While the lead in itself is not surprising given the current political climate what is very very surprising are the underlying numbers.

It is not very often we see a Democrat lead in both college educated and non college educated voters but Talarico does. The sheer scale of support that Talarico has over Paxton with Latino and Black votes is wild. In recent years the Republican Party had made considerable gains in these two areas especially with Latino votes and Paxton has minimal support.

When it comes to economic/financial trust Paxton continues to trail and that is an issue when the biggest theme of the election is affordability. Given his position as Attorney General for Texas Paxton does have the ability to go after things like price gouging and other affordability topics but either A) hasn’t or B) has failed to relay that to the voters.

When Paxton secured the nomination most people in DC went oof. Paxton isn’t exactly crushing it in the popularity game and that was fine when he was an AG but when it comes to running for Congress it’s a huge issue.

He is looked at even worse than Musk and the Senator he is replacing. What’s funny about Cornyns number is that he has gotten blasted by Trump and others since the election over some of his votes. When he lost the runoffs essentially Trumps leverage over him fell apart as well leading to him breaking with the President or being the face of the group breaking with the President (much like how Sen. Tillis is often a face associated with breaking from Trump).

This is a problem and something that is going to cost hundreds of millions of dollars to try and overcome. Instead of Texas being a safe state and money being able to go to elections like Georgia, Maine, etc. a boat load has to be spent on Texas because during the primary and run off the much smaller far right of the party backed a guy with incredible baggage over someone who you know exactly what you are going to get.