Texas Senate odds show Talarico at 65% as Trump heads to Lubbock for Paxton

State Rep. James Talarico remains the favorite over Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Kalshi heading into the final week of the campaign, even as new public polling shows the race tightening to a near-tie.

Kalshi's Texas Senate winner market prices Talarico at 65%, compared with 35% for Paxton. That's the same level as last week, with nearly $45 million traded on the race. Kalshi's Texas Senate margin market forecasts a Talarico win of about 2.2 points.

The latest wave of public polling has pulled the race closer to even than at any point this fall.

A Fox News poll released Oct. 21 found Talarico and Paxton tied at 49% among likely voters, erasing the 2-point edge Talarico held in Fox's September survey. Fox attributed the shift to Paxton consolidating conservatives, rural voters, suburban women and voters who backed Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP primary.

Talarico still has structural advantages in that poll. Paxton's favorability is underwater by 17 points (41% favorable, 58% unfavorable), while Talarico sits at a net +1. Hispanic voters, who backed Trump in 2024, favor Talarico by 30 points.

Emerson College Polling and The Hill had Talarico ahead 48% to 46% on Oct. 22, within the margin of error. When undecided voters were pushed, the race narrowed to 49% to 48%, with Libertarian Ted Brown at 3%.

A CBS News poll conducted Oct. 8–16 showed Talarico up 51% to 49%. CBS's Anthony Salvanto noted that Democrats were more likely to say they would definitely vote, but that the larger pool of Republicans in Texas makes GOP turnout the key variable. The RealClearPolitics average gives Talarico a 1.8-point lead.

The gap between the polls and the market is worth noting. Polling averages put Talarico up roughly 2 points, a margin that traders are pricing as nearly a two-in-three chance of a Democratic flip.

Republicans are sending their biggest names to the state for the final push.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to rally with Paxton in Lubbock and Corpus Christi on Tuesday, Oct. 27, according to CBS News Texas. Vice President JD Vance will follow with a rally in Weatherford, west of Fort Worth, on Thursday. Talarico is answering on the same turf, with a stop in Amarillo and a rally at Texas Tech on the night of Trump's Lubbock event, ABC7 Amarillo reported.

The outside spending has been just as heavy. CBS News Texas reported that Republicans have spent more than $200 million on Paxton's behalf, much of it in negative ads targeting Talarico's comments on social and cultural issues. Talarico has a large edge in direct fundraising, with $68.6 million raised to Paxton's $19.5 million, according to FEC figures on Kalshi's market page.

Talarico got an unusual boost last week when Neil Bush, brother of former President George W. Bush, said he voted for the Democrat. In a Facebook post, Bush cited concern about Paxton's record, including his challenge to the 2020 election results, and wrote that "character matters more than party affiliation."

The endorsement speaks to the exact voters Talarico needs. CBS's Ed O'Keefe framed the math bluntly: a 1–2 point margin in Texas can mean 100,000 to 150,000 votes, and Talarico likely needs a meaningful number of Republicans to cross over or skip the race.

On the trail this weekend, both candidates sharpened their closing messages. Paxton told a standing-room crowd in Georgetown that Talarico is the most radical Democrat ever to run statewide, KSAT reported, and pitched a $25,000 deduction for out-of-pocket medical costs, according to KVUE.

Early voting, which runs through Oct. 30, is on a record pace. About 4.2 million Texans had voted through Saturday, 22% of registered voters, per TexPolls. In-person turnout is at 21.1% of registered voters, versus 14.7% at this point in 2022. Harris County alone topped 624,000 ballots through Sunday, ABC13 reported.

Turnout gains are largest in Dallas County, up 9.5 points from the same point in 2022, and battleground Tarrant, up 9.3, while GOP-leaning Montgomery is up just 1.6. New voters are also reshaping the electorate. More than 40% of early voters who skipped 2024 are Hispanic, roughly double their share among those who did vote, according to VoteHub data analyzed by Zachary Donnini, its head of data science.

In Hidalgo County, which is 92% Hispanic, turnout is running ahead of its 2024 presidential pace, and 16% of early voters sat out 2024 entirely. Donnini called it "a microcosm of the exceptionally strong Hispanic turnout across Texas."

Tarrant County may be the clearest test. VoteHub estimates Talarico needs to carry it by about 6 points to win statewide, Donnini told CBS News Texas.

Still, it's hard to draw conclusions from early vote data. It shows who is voting, not who they're voting for, and Donnini noted the Democratic edge could simply mean Republicans are voting later. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told ABC13 that Democrats will "start running out of voters mid-week," with 600,000 high-propensity Republicans yet to vote. And Trump carried Texas by 14 points in 2024.

The polls call Texas a coin flip. Kalshi traders don't. At 65%, the market has Talarico as a clear favorite, even with Fox showing a dead heat and Republicans pouring more than $200 million into Paxton's corner.

The final week will decide which read holds up. Trump in Lubbock and Corpus Christi and Vance in Weatherford are aimed at one group: the Republicans who haven't voted yet, which Patrick puts at 600,000. If they turn out by Friday, the polls will look right. If the surge in Tarrant and Dallas holds and breaks Democratic, Texas could elect its first Democratic senator since 1988.

Kalshi markets now predict:

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