Texas Senate Race: Talarico Holds 66-34 on Prediction Markets While Polls Stay Near-Tied and Nearly 5 Million Texans Have Already Voted

HOUSTON - The Texas Senate race is being read two different ways in its final week, and both cannot be right. On Kalshi's prediction market, Democrat James Talarico has held between 65 and 66 percent for two straight weeks - 66 to Ken Paxton's 34 as of Wednesday afternoon, touching 67 during the day - while the polling average describes something much closer: Talarico ahead 48.5 to 46.7, a 1.8-point edge in the RealClearPolitics average. The one new public poll since last week, a Univision/YouGov survey of registered voters fielded October 13-21 and released Tuesday, put Talarico up 50 to 45, with a margin of error of about 3.8 points and a 55-to-37 lead among Latino voters. A market price is not a vote count, and this station reports it as what it is: traders' money, holding steady.

The early vote is the ground both reads stand on. Nearly 5 million Texans - about 26 percent of a record 19 million registered voters - have already cast ballots, ahead of the same point in 2022 (about 21 percent) and 2018 (about 24 percent), according to figures reported by KERA. The composition cuts both ways: through Monday, 66 percent of March Democratic primary voters had already voted in the general election, against 60 percent of Republican primary voters, according to L2 data charted by VoteHub - yet the largest single bloc of early voters, about a third, has never voted in a primary at all, and no analyst can say how they break. Geographically, turnout versus 2022 is up 59 percent in urban areas and just 28 percent in rural Texas - the lag Tuesday's Trump rally in Lubbock, and Vice President JD Vance's Weatherford rally today, are built to close before early voting ends Friday.

Hovering over the closing argument is money at a scale Texas has not seen. Federal filings released October 15 showed Elon Musk giving the Senate Leadership Fund $75 million on September 9 and another $83 million on September 23 - each sum moved into the pro-Paxton Texas PAC the following day - plus $10 million to Lone Star Liberty PAC, at least $189.6 million toward electing Paxton by CNBC's count. Talarico has made that the center of his stump speech, contrasting 1.3 million individual donors on his side with a rival he says is funded by, in his phrase, 'one dude.' Paxton's case rests on the state's Republican lean and on late-arriving Republican voters - the pattern Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick predicted, and the one the next three days will either deliver or deny.