Ken Paxton’s Gen Z Push Goes Belly-Up - Newsweek

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton spent the end of summer courting young voters in his race for U.S. Senate. A new poll suggests those voters are moving the other way, and fast.

Democratic state Representative James Talarico now leads Paxton 76 percent to 18 percent among likely voters under the age of 35, according to a survey released this week by the Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center at Texas Southern University. In the center's late July poll, Talarico led that group 59 percent to 29 percent.

That puts Talarico up 17 points with young voters in seven weeks while Paxton fell 11. His deficit with the group nearly doubled, from 30 points to 58.

The race to replace Senator John Cornyn, who lost the Republican nomination to Paxton, remains one of the closest Senate contests in the country. Overall, the Barbara Jordan Center poll shows Talarico at 47 percent and Paxton at 46 percent, with Libertarian Ted Brown at 3 percent and 4 percent undecided. The survey of 1,800 likely voters, fielded September 15 to 19, has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.31 percentage points.

A Talarico win would make him the first Democrat to win a statewide election in Texas in more than three decades.

Newsweek reached out to the Paxton and Talarico campaigns for comment via email.

The collapse comes weeks after Paxton made a direct play for students. In an August 31 press release, his campaign announced 11 Students for Paxton chapters at Texas colleges and universities, meant to serve as hubs where students could recruit classmates, register voters and volunteer.

"I am incredibly proud to have students across our state stepping up to fight for the future of Texas," Paxton said.

Since then the numbers have moved against him. In July, 5 percent of voters under 35 backed Brown and 7 percent were undecided. By mid-September, Brown's share of that group had dropped to 1 percent and the undecided share to 5 percent. Nearly all of that movement went to Talarico.

Talarico has spent much of the cycle on podcasts and online shows popular with young men, an audience Democrats have struggled to hold. Political strategist Mike Madrid told Newsweek that the approach was central to his rise.

"I think it's one of the reasons he's been launched to a national profile," Madrid said. "He's on these platforms. He's very popular and well received by the hosts and presumably the audience."

The shift was not limited to the Senate race. Among voters under 35, Democrat Gina Hinojosa now leads Governor Greg Abbott 71 percent to 21 percent, up from 54 percent to 35 percent in July. Democratic state Representative Vikki Goodwin leads Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick 65 percent to 18 percent in the same group.

Younger voters also make up a smaller slice of this poll than the last one. Voters ages 18 to 34 were 14 percent of the September sample, compared with 18 percent in July, and subgroup results carry a larger margin of error than the topline.

Paxton's ties to young conservative voices online go back years. In 2023, as the Texas House moved to impeach him, a company called Influenceable LLC recruited Gen Z social media figures who then posted in his defense, according to a Texas Tribune investigation. The company allegedly offered influencers $50 to share a specific post from Paxton's account on X.

Talarico's gains with young voters come as he has shifted his message on some of the issues that first made him a favorite among progressives online.

In May 2021, he urged colleagues on the Texas House Public Education Committee to vote down a bill barring transgender student athletes from teams aligned with their gender identity. "You can't compromise with hate," he said then, according to The Texas Tribune.

This month, speaking on Fox News, he took a different position. "I oppose trans athletes playing in girls' sports if it endangers safety or fairness," Talarico said.

His energy platform has moved too. The campaign still lists fighting climate change among its goals, but its main plan now centers on an "all-of-the-above" approach that protects the oil and gas industry.

Republicans say the shift proves he cannot be trusted and would return to his most progressive positions in Washington. Paxton told the Republican National Committee's midterm convention this month that Talarico was "really obsessed with transitions." Talarico maintains he has stayed consistent.

Madrid said Talarico's pitch has leaned toward the center since the primary, when he beat Representative Jasmine Crockett of Texas, a Democrat who ran a more base-focused campaign.

"His style and his appeal has been to be more centrist from the beginning," Madrid said. "In Texas, you can't do this with just Democrats. You've got to have Republicans."

The new poll shows some of that happening. Among Republicans who identify most with the party's moderate wing, 27 percent said they plan to vote for Talarico. That group makes up 15 percent of Republican likely voters in the survey.

Paxton still dominates the rest of his party. Among Republicans who identify most with the MAGA wing, 98 percent back him. Overall, 84 percent of Republicans say they will vote for Paxton, while 99 percent of Democrats back Talarico.

The Barbara Jordan Center survey fits a steady pattern. Every public poll of the race conducted in September has shown Talarico ahead, most within the margin of error.

Trafalgar Group, a Republican pollster, found Talarico up 46 percent to 45 percent among 1,079 likely voters surveyed September 15 to 17. An Emerson College poll for Nexstar, conducted September 12 to 14, showed him leading 47 percent to 46 percent. ReconMR and the Siena Research Institute had the widest recent gap, 49 percent to 43 percent. Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, InsiderAdvantage, SoCal Strategies and a YouGov poll for Univision all found Talarico ahead by between 2 and 5 points, and an AARP poll released earlier this month put him up 48 percent to 44 percent.

However, Republican strategist Alex Patton cautioned against reading Talarico's strength as a broader Democratic turn in the state.

"There is no evidence Texas voters are warming to the national Democratic message," Patton told Newsweek. "The data shows that Texas voters are responding to Talarico as a candidate and support for the opposition is softening."

Paxton's path runs through older voters. He leads Talarico 57 percent to 37 percent among likely voters 55 and older, who make up 55 percent of the September sample. He also leads among white voters, 56 percent to 37 percent. Talarico leads among Latino voters, 57 percent to 38 percent, and among Black voters, 87 percent to 10 percent.

Older Texans have historically dominated midterm turnout. In 2022, voters 49 and younger made up just 41 percent of total turnout in Texas, according to figures compiled by data analyst Derek Ryan and cited by the Austin American-Statesman. Mark P. Jones, one of the poll's authors, noted after the July survey that standard models typically show voters 34 and under making up only about a fifth of the electorate.

Cook Political Report, widely considered the industry standard for nonpartisan race ratings, lists Texas as one of seven toss-ups among the 35 Senate seats on the ballot this year, along with Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire and Ohio. Cook rates two more races, in Georgia and North Carolina, as lean Democrat.

The race has also drawn some of the heaviest spending of the cycle. Republican-aligned groups had reserved $47.2 million in advertising as of September 15, compared with $6.4 million for Democrats, according to AdImpact. Talarico's campaign, meanwhile, had $21.5 million in cash on hand at the end of June, compared with $1.8 million for Paxton, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

Still, a Democratic win in Texas is far from certain.

"It's still Texas," Madrid said earlier this year. "Still a very tough state for the Democrats. But the conditions could not be more favorable for them at the same time."