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Beto O'Rourke went into the last week of his 2018 Senate race trailing Ted Cruz in every final poll. Eight years later, Democrat James Talarico heads into the final stretch tied with Republican Ken Paxton or a little ahead, depending on the survey.
O'Rourke lost by 2.6 points. RealClearPolitics had him down 6.8 in its last average; today it has Talarico, a state representative who used to teach sixth grade, up 1.5. The Cook Political Report, Sabato's Crystal Ball and Inside Elections all call it a toss-up. Texas hasn't elected a Democrat statewide since 1994.
Brendan Steinhauser, a Republican strategist in Texas, puts the gap down to two things.
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"This national climate is key to all of this, and then the differences between the candidates is the second key," he told Newsweek.
Paxton has cushions of his own. President Donald Trump won Texas by almost 14 points two years ago. Outside groups on Paxton's side have outspent Talarico's allies by more than 2-to-1. And the latest Fox News poll finds conservatives, along with Republicans who backed Senator John Cornyn in the primary, drifting back to him.
Newsweek reached out to the Talarico and Paxton campaigns for comment.
1. Ken Paxton Carries Baggage Ted Cruz Did Not
Cruz ran in 2018 as a first-term senator, with Texas Republicans lined up behind him. That summer a University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll had his job approval at 50 percent; 42 percent disapproved.
Paxton's record is longer and messier. A grand jury indicted him on felony securities fraud charges in 2015. The case dragged on until 2024, when he took a pretrial diversion deal: community service and nearly $300,000 in restitution. In 2023, the Texas House impeached him over bribery and abuse-of-office allegations. The state Senate acquitted him in September. Then, in July 2025, his wife, state Senator Angela Paxton, filed for divorce, citing "biblical grounds."
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Trump endorsed him a week before the May runoff against Cornyn, and Paxton won it 63.8 percent to 36.2 percent. Cornyn still hasn't endorsed him.
Fox News polled Texas voters October 15 to 19. Forty-one percent had a favorable view of Paxton and 58 percent didn't. Talarico came in at 49 percent favorable, 48 percent unfavorable.
Mark Jones, a fellow in political science at Rice University's Baker Institute, goes back further than the runoff.
"The campaign failed when Paxton decided to file to run for the U.S. Senate," Jones told Newsweek. "Paxton was always going to be a weak candidate and was going to underperform the Republican baseline."
Republicans are coming home anyway, according to Fox: 90 percent back Paxton. Among voters who dislike both men, he's up 50 points.
2. The Polls Look Nothing Like 2018
In 2018, Cruz led every public poll from April through July. Decision Desk HQ counted O'Rourke ahead in roughly one survey out of 10 over the whole race. The last round had Cruz up anywhere from 3 to 7 points.
Fox's October survey, run by Beacon Research and Shaw & Company Research among 1,398 likely voters, has the two men tied at 49 percent. An Emerson College/Nexstar poll of 1,000 likely voters, taken October 17 to 19, had Talarico at 48 percent to Paxton's 46 percent, and 49 percent to 48 percent once undecided voters were asked which way they lean. Libertarian Ted Brown got 3 percent.
The University of Houston's Hobby School, releasing its numbers October 18, had Talarico up 2, at 48 percent to 46 percent. The widest margin of the bunch came in a Cook Political Report survey by New River Strategies and GS Strategy Group, a bipartisan pair: 49 percent to 44 percent among 934 likely voters polled October 9 to 13.
Back then, Inside Elections had the race at Likely Republican and Sabato's Crystal Ball at Lean Republican. Inside Elections moved this one to toss-up on October 15, which left all three forecasters in agreement.
Most of these leads sit inside the margin of error. Texas polls have been wrong both ways, too. They lowballed O'Rourke by about 4 points in 2018. In 2024, Democrat Colin Allred lost to Cruz by 8.5 points, a wider margin than most pre-election polling suggested.
"Voters have had a long time to analyze both candidates, Talarico and Paxton," Steinhauser said.
3. Texans Are Paying More and Feeling Worse
O'Rourke ran during one of the strongest economic stretches of the past two decades. The University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index stood at 98.6 in October 2018. Its final October 2026 reading was 48.0, the second-lowest in the survey's 74-year history.
In the University of Texas/Texas Politics Project's October poll, 54 percent of Texas voters said the national economy is worse than a year ago. Fox found 43 percent of Texas voters say they are worse off than two years ago and 20 percent say they are better off, with the worse-off group backing Talarico by 45 points.
Fuel is the cost voters see every week. Regular gasoline in Texas averaged $3.71 a gallon on Wednesday, according to AAA, up from $2.61 a year ago and $2.55 in late October 2018. Diesel cost $5.79, about $2.60 more than last year, after setting a state record of $5.98 on September 19. Governor Greg Abbott declared a statewide disaster over diesel prices on September 28.
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Nationally, AAA put regular gas at $4.25 and diesel at $6.35 on Wednesday. Analysts have tied the jump to the war with Iran, instability around the Strait of Hormuz, Russia's ban on diesel exports and tariffs.
"It's real. Everybody brings it up unprompted," Mike Madrid, a political strategist and author of The Latino Century who has traveled through South Texas this year, told Newsweek. "Whether you have a truck or not, because they know that it's affecting the entire economy."
Matt Angle, a Democratic strategist and director of the Lone Star Project, told Newsweek that Talarico has kept his campaign on "people's focus on being able to make a living, buy groceries, put gas in their car, make enough money at work in order to pay their rent or make their house payment."
Rural voters, many of whom drive diesel trucks for work, still back Paxton by a wide margin. He leads them 65 percent to 27 percent in the Hobby School poll.
4. Trump Is Underwater in Texas This Time
Trump was unpopular nationally in 2018 as well. Gallup measured his approval at 40 percent in late October that year, and Democrats picked up 40 House seats while still losing in Texas.
A CNN poll of Texas likely voters in October 2018 found 49 percent approved of Trump and 48 percent disapproved. Those numbers have since slipped. This month, Fox found 45 percent approve, and 54 percent disapprove, and the Texas Politics Project recorded his worst net approval in the state across both of his terms, 10 points underwater.
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Latino voters account for part of that slide. Talarico leads Paxton 64 percent to 34 percent among Hispanic voters in the Fox poll, after Hispanic Texans narrowly favored Trump in 2024, according to Fox's voter analysis. Those numbers return Democrats to about where O'Rourke stood in 2018, when he won 64 percent of Latino voters, according to Pew Research Center's analysis of exit polls.
Jones called Latinos in Texas "the ultimate swing voters" and said they are "far less anchored by partisanship" than white or Black voters. In his view, most Latino voters believe the Trump administration has failed to deliver the economic prosperity it promised.
Enthusiasm also favors Democrats for now. Sixty-nine percent of Texas Democrats told Fox they are extremely interested in the election, compared with 61 percent of Republicans.
"Democrats are more enthusiastic to vote this year than in the past," Steinhauser said.
About 4.5 million Texans voted in the first seven days of early voting, according to the Texas Tribune, running a bit behind the 2018 pace.
5. Talarico Has More Money and a Different Pitch
O'Rourke's money was one of the big stories of 2018: $38.1 million in the third quarter alone, $80.3 million over the cycle. Talarico has passed both. He has raised more than $134 million, over $60 million of it from July through September, a third-quarter record for a Senate candidate. On September 30, he had $14.6 million in the bank. Paxton had $4.9 million, Federal Election Commission filings show.
Plenty of it comes from Republican-leaning suburbs. Newsweek went through itemized contributions in 19 suburban counties around Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Austin and San Antonio and counted about 10,200 Talarico donors. Paxton had about 2,600.
Count outside groups, though, and Paxton pulls ahead. Those backing him or attacking Talarico have put in more than $230 million, The Texan reports, against roughly $94 million on the other side.
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Talarico studied at a Presbyterian seminary, and he talks about his faith on the trail almost as much as he talks about prices and corruption. He has gone after rural and religious voters. O'Rourke carried different baggage. "Hell yes, we're going to take your AR-15," he said on a presidential debate stage in 2019, and Republicans used the line against him in the 2022 governor's race. He lost that one by 11 points.
"I think they've been very, very smart and very, very disciplined," Angle said of Talarico and Gina Hinojosa, the Democratic nominee for governor.
Paxton calls Talarico "the most radical Democrat ever to run statewide," and he has gone after Talarico's old remarks on religion and on oil and gas. Fifty-three percent of voters in the Fox poll worry Talarico is too liberal. Half worry Paxton is too close to Trump.
Angle isn't celebrating yet. "We are very hopeful and very optimistic about this election, but again, we're not taking anything for granted," he said.
Madrid has a short list for what Democrats need on Election Day. Very high Democratic turnout. Independents breaking from Republicans in historic numbers. And Republican voters who either stay home or cross over.
"You need all three of those to win Texas," he said, "and that's why it's so competitive right now."
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Gray R. Thomas
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