The U.S. Senate Contest in Texas

 Recently, The Texas Poll Report provided voting preferences of a sample of Texas registered voters. This post relates to the preferences of Texas registered voters in the U.S. Senate race among Republican Ken Paxton, Democrat James Talarico, and Libertarian Ted Brown. Since partisanship places a central role in a person's vote choice, I'll first display a Table depicting the partisan identities of the sample. According to the poll, 42 percent of registered Texans are strong or weak Republicans; 30 percent are strong or weak Democrats, and the remaining 28 percent are pure Independents or Independents who lean toward one of the two major parties. Note that I have placed the "leaners" with the Independents.







With this distribution in mind, who do Texas registered voters favor in the

 November General Election to replace Republican John Coryn in the U.S. Senate?









There are several takeaways from the preferences displayed above:

  1. 1. Strong Republicans are more supportive of their candidate than Democrats are supportive of their candidate, but both have 90 percent or more of their support. 
  2. 2. Among weak partisans, Democrats are more supportive of their candidate than Weak Republicans are supportive of their candidate.
  3. 3. Among pure Independents, a majority (52 percent) either support the Libertarian candidate or are undecided about whom they support. 
  4. 4. Independents who lean toward the Democratic candidate are more supportive of James Talarico than Independents who lean toward the Republican Party are supportive of Ken Paxton. The difference is 21 percentage points, which is significant.

Does this mean that Talarico will be the U.S. Senator from Texas in 2029? Not really. Polls are snapshots in time. Events could shift preferences before Election Day. At this point in the race, I'd rather be James Talarico than ken Paxton.



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