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.