Steve Bannon Warns Republicans Texas Senate Race Is 'Totally in Play'

Steve Bannon told his War Room audience on Friday that the Texas Senate race is "totally in play," urging Republicans to vote as early-vote data from the state's biggest swing county showed Democrats ahead.

Luke Macias, a Texas Republican political consultant and podcast host, went further on the show and said Democratic state Representative James Talarico could beat Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for the open seat. Early voting runs through Friday, and Election Day is November 3.

"I think if Republicans keep showing up at the current rate, Texas will stay red, but Ken Paxton could lose," Macias said.

Steve Bannon's Message to Texas Republicans

Bannon's warning came mixed in with get-out-the-vote cheerleading. He opened the segment by saying the race "will come down to turnout." He also asked whether Democrats were banking only their most reliable voters "to kind of use it as a psy-op and a shock treatment to people."

After hearing Macias's numbers, Bannon summed up: "this thing is totally in play... it's gonna be a struggle and you're gonna have to turn out."

"We're gonna have to turn out not simply yourself, we're gonna have to turn out your list of 10 to make sure that we don't have a blue wave," he said. Then he softened it: "I don't think you say blue wave, but to have these opportunistic pickups in places like Texas and places like Georgia and places like Kansas."

Bannon named churchgoers as the party's answer. "I think the secret weapon we have here is the Christians that we just have to have turn out," he said.

What Luke Macias Said About Tarrant County

Macias focused on Tarrant County, which includes Fort Worth. Donald Trump won the county with 51.82 percent in 2024, the Fort Worth Report noted, after Joe Biden carried it in 2020.

By Macias's count, "Democrats out-voted Republicans by 6,000 votes on day one of early voting," then by 3,000 and 1,000 on the next two days, for "a 10,000 vote lead in Tarrant County." He said Republicans won Thursday, the fourth day, by about 1,000. Texas voters do not register by party, so tallies like his sort voters by their primary history.

He said Democrats who had voted in all of their last four primaries were turning out well above their usual pace in the first three days, while Republicans were "at or just above" a normal midterm. "Republicans are turning out at an even slightly higher clip than they normally do in a midterm, but it's not enough," he said.

The overall turnout is not in dispute. Tarrant County cast 50,409 ballots on the first day of early voting, up from 29,197 in 2022 but below the 58,487 cast on day one in 2024, NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth reported. In Williamson County, which Macias also said Republicans risk losing, 25,694 people voted on the first day, compared with about 15,000 in 2022, Fox 7 Austin reported. By Friday, more than 2.2 million Texans had voted early, KRLD reported.

The 'Cannibalizing' Argument

Both men pointed to a possible bright spot for the GOP. Bannon asked whether Democrats were "cannibalizing their game day vote," and Macias agreed: "the silver lining to that is they're cannibalizing people that should participate."

Macias also warned that "if we don't correct the numbers, we would lose the entire state," and told listeners to use Governor Greg Abbott's Abbott Impact app to find Republican friends who had not voted yet.

What the Texas Polls Show

The polls point to the same close race. A Fox News poll of 1,398 likely voters, conducted Oct. 15-19, found Talarico and Paxton tied at 49 percent. The same poll found Texans favor Republican control of the Senate by 51 percent to 47 percent, up from 1 point in September. Fox's September survey had Talarico ahead, 51 percent to 49 percent.

PolitiKool's polling average puts Talarico at 48 percent and Paxton at 43.6 percent, a 4.4-point lead. Senator Ted Cruz has called the race a "dead heat".

Republicans have also beaten their polls in the past. In a CNN clip Bannon aired, Harry Enten, the network's chief data analyst, said that in states Trump won, Republican Senate candidates in the Trump era beat their final poll averages: "They've outperformed on average by 4.1 points."

"If they have, Republicans hold on. If the polling is right on, the Democrats head to a majority," Enten said.

What Happens Next

Control of the Senate is a toss-up on PolitiKool's Senate map. Macias said Democrats will probably win Sunday's vote because of church get-out-the-vote drives, and that Republicans have to make it up over the last five days of early voting.

He said the goal is not just a Paxton win but "a one or two or three point margin." Whether Republican turnout gets there will be clear by Friday, when early voting closes.