After months of negative Texas Republican Senate primary polls showing him trailing a firebrand opponent, longtime Sen. John Cornyn appears to be gaining some ground.
On Monday, Emerson College Polling showed Cornyn leading 30% against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s 29% among Republican primary voters.
Thirty-seven percent of the respondents remained undecided and the margin of error is 4.4%. Just 5% of respondents expressed a preference for “someone else.”
The primary race has been a war of words, as Paxton has repeatedly accused Cornyn of being insufficiently conservative, while Cornyn has accused Paxton of corruption and has touted his own work in his years as a Republican lawmaker.
The polling essentially shows a neck-and-neck race, which is usually bad news for an incumbent Senator of over 20 years, but a welcome development for Cornyn after a series of polls showing Paxton in the lead.
Punchbowl News previously obtained a presentation from the Senate Leadership Fund, a Republican-allied group that backs Cornyn, showing him trailing “Paxton by 17 points in an average of 13 public and private polls taken during the first six months of 2025.”
The Emerson polling also illuminates the top political issues in the Lonestar State in 2026.
“The top issue for Republicans is the economy (33%) and immigration (30%), while the top issue for Democrats is threats to democracy (31%) and the economy (26%),” reads the Emerson report.
All in all, the data set is positive for Republicans.
In a prospective matchup between Cornyn and Democrat candidate Collin Allred, Cornyn leads 45.2% to 38.1%, with 16.7% of the Texas respondents undecided.
In a matchup between Paxton and Allred, the attorney general leads 45.9% to 40.6%, with 13.6% undecided.
The Cornyn campaign declined to comment on the polling and the Paxton campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Inquiries sent to the Allred campaign’s informational and press inboxes could not be delivered after “the recipient’s email provider rejected” them.