After spending much of the spring and summer trailing Attorney General Ken Paxton in the polls, Sen. John Cornyn has pulled even with his main rival for the 2026 Republican Texas Senate primary.
Houston-area Congressman Wesley Hunt, who formally entered the contest last week, is in third place.
The latest survey of likely GOP primary voters by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs and Texas Southern University’s Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs shows Paxton polling 34% in a three-way race, with Cornyn polling 33%, Hunt 22%, and 11% of respondents unsure.
Mark Jones, a professor of political science at Rice University and co-author of the survey, said this change speaks to Cornyn’s campaign efforts over the summer.
“Cornyn as well as his supporters have spent a tremendous amount of money over the course of the summer boosting his name recognition and especially burnishing his conservative bona fides and tying them very closely to Donald Trump,” Jones said. “All while also attacking his opponent Ken Paxton for ethical, legal and marital mishaps.”
In the Democratic primary for the same Senate seat, the poll showed Dallas-area Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett leading in the field — though she hasn’t declared her candidacy. Jones said it’s not unusual for polls to ask about possible candidates beyond those currently running.
“We have questions that consider a four-way race with Jasmine Crockett, Beto O’Rourke, and the two people who are actually in the race, James Talarico and Colin Allred,” Jones said. “But then we also ran it separately, so we also looked at Talarico versus Allred in a two-way race … Crockett is ahead, and what it suggests is that if she were to launch a bid and get into the race, she would start off as the odds-on favorite. But we also can see that Allred and Talarico are pretty much deadlocked right now.”
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Jones also asked respondents about the ongoing federal government shutdown, which he said is unpopular with voters from both parties.
“There tends to be a pox on both of their houses approached by most voters, blaming both Democrats and Republicans, effectively all politicians. But on the margins, Republicans are getting a little more blame than Democrats are,” Jones said. “This isn’t likely to affect the election in 2026 since it’s so far off.”
Jones said it is still unclear which party will end up yielding their position to end the stalemate and reopen the government.
“Every day that passes, I think, will lead to more negative consequences,” he said. “And that’s where it will be up to one of the two sides to effectively say we’ve done enough.
“It’ll probably at the end of the day be perhaps the Democrats who yield simply because they’ll see the negative effects that it’s having on so many federal workers. But Democrats are also sticking to their guns for now because right now they see this is their only real way to resist what they see as overreach, and some of them would call it tyranny, on the part of President Trump.”
Trump’s popularity also took a dip in Jones’ recent poll. Among the president’s 2024 voters, Jones said there was a decrease in those who said they would vote for him again if they could do it over.
“Only 49% said they would vote for Trump [again]. He fell by 7%. And that decline was especially steep among independents; it dropped by 20%. With Gen Zers, it dropped by 16%, and Latinos, it dropped by 12%,” Jones said. “And that Latino number is a very important one because much of the redistricting process that occurred as part of this mid-decade redistricting cycle during the second special session of the Texas Legislature hinges on Republicans repeating their success among Latino voters in 2024.”
