Hmmm: Cornyn on the Ropes in Texas?

It may seem a bit early to start gaming the 2026 midterm elections, but not for Senate races — and perhaps especially in Texas, where even a deep-red electorate has its issues with its own incumbents. 

John Cornyn recently tried to move up the Senate Republican leadership ladder after the retirement of Mitch McConnell, eventually losing to John Thune for Majority Leader. That may not be Cornyn’s last loss, according to a new poll out from UpOne Insights and GOP pollster Robert Blizzard. Texas AG Ken Paxton announced a primary challenge against the 73-year-old four-term incumbent, and Blizzard’s poll of 600 registered Republican voters shows Cornyn down … by 22 points (via Stephen Green at Instapundit):

BREAKING: Ken Paxton is beating John Cornyn by 22 points in the Texas Republican Primary Election for Senate.

John Cornyn: 28%
Ken Paxton: 50%

John Cornyn is the incumbent.

Poll conducted May 27-28. pic.twitter.com/riB94f9TsT

— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) June 3, 2025

Yikes. How often does a four-term incumbent in a safe state for his own party get down by double digits in a primary without some sort of explosive scandal involved? Bear in mind that Cornyn got 78% in the 2020 primary, and went on to rack up the most votes in Texas history in easily defeating his Democrat rival. Given Cornyn’s track record in Texas elections, this collapse is nothing short of astonishing. 

But is it real, or is this an outlier? The answer appears to be … yes. It’s still early in the cycle, but pollsters have started testing the water in Texas for this primary. While the gaps have been nowhere as large as 22 points, the two polls aggregated at RCP give Paxton a +7.5 lead against Cornyn, with a third candidate named Wesley Hunt getting around 15% amongst Republican primary voters. One of these polls claims to have used a sample of likely voters, but this far out from the election, that doesn’t seem terribly reliable. But even if these are just RV polls, Paxton has leads in all three outside the margin of error, even if 22 points sounds somewhat fanciful. 

Can the arch-conservative Paxton win a general election, though? Paxton has some scandal baggage in Texas, but it doesn’t seem to be holding him back. YouGov has polled Paxton and Cornyn against the last two Democrat contenders for the Senate, and Paxton edges out Robert “Beto” O’Rourke by four points. Paxton’s lead narrows against Collin Allred to two points, but Paxton still looks at least competitive, if not exactly safe in a state where Republicans expect to easily hold this seat. However, Cornyn only does marginally better. He edges Allred by four points, and beats O’Rourke by five. 

That doesn’t make it look like a change on the ticket will mean much in this next cycle. Texas Republicans will likely turn out for anyone who wins the primary, or at least that’s what the YouGov numbers suggest. Don’t forget that pollsters got embarrassed in Texas over Allred’s performance against Ted Cruz last year, far overestimating his support. One has to wonder whether Democrats will get that close to any Republican in a statewide election, and if that’s the case, then Cornyn loses the incumbent-advantage argument.

At the very least, Cornyn may be in serious trouble for the first time in many years. Conservatives in this state have rallied to Paxton for his pugnaciousness in political fights, whereas Cornyn has come to be seen as an establismentarian rather than an active conservative in the upper chamber. His participation in a gun-control effort in 2022 went over like a flatus in a cathedral among Texas Republicans. Three years ago, Cornyn got loudly booed in a Texas Republican convention shortly afterward, and said he was “not discouraged at all” about his reception. 

Perhaps he’s more discouraged now by this apparent reception. 

There is still plenty of time left for Cornyn to make an argument with Texas Republicans for his re-election, and it’s certainly far too early to count out an incumbent with this much success in his track record. But it might be the first time in a while that Cornyn really has needed to make that argument, and by this point, he may be too out of practice to make up the lost ground.