Tuesday's Texas Republican Senate runoff is one day away. Polls open across the state at 7 a.m. Central. President Trump endorsed Attorney General Ken Paxton on May 19 — the same week Senator John Cornyn was one of three named Republican absences on the 50-47 Senate vote that advanced the joint war-powers resolution against operations in Iran. [1] The second Senate vote on that resolution is scheduled for June 1, eight days after the runoff closes. Cornyn's office issued no Iran statement over the Memorial Day weekend. Sunday's brief on the calendar collision named the stakes; Monday's update is the holiday quiet.

The runoff math holds where Sunday's update left it. The University of Houston Hobby School poll fielded April 28 to May 1 had Paxton 48-45 with 7 percent undecided. [2] RealClearPolling's average has Paxton +3.2 — Paxton 45.5, Cornyn 42.3. Wesley Hunt's third-place primary voters broke for Paxton 54-35 in the Hobby School poll, and Hunt has not endorsed. Punchbowl News's smaller-and-more-conservative runoff-electorate read — "the hard-core activist types who show up to vote the day after Memorial Day" — is the structural variable. Early voting ran May 18-22 and recorded heavier-than-usual turnout in conservative North Texas counties.

What Tuesday produces is the procedural verification of whether Trump's endorsement is enough on its own. Fox 26's April 15 poll showed an endorsement alone might not be sufficient to overcome an existing Paxton lead; the Hobby School fielded after the endorsement showed the gap holding. The Cornyn campaign closed the weekend with a Hill interview Sunday in which the senator distinguished his Trump relationship from "the Cassidy and Massie situation" and vowed to fight to the end. The Memorial Day quiet is the last quiet of the cycle. Tuesday's polls close at 7 p.m. Central. The runoff verdict is the immediate political document. The Iran vote a week later is the procedural one.

-- LUCIA VEGA, São Paulo