Republicans Cling to Slim Leads in Nebraska and Texas Senate Races

In Nebraska, Dan Osborn, an independent, is in a tight race with Senator Deb Fischer, and in Texas, Representative Colin Allred is four percentage points behind Senator Ted Cruz.

Dan Osborn, a union leader and political independent, is within striking distance of Senator Deb Fischer, Republican of Nebraska, while in Texas, Representative Colin Allred, a Democrat, has more ground to make up against Senator Ted Cruz, according to new polls from The New York Times and Siena College.

The results offer more evidence that the election remains excruciatingly tight up and down the ticket with little more than a week until ballots are tallied. They also show that in several Republican states, non-Republican candidates are running ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris, who trails former President Donald J. Trump by wider margins in Nebraska and Texas.

The Nebraska poll has found that Mr. Osborn, an industrial mechanic who is running as an independent voice for the working class, is trailing Ms. Fischer, a Republican who has kept a relatively low profile since taking office in 2013, by two percentage points, 46 percent to 48 percent, with 5 percent of likely voters in Nebraska either undecided or refusing to answer.

In Texas, Mr. Allred, a former professional football player from Dallas, trails Mr. Cruz, once a rival of Mr. Trump’s but now a loyal ally, 46 percent to 50 percent. In a contest this close, a small polling error could tilt the race in either direction. But the current margin is about the same as Mr. Cruz’s margin of victory against his last well-funded Democratic challenger, Beto O’Rourke, in 2018. That year, Mr. Cruz beat Mr. O’Rourke, 51 percent to 48 percent.

Mr. Trump is running ahead of the Republican Senate candidates in both states.

He leads Ms. Harris in Nebraska, 55 percent to 40 percent. But the state parcels out its five electoral votes in part by congressional district, and Ms. Harris leads comfortably in the so-called blue dot around Omaha, 54 percent to 42 percent, putting her on track to secure a single — and potentially critical — electoral vote. If Ms. Harris won the “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin but lost the Sun Belt swing states, that single Nebraska electoral vote could be the difference between a Harris victory and an electoral tie, which almost certainly would lead to her defeat in the House of Representatives.

The surprisingly close Senate contest in Nebraska could decide which party controls the Senate next year. For Democrats to retain their majority, they would have to defend tightly contested Democratic seats in the tossup states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona, while staving off Republican challengers in the conservative-leaning states of Ohio and Montana. The Montana race, between Senator Jon Tester, a Democrat, and Tim Sheehy, a Republican newcomer, has appeared to be trending away from the Democrats.

Mr. Osborn, diligently refusing to compromise his independent status, has not said which party he would side with to secure committee assignments in the Senate. But if Mr. Osborn beats Ms. Fischer and joins the Democrats, he may provide an increasingly important insurance seat for Ms. Harris’s party.

Mr. Osborn’s steadfast independence appears to be keeping the race close. In Republican-dominated Nebraska, Ms. Harris is actually leading among independent voters by 10 percentage points. Mr. Osborn is leading Ms. Fischer among independents by a much wider margin: 31 percentage points.

Mr. Osborn “is so much more relatable to us everyday folk in Nebraska,” said April Baker, 42, an independent voter in Omaha who is an anti-human trafficking consultant and undecided on the presidential race. “Like, he seems to have more of his finger on the pulse of what’s going on. He’s not someone who’s out of touch with reality.”

A special election for Nebraska’s other Senate seat is not close. Senator Pete Ricketts, a powerful Nebraska Republican, is favored to hold on to the seat he was appointed to in 2023 after Senator Ben Sasse resigned. Preston Love, a civil-rights leader who is a traditional Democrat, is trailing Mr. Ricketts, 38 percent to 56 percent.

In Texas, Mr. Allred is outpacing Ms. Harris. Mr. Trump leads the vice president by 10 percentage points, 52 percent to 42 percent, in a head-to-head contest. Mr. Allred, who is backed by 46 percent of likely voters in Texas — four percentage points better than Ms. Harris’s tally — is buoyed by his success with Black and Hispanic voters. Mr. Allred has the support of 76 percent of Black voters, compared with Ms. Harris’s 71 percent, and is backed by 56 percent of Hispanic voters, versus Ms. Harris’s 50 percent.

Mr. Allred is also winning 9 percent of likely Texas voters identifying themselves as Republican. Ms. Harris is capturing about 6 percent.

Democrats had been bullish on their chances with a former football player in football-crazy Texas running against Mr. Cruz, who is from the state’s dominant political party but has never been beloved by voters.

Katherine McDonald, 45, a field supervisor for a local security company in Dallas, has not forgotten Mr. Cruz’s decision to join his family in Cancun, Mexico, while his state suffered through power outages driven by a brutal winter storm in 2021.

“I don’t see Allred doing that,” she said. “I see him struggling right alongside us.”

She said she would vote for Mr. Allred and for Mr. Trump.

But even as Texas has grown more diverse and urban, it has remained elusive to Democrats, in part because its Hispanic population has been drifting toward the Republicans.

In the new poll, 31 percent of Hispanic voters in Texas identified the economy as their top issue, by far the biggest category of concern. For Hispanic voters, the economy loomed larger than it did for white voters, Black voters and those of other races and ethnicities. By the slimmest of margins, 48 percent to 47 percent, likely Hispanic voters in Texas said that Mr. Trump would do a better job at handling their top issue than Ms. Harris would.

Democrats eyeing the big prize of Texas’ 40 electoral votes in future elections can take solace in one factor: The growing urban centers are increasingly Democratic. Ms. Harris still trails Mr. Trump in the region around Texas’ largest city, Houston, 45 percent to 50 percent, but she leads the former president in Greater Dallas-Fort Worth, the state’s largest metropolitan area, by six points, San Antonio by seven points and Austin by 15 points.

Mr. Trump’s lead largely rests in the smaller cities, towns and rural areas, where he dominates, 67 percent to 28 percent.

Ruth Igielnik contributed reporting.

How These Polls Were Conducted

Here are the key things to know about these polls from The New York Times and Siena College:

• Interviewers spoke with 1,194 voters in Nebraska, including 500 voters in Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, and 1,180 voters in Texas from Oct. 23 to 26, 2024.

• Times/Siena polls are conducted by telephone, using live interviewers, in both English and Spanish. Overall, more than 97 percent of respondents were contacted on a cellphone for these polls. You can see the exact questions that were asked and the order in which they were asked here.

• Voters are selected for the survey from a list of registered voters. The list contains information on the demographic characteristics of every registered voter, allowing us to make sure we reach the right number of voters of each party, race and region. For these polls, interviewers placed about 210,000 calls to about 75,000 voters.

• To further ensure that the results reflect the entire voting population, not just those willing to take a poll, we give more weight to respondents from demographic groups that are underrepresented among survey respondents, like people without a college degree. You can see more information about the characteristics of our respondents and the weighted sample at the bottom of the page, under “Composition of the Sample.”

• The margin of sampling error among likely voters for each state poll is about plus or minus three percentage points, and about five percentage points in Nebraska’s Second Congressional District. In theory, this means that the results should reflect the views of the overall population most of the time, though many other challenges create additional sources of error. When the difference between two values is computed — such as a candidate’s lead in a race — the margin of error is twice as large.

You can see full results and a detailed methodology here. If you want to read more about how and why the Times/Siena Poll is conducted, you can see answers to frequently asked questions and submit your own questions here.