Pipkins Reports Model Predicts Paxton Will Beat Talarico by More Than 10 Points

*Update: This article has been updated to better explain the connection between our “Ideological Index” and our election model, which wasn’t outlined in our first edition.

Austin, TX – If the Texas Senate election were decided by ideology, turnout, and the assumptions laid out in the Pipkins Reports election model, Ken Paxton wouldn’t just beat James Talarico, he would beat him badly.

The Pipkins Reports model predicts Ken Paxton will defeat James Talarico approximately 55% to 45%, a Republican victory of about 10 percentage points.

More precisely, the model produces a 10.04 percentage point Paxton margin.

And, to be perfectly clear, this is an election model, not a polling forecast. We aren’t claiming to know what individual Texans will tell a pollster. We’re testing what happens if the electorate has the ideological composition and voting behavior specified in our model.

The Ideological Index

Pipkins Reports uses a scale running from -10 to +10, with 0 representing the political center.

Negative numbers indicate movement toward the political left. Positive numbers indicate movement toward the political right.

The scores are our analytical assessments, based on candidates’ public records and positions on major political issues, including taxation, government spending, abortion, guns, immigration, transgender policy, health care, education, criminal justice, energy, federalism and cultural issues.

That methodology produces the following historical comparison:

Year	Democratic nominee	Ideological score, Democrat	Republican nominee	Ideological score, Republican	Ideological difference	GOP margin of victory
2002	Ron Kirk	-2.0	John Cornyn	+5.0	7.0	11.90 pts.
2008	Rick Noriega	-3.5	John Cornyn	+5.0	8.5	11.98 pts.
2012	Paul Sadler	-3.0	Ted Cruz	+8.0	11.0	15.82 pts.
2014	David Alameel	-3.0	John Cornyn	+5.0	8.0	27.20 pts.
2018	Beto O’Rourke	-6.5	Ted Cruz	+8.0	14.5	2.56 pts.
2020	M.J. Hegar	-5.5	John Cornyn	+5.0	10.5	9.64 pts.
2024	Colin Allred	-4.0	Ted Cruz	+8.0	12.0	8.49 pts.
2026	James Talarico	-8.5	Ken Paxton	+9.0	17.5	TBD

The historical election results come from the Texas Secretary of State and federal election records. For example, the 2018 official results show Cruz with 50.89% and O’Rourke with 48.33%, while the 2024 results show Cruz with 53.05% and Allred with 44.56%.

One thing jumps off the page. Immediately, we see that Talarico is considerably farther left than either Beto O’Rourke or Colin Allred.

Our index places O’Rourke at -6.5, Allred at -4.0 and Talarico at -8.5.
(As an additional point of reference, Jasmine Crocket rates at -9.0)

That assessment reflects more than party affiliation. Talarico has defended transgender children and, during a 2021 Texas House debate over transgender participation in school sports, said, “God is nonbinary,” while arguing that transgender children are made in God’s image.

He has also built a political message around progressive Christianity, reproductive rights, expanded government health care and economic policies that include raising taxes on billionaires. His campaign describes itself as fighting for working people and says the central divide is “top versus bottom.”

Paxton receives a +9.0 score in our index.

That creates a 17.5-point ideological separation, larger than any previous matchup in our comparison, but this is where our revised model gets serious.

Connecting the Index to the Voters

Texas Public Opinion Research surveyed 843 registered voters in August 2025 and asked respondents to place themselves on a 0-to-10 ideological scale, with zero representing very conservative and 10 representing very liberal.

The results were 43% conservative, 34% moderate and 24% liberal. Because those rounded numbers total 101%, we normalize them to 100%, producing:

42.574% conservative, 33.663% moderate, 23.762% liberal

But merely assigning conservatives to Paxton and liberals to Talarico isn’t enough. We put those voter blocs on the same ideological scale as the candidates.

For modeling purposes, we place the conservative bloc at +6, the moderate bloc at 0, and the liberal bloc at -6. Those positions are explicit model assumptions, not claims that every conservative Texan is exactly +6 or every liberal is exactly -6.

Now we calculate ideological distance.

Conservative voters

Paxton: +9.0
Conservative electorate: +6.0
Distance: 3.0

Talarico: -8.5
Conservative electorate: +6.0
Distance: 14.5

Paxton is much closer.

Liberal voters

Talarico: -8.5
Liberal electorate: -6.0
Distance: 2.5

Paxton: +9.0
Liberal electorate: -6.0
Distance: 15.0

Talarico is much closer.

Moderate voters

Talarico: -8.5
Moderate electorate: 0
Distance: 8.5

Paxton: +9.0
Moderate electorate: 0
Distance: 9.0

That is almost a dead heat.

And this is why our revised model does not simply hand every moderate to one candidate.

Turning Distance Into Votes

We use a simple inverse-distance formula. The candidate who is closer to a particular voter bloc receives the greater share of that bloc, with the difference determined by the candidates’ relative ideological distances.

Under that calculation:

Voter bloc	Share of electorate	Paxton affinity	Talarico affinity
Conservative	42.574%	82.86%	17.14%
Moderate	33.663%	48.57%	51.43%
Liberal	23.762%	14.29%	85.71%

That produces an overall theoretical result of approximately:

Ken Paxton: 55.02%
James Talarico: 44.98%

Paxton margin: 10.04 percentage points

Add Five Percent More Voters

The model also assumes turnout will increase 5% over the previous midterm election.

Texas recorded 8,102,908 voters in the November 2022 general election, according to the Texas Secretary of State. A 5% increase produces a projected 8,508,053 voters in 2026.

We assume the additional voters have the same ideological composition as the existing electorate. Under those assumptions, the model produces approximately:

Ken Paxton: 4.68 million votes
James Talarico: 3.83 million votes

Paxton margin: approximately 854,000 votes

The additional turnout therefore changes the number of votes, but not the percentage relationship, because we’re assuming the new voters resemble the existing ideological distribution.

OPINION: Here’s Why I Think This Matters

Originally, we reported a much larger Paxton victory, but in my writing, I was conflating two separate models without bringing them together. Still, despite the large (18.8 point) spread presented in the math, I limited my prediction to 10 points…the smaller of the models that I omitted.

What is really important to remember is that Talarico is not Beto O’Rourke, he is much farther left and any election outcome will reflect this in the voter sentiment. He isn’t Colin Allred, either. He’s considerably farther left than Allred according to our index.

But Paxton isn’t Ted Cruz either; he is far more popular. He also far exceeds John Cornyn in populism, whom most Republicans now view as a full-tilt RINO. Paxton farther to the right than either of them in our model.

So we’re looking at two candidates sitting near opposite ends of the political spectrum, with a 17.5-point ideological gap between them.

The model says that gap favors Paxton because Texas has a larger conservative bloc, while Talarico dominates the liberal bloc and comes surprisingly close to Paxton among moderates.

If Talarico can pull substantially more moderates than this model assumes, the race tightens. If Paxton performs better among moderates or holds conservatives more completely, the margin expands.

That’s the beauty, and the limitation, of an election model. Of cource, it doesn’t tell us what Texans will actually do. It tells us what happens when we make our assumptions explicit and then follow the math wherever it leads.

Right now, our revised model leads to a very simple conclusion:

Ken Paxton 55.0%
James Talarico 45.0%

Projected Republican victory: approximately 10 points.

But in November this will no longer be theoretical. The assumptions will either be proven correct … or not.