Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton spent the end of summer courting young voters in his race for U.S. 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.
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