The Texas Senate race is getting interesting.
With just over two months until Election Day, a new University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll shows Democrat James Talarico with a narrow lead over Republican Ken Paxton—while Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has opened a somewhat larger advantage over Democratic challenger Gina Hinojosa.
And there’s one issue Texans seem remarkably united on, regardless of political affiliation: They don’t want a data center in their backyard.
The poll, conducted Aug. 5–13 among 1,200 self-reported registered voters, found 42% supporting Talarico and 39% supporting Paxton.
Libertarian candidate Ted Brown received 3%, while 14% remained undecided or expressed no preference.
That three-point advantage puts Talarico technically ahead but still well within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 2.83 percentage points.
Still, the movement is notable.
A June Texas Politics Project poll had Paxton ahead of Talarico, 43% to 42%. Now the Democrat has flipped that advantage.
And there’s another potentially important number hiding beneath the toplines: independent voters.
Talarico gets 37% support among independents, compared with just 11% for Paxton. But 43% of independents remain undecided.
That is a huge chunk of the electorate still up for grabs.
Talarico has also consolidated Democratic voters, with 91% of Democrats backing him. Paxton has 79% support among Republicans.
Paxton, Texas’ attorney general, won the Republican nomination after defeating incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP primary with Trump’s endorsement. He now faces what could be one of the most closely watched Senate contests of the 2026 cycle.
The governor’s race tells a different story.
Abbott leads Hinojosa 45% to 40%, with Libertarian Pat Dixon at 3%, another candidate at 2% and 10% still undecided.
The five-point advantage is a more comfortable position for Abbott, but it’s hardly a runaway.
Hinojosa is keeping the race within single digits—a significantly tighter contest than Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s 11-point defeat to Abbott in 2022.
The latest numbers also reverse a trend seen in earlier polling, which had suggested Democrats were making gains in the governor’s race.
For now, Abbott appears to have regained some ground.
The question is whether he can hold it through November.
So while the Senate race is shaping up to be a genuine toss-up, there’s the issue that appears capable of uniting Texans across party lines: Data centers.
A whopping 57% of respondents said they oppose building a data center in their community.
Only 30% support the idea, while 14% have no opinion.
The Texas Politics Project’s June poll found nearly identical numbers, with 56% opposing local data center construction and just 29% supporting it.
The opposition cuts across political lines, although Republicans are considerably more divided.
Among Republicans, 45% support data center construction in their communities, while 43% oppose it.
Democrats are much more hostile to the idea: 75% oppose local data centers, including 59% who strongly oppose them. Only 15% support them.
Independents are also skeptical, with 54% opposed and just 19% supportive.
And rural Texans aren’t exactly lining up to welcome massive facilities into their communities either. Sixty percent oppose local data centers, including 44% who strongly oppose them.
Suburban Texans feel similarly.
