Last week PPP took a look at the Presidential race in Texas, and this week we checked in on the Senate race. MJ Hegar trails John Cornyn just 49-46, making up for the Republican lean of the state thanks to a 55-34 advantage with independent voters.

Hegar is running close to Cornyn even though he still has a 15 point advantage in name recognition on her. 76% of voters have an opinion about him with 39% rating him favorably and 37% unfavorably. 61% of voters have an opinion about Hegar with 32% rating her favorably and 29% unfavorably.

There’s evidence within the numbers that if Hegar had parity with Cornyn on name recognition she would have a very good chance at winning the race. Among voters who know enough about Hegar to have an opinion about her, she leads Cornyn 51-48.

This is the third Cornyn-Hegar poll PPP has released this year and they’ve gone from a 7 point lead for Cornyn to a 4 point lead to now just a 3 point lead. That’s a similar trajectory to the one the 2018 Senate race followed and Hegar has already reached the point where Beto O’Rourke finished last time. With two and a half weeks to go she has a chance to pull off the upset as more voters tune into the race and become familiar with her.

PPP interviewed 712 Texas voters on October 14th and 15th. The margin of error is +/-3.7%. Full results here