Kamala Harris will campaign in the Lone Star State, not because she expects to win Texas, but because she wants to shine a light on Texas’ abortion ban.
Kamala Harris will campaign in the Lone Star State, not because she expects to win Texas, but because she wants to shine a light on Texas’ abortion ban.
Clinton lost by ~800,000 votes (5% of registered voters) and Biden lost by ~640,000 votes (~3.5% of registered voters). This year, TX is breaking records for early voting turnout, and, historically speaking, Democrats win with high turnout. In just 4 days, TX has cast almost 1/4 as many votes as the entire 2020 election and that's during the first week of early voting when the polls are only required to be open 9 hours a day. We still haven't seen the turnout for this weekend or next week, when polls are open at least 12 hours a day.
Lupe Valdez's 3.5M votes in 2018 was about the same number of votes Beto received in 2022. The shrinking gulf is largely coming from a sag in Republican turnout year-over-year. And GOP favorables aren't so bad that the party doesn't consistently beat Democrats in high turnout races.
Maybe this year will be a game changer, but Dems would have to beat a 5-7 pt pad for Trump and at least a 4 pt pad for Cruz. Not holding my breath.