'Paxton is cooked': Eyes widen as new polls add to GOP's worst fears in Texas

Texas Republicans got an ominous new sign on Friday that they have a competitive U.S. Senate election.

According to the newest poll from the Texas Public Opinion Research, Democratic state lawmaker and Presbyterian minister James Talarico is leading Republican state Attorney General Ken Paxton 47 to 43 — notably, being one of the first polls to show Talarico relatively close to the 50 percent threshold, meaning Republicans would have to win a very large majority of undecided voters to overcome this lead if it is true.

One of the other trouble signs for Republicans in the poll is that a significant percent of Republican voters who backed incumbent GOP Sen. John Cornyn, who recently lost in a blowout runoff election after Trump endorsed Paxton, now plan to vote for Talarico.

Moreover, this appears to be driven by Paxton's long history of personal scandals, including a previous criminal indictment, impeachment, and accusations of an extramarital affair.

According to the poll, almost one in three Cornyn runoff voters "say that they would vote for Talarico, while 44% would vote for Paxton — 23% remain undecided or say that they will not vote." Of the Republican runoff voters backing Talarico, "More than half ... cite Paxton’s criminality or corruption as their primary reason."

This comes just two days after another poll suggested Talarico has a lead among Latino voters in Texas — a plurality of the state population — by 27 points.

"If the actual result of the Texas Senate race among Latinos ends up anywhere close to this, Paxton is cooked," election forecast analyst G. Elliott Morris said of those results.

Republicans are fearful that even if they can hold the Texas seat, it will require hundreds of millions of dollars in political spending, draining resources from other battleground states.