Ken Paxton Less than 40% to win Crucial Texas Senate Seat — VICO News

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Ken Paxton Less than 40% to win Crucial Texas Senate Seat — VICO News

FUTURE MONITORUsing forecasts and simulations of tomorrow to find insight into today's biggest stories.

POLITICSDOMESTIC POLITICS · TEXAS SENATEOCT 23, 2026

Ken Paxton Less than 40% to win Crucial Texas Senate Seat

The model gives Ken Paxton just a 38% chance to hold a Texas Senate seat, with Democrat James Talarico favored, a call VICO has run ahead of markets for months.

This story and its forecasts were created by the VICO AI model and edited by the VICO editorial team.

ISSUE: A RED SEAT TURNS COMPETITIVE

Scandal has made a reliably Republican Texas Senate seat a genuine contest, with Democrat James Talarico favored and Ken Paxton running well under even odds to win.
The model has tracked ahead of prediction markets on this race for months, with the markets only recently catching up.

REASONING: WHY TALARICO IS THE FAVORITE

A VICO Causal Explorer on a Talarico win points to three drivers:

— 74%: Paxton’s own high negatives and corruption, which the model sees as the real reason the race is close, since a more neutrally viewed Republican would likely win on the party label alone.

— 68%: Strong Hispanic turnout and support, which requires clawing back many of the Hispanic voters Trump gained in 2024.

— 66%: Talarico’s effective moderate, faith-based messaging pulls in a sufficient number of suburban swing voters.

The model argues that this could be the perfect storm for a blue Texas. A scandal-ridden GOP candidate in what is likely to be a very blue midterm year is likelier than not to hand Democrats a Texas Senate seat for the first time in over 30 years.

FORECAST:

— 38%: The probability that Ken Paxton wins the Texas Senate race. Versus Polymarket at 33%.

SO WHAT: A NEW SEAT ON THE SENATE MAP

Not only could Democrats flip a seat they haven’t won in decades, but just making Texas competitive forces the GOP to pour resources into a race it should win easily. That eases the financial disadvantage Democrats face in other seats like Ohio, Michigan, and Maine.

VICONTHWWill Ken Paxton (R) win the 2026 Texas Senate election?

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Credit: VICO Technologies

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