Texas

As of Jun 18, 2026

Sabato's Crystal Ball and Inside Elections have both moved Texas to Toss-Up, a classification that would have read as political fiction a year ago. Cook Political Report holds at Likely R. The divergence is not idle rater disagreement: it maps directly onto the May 26 Republican runoff between John Cornyn and Ken Paxton, whose outcome determines how much general-election oxygen Democrats actually have. James Talarico, an Austin-area state representative, is the Democratic nominee. Polling as of May 26 shows him trailing the Republican field by roughly 11 points, a gap that is large but not prohibitive if Paxton, who survived impeachment by the Texas House and faces an FTC civil suit, emerges from the runoff carrying that legal weight into a November electorate. Democrats have not won a statewide Texas race since 1994, and the structural barriers, a Republican registration and early-vote advantage built over three decades, remain intact. The populist read on this seat cuts across the usual party lines. Texas's energy sector concentrates pricing power in a handful of producers and grid operators whose lobbying footprint in Austin and Washington has been a consistent subject of legislative complaint from both free-market conservatives and consumer advocates. Cornyn's long incumbency places him at the center of that donor network; Paxton's record as Attorney General reflects a different but equally entrenched set of industry relationships. Talarico has made cost-of-living and grid accountability central arguments, and whether those arguments can attract the disaffected-Republican suburban vote that has trended Democratic in Harris and Collin counties in recent cycles is the race's live empirical question.