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By Andrew Stanton
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A new poll delivered a major warning sign to Texas Republicans about their support among Latino voters ahead of this year's midterm elections as Democrats hope to make the Lone Star State’s U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races competitive.
President Donald Trump’s inroads with Latino voters, a voting bloc that historically leaned toward Democrats, helped carry him to victory in the 2024 presidential race. But his support among those voters has slipped amid backlash to his economic and immigration policies, raising major red flags for Republicans approaching the midterms in states like Texas that have a sizable Latino population.
While Trump won the state by double digits in 2024, Democrats believe a reversion among Latino voters could cause large shifts in Texas this year, boosting their confidence in their ability to compete in the traditionally Republican state.
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Texans haven't elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since Lloyd Bentsen won reelection to a fourth term in 1988. Democrats have been able to make some races close, including the 2018 contest between GOP Senator Ted Cruz (51 percent) and Beto O’Rourke (48 percent).
Newsweek reached out to leading Senate candidates for comment via email.
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Democrats Lead Republicans Among Latino Voters, Poll Finds
The new poll from Texas Public Opinion Research found that Latino voters are backing Democrats by sizable margins in 2026. That would mark a notable shift, as Latino voters backed Trump by 10 points over former Vice President Kamala Harris in Texas, though she won the bloc nationwide, according to CNN’s exit polling.
State Representative James Talarico comfortably leads among Latino voters in the Senate race, according to the poll. Talarico won the Democratic nomination in the March primary, but GOP Senator John Cornyn and Attorney General Ken Paxton, who this week was endorsed by Trump, are heading to a runoff next week.
Talarico led Cornyn by 32 points among Latino voters with 57 percent support to the senator’s 25 percent. Talarico received 57 percent against Paxton as well, though the attorney general’s support stood at 30 percent, according to the poll.
In the gubernatorial race, Democrat Gina Hinojosa led with 56 percent support among Latino voters in the latest poll, compared to GOP Governor Greg Abbott’s 34 percent.
The poll surveyed 1,865 likely voters, including 392 Latino voters, from April 17-20 and had a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.
Eduardo Leal, press secretary for Abbott, told Newsweek that Election Day is the “only poll that matters.”
“Governor Abbott knows Texas is a top target for national Democrats, and he’s taking his campaign seriously. Texans have repeatedly rejected the left’s radical agenda of high taxes, soft-on-crime policies, and boys in girls' sports. We are fully confident they will support the common sense, conservative principles that keep Texas strong,” he said.
Hinojosa spokesperson Tommy Kubitschek told Newsweek that Abbott should be concerned about the poll.
“Gina is winning Latinos, independents, and young voters -- the exact coalition needed to win Texas in November. Texans are tired of paying the Greg Abbott Corruption Tax while he gives handouts to his biggest donors. The bottom is falling out for Abbott with the voters who decide this state, and it's only going to get worse for him,” Kubitschek said.
Who Is Leading Senate, Governor Races?
Talarico led both Republicans in the Senate race in the poll. He held a 3-point lead over Cornyn (44 percent to 41 percent) and a 5-point lead over Paxton (46 percent to 41 percent).
Abbott led Hinojosa in the gubernatorial race by 5 points (48 percent to 43 percent).
Another recent poll from Texas Southern University, which surveyed 1,223 likely voters from April 22-May 6, pointed to a competitive Senate race. Cornyn held a single-point lead, receiving 45 percent support in the general election matchup, according to the poll. Libertarian candidate Ted Brown received 3 percent, while 8 percent were still unsure whom to support.
Paxton and Talarico were tied, each holding 45 percent support. In that matchup, Brown’s support dropped to 2 percent, while 8 percent were still not sure who they would vote for in November.
Trump’s Latino Approval Rating Falls Among Hispanic Voters—Poll
Trump’s approval rating has plummeted with Hispanic voters who supported him in 2024, according to a Pew Research Center poll released last Friday, which found that only 66 percent of Hispanic voters who cast their ballots for Trump in 2024 approve of his job performance—the lowest point in his second term.
That’s down from 93 percent who approved of Trump in Pew's February 2025 survey and 75 percent in its January 2026 survey.
Among all Hispanic adults, his approval rating was only 22 percent, according to the survey. The data come from the center’s American Trends Panel, conducted among 5,103 Americans from April 20-26.
Trump came close to winning Latino voters in 2024, according to CNN exit polling. They backed Harris by only a 5-point margin, giving her 51 percent of the vote to Trump's 46 percent.
That’s a major shift from 2020, when they gave former President Joe Biden 65 percent of the vote and Trump 32 percent. Even that was a slight rightward shift from 2016, when former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won 66 percent of Latino voters, and Trump won only 28 percent.
Cornyn, Paxton Set to Face Off in Contentious GOP Runoff
The poll comes less than a week before Texas holds its runoff.
Cornyn, who has represented Texas in the Senate since 2002, faces a challenge from Paxton after drawing criticism from parts of the Republican base over his support for a 2022 bipartisan gun‑safety bill and past comments about Trump. He is viewed as a more traditional Republican. In 2023, he said he did not believe Trump would win the 2024 presidential election.
Paxton heads into the runoff with strong backing from the party’s more conservative supporters and Trump-aligned voters.
But many Republicans do not believe he would be as strong a candidate against Talarico, as some view Cornyn as more capable of holding together a coalition between Hispanic and suburban voters in a difficult national environment for the party.
Paxton also has some legal baggage tied to his 2023 impeachment by the Texas House on articles including bribery and the abuse of public trust. The impeachment investigation stemmed from a proposed whistleblower lawsuit settlement, involving several of Paxton's former aides who said they were fired after accusing him of accepting bribes and other misconduct. The attorney general has denied any wrongdoing and urged his supporters to protest outside the statehouse.
Acquitted in the Texas Senate, Paxton described the impeachment as a “weaponization of our political system" meant to "intimidate, bankrupt, silence, and punish" him.
Trump Backs Paxton in Runoff
“I know Ken well, have seen him tested at the highest and most difficult levels, and he is a WINNER! Ken is a Strong Supporter of TERMINATING THE FILIBUSTER and, very importantly, THE SAVE AMERICA ACT, something which polls at 87%, including Dumocrats, and yet can’t seem to get approved,” Trump wrote in a post to Truth Social endorsing Paxton this week.
Below is a look at recent polls on the Texas runoff:
- Peak Insights showed Cornyn with 47 percent and Paxton with 46 percent. It surveyed 800 likely voters from May 2-5.
- Remington showed Paxton with 47 percent support to Cornyn's 36 percent. It surveyed 1,810 likely voters from May 3-5.
- The University of Houston poll showed Paxton with 48 percent and Cornyn with 45. It surveyed 1,200 likely voters from April 28-May 1.
Can Texas Become 2026 Swing State?
Democrats have long hoped that Texas, the largest Republican-leaning state, would become more competitive as a result of blue-shifting suburban areas around cities like Austin, Dallas and Houston.
At the presidential level, that played out throughout the 2010s. Republican margins shrank from nearly 16 points in 2012 to 9 in 2016 to less than 6 in 2020.
But Democrats have consistently fallen short in Texas and lost ground in 2024. Still, they believe Texas has the potential to become competitive in 2026 as Trump’s national approval rating slips and as Democratic candidates overperform expectations in special elections across the country.
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