Republican Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton are neck and neck in the state’s bruising GOP Senate primary contest, according to recent polling.
Cornyn leads Paxton by one percentage point, 30% to 29%, with 37% of voters undecided in an Emerson College survey released Friday. The survey paints a starkly different picture of the race than the tranche of previous polling showing Paxton with a double digit lead over the longtime incumbent — and Cornyn’s lead in the new survey is well within the poll’s 4.4% margin of error.
“Seven months ahead of the Republican primary, the contest between the four-term incumbent and the Attorney General is a toss-up, with 37% of voters still undecided,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said in a release announcing the survey.
The survey is the first public poll on the bitter primary fight since Cornyn’s backers began spending millions on positive advertising seeking to inform voters about the incumbent’s record.
Cornyn’s allies have also pledged to commit millions in additional resources to boost the candidate over the next several months. Texans for a Conservative Majority, a pro-Cornyn super PAC, spent more than $3 million in advertising through the end of July, the Texas Tribune reported. Chris LaCivita, who co-chaired President Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, is serving as an advisor to the pro-Cornyn outside group.
The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC affiliated with Senate Republican leadership that is supporting Cornyn, told donors that ensuring the incumbent senator wins the contentious primary would require $25 million to $75 million, Punchbowl News first reported.
Both Cornyn and Paxton lead two-time Democratic candidate Colin Allred in a head-to-head matchup outside the survey’s margin of error, according to the Emerson College Survey.
Allred, who lost to Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz last November, trails Cornyn 38% to 45% and is behind Paxton by a smaller five-point margin.
Democratic Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett would dominate the primary field if she entered the race, according to a July National Republican Senatorial Committee poll first reported by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Crockett led Allred by 15 percentage points in the survey despite no experience of running for statewide office.
Both candidates have work to do to avoid a run-off election, which would be triggered if neither candidate secures 50% of the vote. Cornyn and Paxton are both seeking President Donald Trump’s endorsement but he has yet to signal when he would intervene in the highly consequential race.
With 37% of Republican primary voters unsure about their preferred candidate, the president’s endorsement could prove decisive, according to the poll.
“Among these undecided voters, President Trump’s job approval stands at 73%, suggesting his endorsement could be pivotal in such a close race,” Kimball also said.
The Emerson College survey of 491 likely Republican primary voters was conducted on Monday and Tuesday.
Polling conducted on the race earlier in the year showed Paxton with a significant lead over Cornyn. A May poll commissioned by SLF found Paxton ahead of Cornyn by sixteen percentage points. Another poll, conducted by the Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center at Texas Southern University, that month showed Cornyn trailing by nine percentage points.
A Cornyn spokesperson declined to comment on the Emerson College survey. A spokesperson for Paxton did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment before publication.
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