August 4, 2018
THE rIGHT IS NOT rEPUBLICAN:
New polls show Ted Cruz could really lose in 2018 (Tara Golshan, Aug 3, 2018, Vox)
Democrat Rep. Beto O'Rourke is within single digits of beating Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, two recent polls find -- a development that has pushed the Cook Political Report to change the state's partisan rating from "Likely Republican" to "Lean Republican."A new poll from Quinnipiac University released Wednesday put O'Rourke just 6 points behind Cruz. Cruz drew the support of 49 percent of registered Texas voters; 43 percent of registered voters backed O'Rourke. The poll, which has a 3.5-point margin of error, shows the Texas Senate race tightening since an earlier poll in May when O'Rourke was 11 points behind Cruz.Another poll from Texas Lyceum, with a slightly smaller sample size, had Cruz up by just 2 points -- a statistical dead heat. Cruz had the support of 36 percent of registered voters, and O'Rourke had the support of 34 percent. The Real Clear Politics polling average has Beto behind by 6.5 points.Put simply: It's becoming a very real possibility that Cruz could lose reelection to a Democrat -- an upset that would seriously imperil Republicans' hold on the Senate majority. Texas has not had a Democratic senator in more than 20 years. [...]O'Rourke notably underperformed in the Texas primaries; he won the primary and avoided a runoff but still lost some crucial border counties to a complete political unknown, Sema Hernandez. In March, it was a sign that O'Rourke didn't have name recognition. Now, in July, the Quinnipiac poll finds 43 percent of voters still haven't heard enough about O'Rourke to form an opinion about him. Only 7 percent of voters said the same of Cruz. [...]Some things are clearer. O'Rourke has a lot of money, and voters who do know him overwhelmingly like him. The Quinnipiac poll shows black, Hispanic, and women voters prefer him to Cruz.
Who needs them?
MORE:
Democrats Don't Need to Win Texas--But They Just Might, Anyway (TIM MURPHY, SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2017, Mother Jones)
O'Rourke's politics, forged in one of the largest border communities on Earth, are in many ways the antithesis of President Donald Trump's; he supports single-payer health care and marijuana legalization, hates the wall, and loves Mexico. Trump's platform was all but designed in a lab to devastate predominantly Hispanic ports of entry like El Paso. But in Texas, a state gripped by one-party rule, anemic turnout, and a photo ID law that makes voting disproportionately harder for college students and people of color, O'Rourke believes the same frustration that ushered in Trumpism can also be harnessed to thwart it. A year ago, running against Cruz might have looked like a suicide mission--maybe it still is. But something is happening in Texas.After Election Day, when the Democrats' fabled Great Lakes "blue wall" crumbled, party leaders descended on white working-class enclaves of the Rust Belt intent on finding the path back. Sen. Bernie Sanders huddled with miners in West Virginia. Joe Biden reflected on what went wrong in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Mark Zuckerberg put on his pith helmet and parachuted into Ohio. "We've gotta find a way to get them back in," said Rep. Tim Ryan, whose Youngstown district was ground zero for blue-collar anthropology, "and that starts with a message that resonates in the flyover states."But there is another way of looking at what happened. The Trump wave masked a riptide. Hillary Clinton made huge gains across the Sun Belt, in such bastions of Republicanism as Orange County, California, and the suburbs of Houston and Dallas. Texas was closer than Iowa. Arizona was closer than Ohio. The white women and energized Hispanic voters Clinton was counting on really did exist--they just didn't live where she thought they did.Now the dilemma facing party leaders is this: In 2016 the Democratic presidential nominee received 43 percent of the vote in two states. The first state is 80 percent white. Its population is stagnant and graying. Democrats have performed successively worse there in the last two presidential elections, and the last Democrat to run for governor lost by 30 points. The second state is 44 percent white. A majority of the population is 34 or younger. Democrats are coming off their best presidential showing in 20 years. Maybe you still think Ohio is more winnable than Texas--but would you bet your party's future on it?
Posted by Orrin Judd at August 4, 2018 7:20 AM