New polls out ahead of Texas midterms | Dallas News Live

Now, another day, another poll. The Texas Politics Project has Democratic nominee James Talarico at 50%, Republican nominee Ken Paxton sitting at 47%. That's a dead heat, and it's within the margin of error when that's factored in. One thing is for sure, all of these polls have shown that a lot of these races are close. Joining us live, Renzo Downey, lead writer for the Texas Tribune. Renzo, early voting, less than a week away. What did these polls tell you? Yeah, well, these polls have pretty consistently shown a very competitive race at the top of the ticket. James Talarico, the Democratic state representative from Austin, he's been slightly ahead in those polls. But, you know, when you take a look at just the the aggregate of polls, Talarico has been slightly ahead. And so you're kind of seeing that with how much attention the Republicans have been putting into Texas. You've had the vice president here. You've had the House speaker in South Texas. This is affecting races all across the state. Renzo, a lot of money is being spent. It's expensive to campaign in Texas in general. But the fact that Democrats feel like this is the time for the first time in decades. I mean, is it just them going off of the faith of the polls or is there more to it with Republicans having a candidate that has baggage? Well, certainly that is a factor. I mean, you've got a historically unpopular president at the moment. You have a Senate candidate in Ken Paxton on the Republican side that has had a series of scandals and had a very tough primary, a lot of mudslinging in that primary between him and incumbent Senator John Cornyn, who he defeated. And so between that and the national environment right now the democrats are feeling like they've got a pretty uh opportune situation it's not just the senate race though this same poll has Geneen Hoe of the democratic nominee for governor up by one point over governor greg abbott the governor actually here in north texas today is it so much of a okay if talarico does well there will be a trickle down to this governor's race and maybe the attorney general's race yeah well what's certainly interesting about these uh races the senate race and the governor's race is that you know they're helping each other out uh Geneen Hoe she does well in certain parts of the state that James Talarico you know slightly trails her and that there's also regions where Talarico's running better than uh representative Hosa and so that's you know helping out the Democrats right now and with the governor you know he had a significant tranche of money to start off this race and he's been spending a whole lot of that money and what the Republicans are kind of hoping for is that the governor was going to help boost their candidates across the state you know through the state house you know there there's so many races going on down ballot as well and you know if the governor or the you know the senate race of republicans that have performed there then you know you may see some spots like Tarrant County Judge Those could be races that have been Republican-held that might end up flipping if the environment isn't good enough. And Tarrant County could be a bellwether If Tarrant County goes blue, that might make Republicans a bit nervous. Renzo, also, you talk about down-ballot races the Attorney General's race During the primary, all we could hear on TV is Maga Mays Middleton Don't really hear Maga Mays Middleton anymore. I don't see him up with any TV ads. I know his opponent, Nathan Johnson, from up here in North Texas, is on with ads. What do you make of that race? Well, it's pretty interesting that some of these other statewide races have been pretty quiet. One thing I'll say is that when you have this much attention in the Senate race, this much money being spent that's making it pretty expensive for other people to run ads. But in Middleton's case, he's got a significant amount of money that he can dive into to spend if he wants. But we haven't seen that so far Maybe that's because he's feeling pretty confident at where he is It might also be that he's just waiting until early voting to try to make a last-minute push. Early voting starting on Monday. Renzo Downey with the Texas Tribune, thank you for your perspective Thank you.