DALLAS — For the first time in this election cycle, a poll has Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, ahead of incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in the U.S. Senate race.

What You Need To Know

  • The survey was conducted by Morning Consult between Sept. 9 and 18 with 2,716 likely Texas voters. It had Allred ahead by a point, 45% to Cruz’s 44%, which is within the poll's 2-point margin of error

  • Allred acknowledged the recent polling on X, formerly Twitter, saying he was “fired up and ready to WIN!”

  • The morning after the Morning Consult poll was released, both the Cruz and Allred campaigns announced they had agreed to a debate

  • The Texas Senate Debate will take place on Oct. 15–just three weeks before election day on Nov. 5–and it will be hosted by WFAA

The survey was conducted by Morning Consult between Sept. 9 and 18 with 2,716 likely Texas voters. It has Allred ahead by a point, 45% to Cruz’s 44%, which is within the poll's 2-point margin of error.

Allred acknowledged the recent polling on X, formerly Twitter, saying he was “fired up and ready to WIN!” He then went on MSNBC Thursday night and again mentioned the poll, but he also said the “polls only say so much.”

“What we have to do in Texas is get folks out to vote,” Allred said. 

The morning after the Morning Consult poll was released, the Cruz and Allred campaigns announced they had agreed to a debate. 

The Texas Senate Debate will take place on Oct. 15–just three weeks before election day on Nov. 5–and it will be hosted by WFAA, an ABC affiliate out of Dallas owned by TEGNA. 

Morning Consult’s previous poll conducted between Aug. 30 and Sept. 8 had Cruz 5 points ahead, 47% to Allred’s 42%. 

Other surveys done in the past month had Cruz ahead in the race with the Emerson College and The Hill poll putting Cruz at 48% and Allred at 44% and the YouGov and the Texas Politics Project with Cruz at 44% and Allred at 36%. The Emerson College poll surveyed 845 likely voters between Sept. 3 and Sept. 5, while the YouGov poll surveyed 1,200 registered voters between Aug. 23 and Aug. 31. 

Cruz narrowly defeated former Rep. Beto O’Rourke back in 2018 by 214,921 votes in an election where over 8.3 million Texans cast their ballots. 

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