James Talarico Texas Senate odds now look tighter after MS NOW cited a 12-poll average showing Ken Paxton at -14% net favorability and James Talarico with a 6.5-point edge. That gap leaves Paxton with 51.7% unfavorable and 37.5% favorable ratings, while Talarico drew 46.6% positive and 40.0% negative marks.
Paxton’s Favorability Slump
Those numbers put Paxton at the bottom of the Republican U.S. Senate field on favorability. In the polling average, his unfavorable rating is 14 points below zero, and his favorable number never clears his negatives.
For a candidate running in Texas, that is a rough starting point. The state’s Senate race is being measured less by party label alone and more by personal image, and Paxton is carrying the weaker profile.
Talarico’s Edge in Texas
Talarico’s side of the ledger is cleaner. His 46.6% positive rating against 40.0% negative gives him the 6.5-point favorability advantage cited in the polling average, and the spread between the two candidates is roughly 21 points.
That gap is the largest between any pair of candidates in the country in the data cited, which is why Texas is drawing attention beyond its own borders. The numbers suggest a race where the challenger begins with a better image than the Republican nominee, not just a narrower deficit.
Texas and the Midterms
The contrast lands against a wider problem for the Republican Party: none of its nominees in competitive Senate races has positive favorability on average. Texas is part of that pattern, but Paxton’s numbers make the problem look sharper in the Lone Star State.
That is what makes the Texas line in FiftyPlusOne’s model notable. It puts Texas as leaning Democratic even though Donald Trump won it by 14 percentage points in 2024, a reminder that a state can still vote red at the top while its Senate race tilts another way.
Paxton’s record already hangs over the contest. The Texas House of Representatives impeached him in May 2023 on charges of bribery, abuse of office and obstruction, and the Texas Senate acquitted him in September 2023. Those facts now sit beside the polling in a race where image, not just party loyalty, is doing a lot of the work.
Whether the favorability edge turns into votes is the open question. For now, the polling average gives Talarico a cleaner path and leaves Paxton trying to climb out of the weakest image problem in the Republican U.S. Senate field.
