Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) faces an uphill battle to win a fifth full term in the upper chamber next year, with a new survey showing him trailing both his main GOP primary rivals by double-digits in one-on-one ballot testing.
The J.L. Partners poll, exclusively obtained by The Post Friday, shows Lone Star State Attorney General Ken Paxton getting the most support (29%) of any named candidate among Republican primary voters, with Cornyn and Rep. Wesley Hunt each on 24%.
More than one-fifth of all primary voters (23%) said they were unsure which of the three would be their pick in the March 3 primary.
If no candidate receives a majority, the top two candidates will advance to a runoff May 26 — but the survey indicates that won’t be good news for Cornyn.
In a head-to-head contest with Paxton, the AG leads the incumbent by 14 percentage points (45%-31%). If Cornyn and Hunt are the top two candidates in the runoff, the congressman leads the senator by 11 percentage points (43%-32%).
“As we poll the big races of 2026, this was one of the first we had to come to because of how
close the race is,” J.L. Partners co-founder James Johnson told The Post Friday. “And it is most concerning for incumbent John Cornyn, who has enjoyed a massive spending advantage over both Paxton and Hunt. He is behind, and does not seem to have much room for growth.
“Hunt’s and Paxton’s voters largely swap between each other in the drop-out scenarios, suggesting Cornyn cannot simply spend more money and expect the fundamentals of the race to change.”
According to the poll, if Paxton exits the race, his voters would break for Hunt over Cornyn by a 52%-20% margin. If Hunt drops out, his primary voters would support Paxton by 51%-23%.
If Cornyn were to announce his retirement, the poll shows Hunt narrowly leading Paxton, 37%-35%, in a hypothetical contest.
Cornyn, 73, also has the lowest favorability rating of any candidate tested, with just 46% of voters saying they have a “very” or “somewhat” positive opinion of him, compared to 60% for Paxton and 47% for Hunt.
The senator also has the highest unfavorability rating — 36% — compared to 25% unfavorability for Paxton and just 5% for Hunt.
The J.L. Partners poll surveyed 600 likely Republican primary voters Dec. 1-3, with a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.0 percentage points.
