44 electoral votes and a national map Republicans have leaned on since Reconstruction, and there isn’t a rebrand fast enough to build a new one. Texas Republicans spent two decades making sure Texas would never be the state that decided a presidential election against them. They overplayed their hand, and there’s no redraw for that.

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