There are two kinds of political polls. The first is curated propaganda for your consumption. Its goal is not to reflect public opinion but to shape it. It’s designed to shape your opinion, and in a sense manipulate you in the most cynical of ways. The second is the internal poll, where the campaign pays for it and keeps the results out of the public eye. This is the information and data the campaign uses to plan for, initiate, and respond to the day-to-day events of the campaign.
Since all campaigns conduct their own internal polling, you have to know that if their behavior and messaging seem slightly out of step with the general tone of news coverage, this is the reason. They know something the media does not, and you do not.
The Senate race in Texas has just served up a great example of how the left and their partners in the legacy media like to use polls to manipulate public opinion.
According to a poll from an organization called Texas Public Opinion Research (TPOR), Texas state Rep. James Talarico (D), who definitely eats meat and definitely likes females, has a three-point lead over Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R). TPOR reports that Talarico is favored 47% to Paxton’s 44% among likely general election voters.
The totally unbiased people at The Hill reported that the poll sampled voters in the wake of Paxton’s defeat of Sen. John Cornyn (R) in the Texas primary election.
Nearly a third of the respondents who voted for Cornyn in the runoff indicated in the poll that they will support the Democratic nominee in the November election. A plurality — 44 percent — of these voters said they will now choose Paxton, and 23 percent were undecided, The Hill Reported.
The pollsters and The Hill, apparently, would have you believe that roughly 33% of Cornyn voters switched over to Talarico. Before taking this seriously, take a step back and ask yourself if this makes any sense. Chances are, if it doesn't make sense to you, then it doesn't make sense.
Texas is a solidly red state. Cornyn, while seen as a RINO and a squish by many conservatives, is still largely regarded as very, very far to the right of Talarico. On his campaign website, Cornyn bragged that he had a “more than 99.2% voting record with President Trump.”
Do the people who voted for that sound like the kind of people who would now vote for a man-child who is working very hard to try to convince voters that he eats meat and is a heterosexual male? He even has a girlfriend, according to the latest reports.
The New York Post reported that she is “Brianna Menard, 30, (who) describes herself as a ‘committed vegan,’ yoga buff and cat mom who likes ‘dancing the night away’ at local gay bar Cheer Up Charlies in Austin.”
This is the man pollsters want you to believe has immediately taken the lead on Paxton. This smells fishy to me, and probably to you, too. I remember well how the polls said pretty much the same thing about Kamala Harris in the days after she became the de facto Democrat nominee in 2024. Back then, The Hill ran a similar story about how, at the outset of her run for president, Harris had a one-point lead over candidate Donald Trump.
Isn’t it amazing that The Hill always seems to find polls that show Democrats with the lead right out of the gates against Republican candidates? Of course, we now know that Harris never stood a chance against Trump, and it was likely that every poll which suggested she had a lead was either very sloppy or very rigged.
So, let’s take a look at this latest poll on Talarico and Paxton from TPOR. All of the legacy media has picked it up and run with it without any indication that the pollsters might not be non-partisan.
In terms of methodology, TPOR says that it surveyed 1,670 “likely voters” between May 27 and 28, 2026. It cited a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points and said “crosstabs are available upon request.” That means if you want to check under the hood to see who pollsters actually talked to — party, age, voting habits, etc. — you have to ask to see the data to the extent it would reveal much.
Otherwise, you just have to trust the pollsters. So, who are the pollsters?
TPOR’s website is a scantily populated Substack site operated by TPOR’s owner and operator, Luke Warford. TPOR launched on Sept. 13, 2024, when it described itself as “a quarterly polling project focused on understanding Texans’ beliefs, attitudes, values, and policy preferences, in partnership with Lake Research Partners, one of the top pollsters in the country.”
Lake Research Partners' past client list features a who's who among Democrat politicians, leftist nonprofits, and NGOs, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Joe Biden, labor unions, and the Sierra Club.
Looking back just this year, most of TPOR's posts and polling appear to simply advance the notion that Talarico is the one to watch in the Senate race. If you read the site, you’ll see that very cursory attention is paid to all of the other issues on Texans’ minds and to most other political races in the state. Regardless, all of the content is very obviously generated to advance the Democrat cause.
Since all of the posts are unapologetically biased in favor of Democrats, maybe if we understood more about the man behind TPOR, we might have a better idea of where this latest poll on the Senate race is coming from. Who is Luke Warford?
According to his social media profiles, Warford is the Austin-based founding partner of Agave Democratic Infrastructure Fund, and he’s director at Texas Public Opinion Research.
Warford’s Agave fund makes no bones about what it is trying to do. On its website, Agave says, “The Agave Democratic Infrastructure Fund is making strategic investments that will help Democrats win in 2026 and inform a long-term strategy helping create the environment where Democrats can win in Texas — and building campaign infrastructure that lasts beyond any one election cycle.”
We envision a Texas where many Democrats can have success on Election Day - not just one candidate or campaign. We know that running strong campaigns up and down the ballot is critical to our ability to win statewide — both to build a bench and to build power, but also because well-funded down-ballot races help our top-of-ticket prospects, the site says.
The Agave Democratic Infrastructure Fund gets its funding from leftist donors and is a Texas political action committee (PAC). It is not clear who the fund’s major donors are.
As for Warford’s focus on polling, he told the Texas Tribune at the time he launched Agave in 2024 that there are two “major gaps” holding Democrats back.
“He said candidates throughout Texas are facing a persistent shortage of ‘qualified and well-trained’ political staff — and struggling to keep the ones they find from leaving the state,” the Tribune reported.
The Tribune summarized Warford's comments, reporting that he said, "Most Democrats also lack the money to pay for polling and public opinion research...leading to situations where candidates shape their campaign message around anecdotal conversations with voters or what they’re hearing from national Democrats.”
TPOR would appear to be part of Warford’s effort to help Democrats with that polling and public opinion research. So, is it partisan or non-partisan? In fairness to TPOR, I couldn't find anywhere where it calls itself non-partisan. At the same time, I couldn't find anywhere where the legacy media made it clear that TPOR's data came from a clearly partisan source.
This post on X more accurately reflects how the prediction markets see the situation in Texas, where Paxton is the odds-on favorite, regardless of what polls from Democrat operatives say.
🚨 NEW TPOR POLL: Texas Senate (5/28)
— Publius (@OcrazioCornPop) May 29, 2026
🔵 Talarico 47% (+3%)
🔴 Paxton 44%
Earlier TPOR and University of Texas polls also showed Talarico leading Paxton, but prediction markets like @Kalshi currently favor Paxton by around 60%.
DO YOU THINK IT'S POSSIBLE THAT TEXAS FLIPS… pic.twitter.com/FP9KfsrIkn
And still, outlets like USA Today and many others have run with the TPOR story, never disclosing that the source of the data is clearly partisan. It's almost like the legacy media wants to manipulate your opinion with partisan poll results. They'd never do that. Would they?
Find out what you’re missing behind the members-only wall. It’s time for you to take advantage of the full catalogue of common-sense thinking that comes with a PJ Media VIP membership. You’ll get access to content you didn’t even know you wanted, and you’ll be hooked. The good news is, PJ Media VIP memberships are on sale! Get 60% off of an annual VIP, VIP Gold, or VIP Platinum membership! Use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off a VIP membership!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member