Senator facing an opponent?

Well, you know, that's an interesting comparison point because Cornyn always was dogged by some, uh, I'd say skepticism in particular among Republican voters, the most conservative voters in the Republican electorate always expressed a fair amount in a growing concern about the commitments of John corn.

And in many ways, that's why Ken Paxton is the nominee because it's those same voters who really dominate Republican primaries.

And it's those voters who can pass and really has appealed to throughout his career.

So in some ways it's not really the relevant comparison actually, because the challenge in this case is that, you know, John Cornyn, What he could lean on was to independence, attract some maybe conservative leaning Democrats into his column, knowing that most Republicans were going to support him anyway, even if they were reticent.

For Paxton, the challenge is that no Democrats are going to support him.

They've made that wildly clear for months now.

Is there any way to factor that into some of your numbers at this point?

What did you hear from folks about their their prospects going forward?

Well, right now we're seeing a really close race there at the top of the ticket.

In this poll, we saw Ken Paxton lean by one point over James Tallarico, 43 percent to 42 percent.

Obviously, that doesn't equal 100.

We have a libertarian candidate.

We have people who are still making up their minds, of course.

But the big story there was what was underneath the top line, which is what we saw was Republicans, as we say, coming home after that vicious primary.

What's something that maybe folks aren't talking about right now that stood out to you?

Thoughts on that?

I think, you know, look, first and foremost, one of the things to note is that this is a departure from the polling that we had been seeing prior to the runoff completion.

So in the lead up to the runoff, a lot of polling, including our own, was actually showing Representative Tallarico with some form of a lead over Representative Paxson, sorry, Attorney General Paxson, depending on how you ask the question.

But nonetheless, he was showing a lead.

And what we pointed out at the time was this was a reflection of a lack of unity among Republican voters, that in the wake of the vicious primary between Senator Cornyn and Attorney General Paxson, you know, Republicans were forced to look at all the warts of candidates.

And honestly, they voted for it many, many times.

And in our April polling, in which we did see Tallarico in the lead, only 63% of Republicans said they'd be supporting Ken Paxton in that race.

Can you tell me why you decided to kind of ask about those two things and what you heard from people about them?

Right.

But that, that advantage has been shrinking.

I think we can look at elections in the, in the last number of years, we can look at a lot of polling, and we see that the, the advantage that they entered the elections with 10, 15 years ago is not nearly the same today.

And so for Talarico, in an election cycle in which, you know, he knows Democrats are turning out, uh, the question really is, is that, you know, where does the independent electorate go? Where does the electorate that is, you know, voting on performance go? And that electorate tends to be a little bit conservative in Texas, and in some ways, Talarico's appeal to his faithIs a way to make him a safer choice for voters who might normally cast a ballot for Republicans, but don't consider themselves hardcore Republicans.

And there's ano- there's another piece to this too, which is, you know, regardless of whether the, the, the nominee that emerged from the primary was, was Crockett or Talarico or anybody else, the Republican playbook in Texas is to paint that candidate as the most extreme version of any Democrat who has ever walked the face of the earth, which includes, and, and maybe in some ways is supported by, their godlessness.

And so for Talarico to so openly, uh, wear his faith on his sleeve in a lot of ways really blunts some of the inherent criticisms that Republicans generally lob at whoever is at the top of the Democratic ticket, essentially that they're out of step out of the mainstream in Texas.

And you can't really say that about him, at least on this front.

Mm-hmm.