2024-Second-Reading Podcast_master

[00:00:00] Jim Henson: Welcome to the Second Reading Podcast from the University of Texas at Austin.

[00:00:05] Intro: The Republicans were in the Democratic Party, because there was only one party.

Sir, I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s

called

Texas.

The problem is, these departures from the Constitution, they have become the norm.

At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized for Over the male colleagues in the room

[00:00:34] Jim Henson: and welcome back to the second reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Happy to be joined today by Josh Blank, research director for the Texas Politics Project. Top of the morning, Josh. Good morning. Nice. I mean, it’s going to be hot this afternoon, but a nice fall morning.

[00:00:52] Joshua Blank: Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s very, very generous.

[00:00:56] Jim Henson: Well, you know, it was, it was nice earlier. Let’s put it that way.

[00:00:59] Joshua Blank: Not to be like the weather thing, like it’s so crazy right now, like how beautiful it is in the shade and how unbearable it is in the sun. Like, it’s just,

[00:01:07] Jim Henson: there’s nothing metaphoric about that.

I think

[00:01:08] Joshua Blank: I guess so.

[00:01:10] Jim Henson: So, you know, today we thought that we would circle back and we haven’t really done a whole podcast on the Senate race, although we’ve, you know, been touching on it as the polies. We’ve done the periodic poll releases in that race and commented on the, the evolution of that race. So today we thought we’d take a closer look at the U.

S. Senate race in Texas between incumbent Ted Cruz and his challenger, three term Congressman Colin Allred of Dallas. Um, And The candidates will have their only debate on Tuesday, October 15th, which is, you know, for at least some people in Texas must see TV. Um, and the race more recently has been getting national attention.

And I, you know, I think if you look at the larger context, of this. Part of it is the national fight over the Senate where, uh, Democrats nationally have a one seat majority. They’re at the disadvantage nationally and that they are defending more seats this cycle than Republicans are given the. Staggered nature of Senate reelections in between or Senate elections in between censuses or sense.

Yeah, since I and just in the last few weeks, a lot more increased attention to Texas is some of the key Democrats are struggling. Um, I think most people are writing off John Tester in Montana. You know, Sherrod Brown, I think is running a little stronger in Ohio, but there are, you know, a handful of these Senate seats, you know, people are in trouble and Democrats are beginning to see the writing on the wall.

And you know, as somebody recently was pointing out in a, something we saw, I guess it was our colleague Sean Theriault yesterday and a thing in the government department, among other people pointing out that actually Allred looks closer to Cruz in the polls right now than Tester is to his Republican opponent in Montana.

And so there’s a. You know, an understandable kind of rational shift to reconsidering what’s going on in Texas, what’s going on with Senator Rick, Rick Scott in Florida, and that’s kind of setting this up.

[00:03:13] Joshua Blank: Yeah, I think that’s right. And I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting. I mean, in some ways, you know, one of the things that makes Texas unique and, and I’m, again, to your, your point, you know, one of our other colleagues who we have on the podcast regularly, Darren Shaw was doing a presentation yesterday as well.

And you’re, you’re looking at sort of the partisan liens of the various states. And the reality is, is, you know, Texas is not really kind of far outside of the middle, you know, when you kind of look at what we think of as competitive states, the issue with states like Texas and Florida is that, you know, there’s, it’s no small amount of resources once you decide you want to be competitive.

So in some ways, Texas could be more competitive, you know, in terms of like the partisan lean than some other states, and there could still be reticence to spend money here. I think right now, what you’re seeing is that as Democrats, you know, two things, right? One is Democrats are writing off states that, you know, essentially they, they They kind of needed to win, but that would be less expensive to campaign.

And, but I think on the, the heels of certainly huge fundraising numbers, especially at the national level. Now they’re sort of turning this money to where they can. And Texas is one of the recipients, it seems of that.

[00:04:10] Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, it’s a familiar, we’re at a familiar point in the cycle where people are, parties are trying to figure out where they’re going to place their last couple rounds of bets.

[00:04:19] Joshua Blank: Yeah. And it’s one of those things where, you know, I mean, the, the worst thing than placing the wrong bets is not placing bets. Cause then if you want to see people mad, it’s when they don’t spend the money. Yeah. Right. And so, and that’s the thing. I mean, I think, you know, what you’re seeing is, is that, you know, As other groups are starting to pay more attention to taxes.

I mean, one of the things, you know, having been here for a long time, you know, you kind of go, yeah, you know, 10 it’s a lot of money, but how much is it really like in a state like this? It’s kind of like, you’re like, yeah, it’s like, you know,

[00:04:44] Jim Henson: as people have pointed out, we’re certainly not for, you know, Whether it’s a million or 10 million, it goes a lot farther in Montana than it does in Texas.

Exactly. Right. So.

[00:04:52] Joshua Blank: And if anything, it shows the desperation of the, of Democrats and their Senate hopes that now they’re kind of moving in this direction.

[00:04:58] Jim Henson: Yeah. The price of doing business here is always, you know, more expensive, you know, is, is, is higher. Not in all things. I don’t want to hear from the governor’s office, but it comes to politics.

Certainly the price of doing business here, a lot higher. Um, so, you know, a little, let’s, let’s, you know, let’s delve a little into the background before we look at the current, so, you know, obviously the big benchmark here for better and for worse, and we want to talk about that for a few minutes is Cruz’s Ted Cruz’s last race in 2018, where he narrowly beat better O’Rourke.

2. 58%. Um, Cruz won by 215, 000 votes. And I think, you know, this election is, you know, You know, we talk about over interpreted interpretation a lot, and I that’s not quite the right way to describe this, but the level of interpretation that goes on and how people are attaching meaning to this election varies a lot.

And, you know, it’s complicated thing to some degree, I think.

[00:05:58] Joshua Blank: I think that’s right. I mean, you know, I get a lot of questions about, you know, whether or not, you know, this race is going to be competitive, whether Alred can do it, you know, whatever the way the question is for me. And I think one of the things about, you know, Cruz’s 2018 race, and I’ve been thinking about this, I sort of sort of discussion question that we just talked about a little bit now is like, is that really fair?

You know, is that really the fair point of comparison? And, um, And we’ll talk about sort of why, you know, I think Cruz sort of has this fixed space in people’s minds, but I’ll just put, put this point out there, right? In that same election, right? Which was a very tough year for Republicans across the board.

And, and for structural reasons. For structural reasons. Yeah, yeah. Not

[00:06:33] Jim Henson: only in Texas, but everywhere.

[00:06:34] Joshua Blank: That’s right. I mean, nationally. That was not a, that was a, that was a Democratic year. We don’t need to go into the details there. You, most of you probably know that. But yeah, well, Cruz won his race by 250, 000.

I think what people, a lot of people sort of automatically say to themselves, well, that’s pretty close to zero. You know, right? I mean, you’re almost looking past it to say, you know, well, how much further would Democrats get in that same election? Again, very different candidate, very different race, but Greg Abbott won by over a million votes.

Same election, 2018, same year, same structural factors in different candidates, different, you know, fundraising, all that kind of stuff. But the point is, is there were a lot more Republican votes out there to pick up, or at least potentially, potentially Republican leading voters and Abbott got them, right?

And so, You know, and you can sort of look at all the races since then that are top of the ticket races. So again, that same year Abbott won by 1. 1 million, you go ahead to, to 2020, you know, we’ve kind of come to this, but Trump won by 630, 000 votes, so another 400, 000 votes on top of what, you know, Cruz did.

Uh, Cornyn won by over a million, Abbott won in 22 by 880, 000, uh, votes. So this is all just to say, Yes, 215, 000 is close to zero, right? In terms of

[00:07:45] Jim Henson: closer than 600, 000, closer than 60,

[00:07:47] Joshua Blank: right? But there’s no indication that those voters exist yet. And that’s just the point I’m making is when you look at the whole scope of the elections that we’ve seen, you know, I’d say that, you know, yeah, maybe Cruz underperformed, but underperformed means that there’s somewhere to go.

[00:08:00] Jim Henson: And to the point that there was a lot going on that year, you know, the, the attorney general and lieutenant governor’s races were pretty close that year too. You know, compared to the usual baseline,

[00:08:11] Joshua Blank: right. Compared to the usual baseline,

[00:08:12] Jim Henson: right, and compared to where, you know, how well Abbott did, you know, there’s probably a little side point there, you know, candidates matter, right.

In that, in that, you know, governor Abbott had an unusually weak candidate that opponent that year. um You know, the attorney general’s race, attorney general Paxson, even back then had some issues that, you know, probably weakened some level, you know, his support at some level, you know, had a, had a, a savvy candidate if, if untested at the time in Justin Nelson.

Um, and I think somebody, you know, who ran an unusually strong race at that level of the ballot for the Democrats. So, you know, there was, there were things going on there. Um, you know, I, I think one of the funny. Things that’s hard to kind of reason through on this, you know, is the conviction out there and it’s stronger among Democrats, but you know, I’ve also had a lot of You know, reporters, other people kind of start the conversation.

Well, you know, everybody kind of hates Ted Cruz. Yeah. It’s, you know, he’s very unpopular and it’s remarkable how my conversations

[00:09:17] Joshua Blank: with people who should know better start that way.

[00:09:19] Jim Henson: Yeah, no. I mean, I think it’s interesting and you know, you know, he’s unpopular, he’s unlikable, therefore he’s vulnerable. Um, and look, that’s true of Democrats, right?

[00:09:30] Joshua Blank: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, in our most recent polling, you know, 82 percent of Democrats had an unfavorable view of Cruz, 73 percent very unfavorable, 80 percent disapprove of his job he’s doing, 71 percent strongly, and it’s pretty common. But this is, this is the thing. It’s not just, you know, it’s not just the direction, it’s the intensity, but this is really like a democratic thing.

[00:09:49] Jim Henson: Yeah. And, and look, there’s not, Absolutely nothing there. If you look at the trajectory of Cruz’s career, you know, there has been, there have been interesting phases to Ted Cruz’s career, you know, it seems like a long time ago, but you know, when you think back to when Ted Cruz won the nomination in 2012 out of a very Crowded field.

Um, you know, he was rightly seen as a sign of, you know, the ascendance of the Tea Party wave within the Texas GOP and in the state overall. You know, he defeated Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, who funded well funded in many ways, you know, was, you know, ran as kind of a known quantity in a quasi incumbent, you know, and I think, you know, That, you know, it was a sign of tooth, you know, cruises rise was, you know, the sign of, you know, the ascendancies I’ve set up this tea party, but, but it was also, you know, exposed, you know, was the first phase of exposing David Dewhurst as, you know, not a particularly strong candidate and somebody who had had kind of a glide path in.

And once it got hard actually turned out to not.

[00:10:56] Joshua Blank: Right.

[00:10:56] Jim Henson: Not run very well. And, you know, that was the other shoe dropping on that was when Dewhurst lost that Senate primary. He ran in 2014 again and was, you know, to be reelected Lieutenant Governor and then lost in that primary to none other than Dan Patrick.

Right. You know, talking about the other shoe kind of dropping in terms of. This internal shift inside the Texas GOP.

[00:11:19] Joshua Blank: He has an interesting footnote. Yeah.

[00:11:22] Jim Henson: A role in the ascension of probably the two most prominent figures that came out of the, the tea party shift in the GOP, so, you know, and then, you know, his and, and Cruz ran with that.

And again, we were talking about 2018 and what the mood of that moment was, you know, when Ted Cruz goes to the Senate in 2013 Obama’s second term. Yeah. You know, he establishes an image that he is now, you know, jump ahead, obviously trying to dilute a little bit or, or, you know, re, you know, sort of rebranded some degree, at least with a, with a, the broader niche in the electorate.

I mean, you know, his initial approach to being a setter was to be disruptive, was to be an outsider. And, you know, I think he didn’t, you know, I think he actually built on the whole, you know, nobody likes Ted Cruz thing, because the argument was, yeah, because I’m not one of them.

[00:12:19] Joshua Blank: Yeah, I think the term of art, you know, to my mind at the time, or the word that sticks with me was, you know, insurgent.

Yeah. This idea that there was an insurgency, and one of the notable things about an insurgent is that, you know, you’re not there to work with the government.

[00:12:30] Jim Henson: Right, and there were, you know, at the time, there were, you know, I use this term, and I, I, I, I try not to use it, but I, you know, sometimes it just fits, you know, there were, you know, there was some pack journalism that went on at the time.

There were a million stories about how his new colleagues kind of hated him and he didn’t mind. You know and that included no small number of republicans at the time because You know, he was so dedicated to being a bomb thrower and a disruptor and that was that was his brand

[00:12:59] Joshua Blank: Yeah, I was gonna say. Yeah, I mean i’m reinforcing your point here And I think i’m both kicking the press and giving them a pass or I don’t even know here but it’s also like He had no problem with that.

I mean, I’d say like, I don’t think at that point in time, the pack journalism that showed Cruz as being an outsider was a problem for him either. Right. I mean, but I think,

[00:13:15] Jim Henson: but I think they, they enjoyed the, you know, the hook of, um, you know, I mean, I kind of vaguely remember a headline, like, you know, nobody likes Ted Cruz or something.

Yeah. And

[00:13:24] Joshua Blank: I think, you know, this reminds me a little bit more, even, I mean, even at the time. Because when this started, it’s funny, it wasn’t that long ago. And yet it feels so long ago in certain ways. Right. And like, this was the time when, you know, you, you might’ve said, I mean, I’m going to take this from you.

It’s like, Oh, so the New York times is writing that nobody likes you as a senator from Texas. Like you’re like, great. That’s amazing.

[00:13:39] Jim Henson: That’s really tough for you. Yeah. You’re really showing him New York times. Yeah. And again, now,

[00:13:44] Joshua Blank: obviously, you know, fast forward ahead in this year’s in the media, so much fragment, it doesn’t even, it’s so different environment, but at that point in time, you’d almost take them and say, Oh, thank you.

Yeah. You know, thanks for that.

[00:13:52] Jim Henson: Right. And so if we follow his trajectory and we’ve got a really, you know, kind of. Telling, you know, a really good, useful, if you know, kind of monstrous graphic that looks at Cruz’s favorability ratings and his job approval ratings, you know, over a long period of time and, you know, that worked for him among Republican voters, given where the Republican Party, Republican voters in Texas, given where the party was at the time and where it was headed.

[00:14:19] Joshua Blank: Yeah. I mean, he enters, you know, uh, office essentially, you know, at about a little under 70 percent favorability rate among Republican voters. And then just climbs, climbs up to about 80 percent over the course of the next couple of years, really, in a lot of ways, only to be dented by his own decision to run for president in 2016 and stay in.

[00:14:39] Jim Henson: And there’s a certain. You know, this is not entirely fair, but you know, you’re, you’re about 75 percent of being able to say, you know, hoist upon your own petard here because then Donald Trump comes as, you know, look, what are the, what are the terms we’ve used, you know, for, for, For Ted Cruz, insurgent, you know, bomb thrower, you know, and you know, then he challenged, you know, he winds up challenging Donald, meeting Donald Trump in the 2016 primary.

And it’s one of the periods where you see his favorability numbers in Texas dip because of the way that the 2016 primary pulls out, you know, plays out, not just the negative attack, the negative attacks by Trump on Cruz, but also Cruz not giving in early.

[00:15:26] Joshua Blank: Yeah. And, you

[00:15:27] Jim Henson: know, dragging his feet and recognize and accepting Trump is the nominee at the convention and, you know, the dip in his job approval ratings among and his favorability ratings among both Republican overall in Texas and among Republicans is very clear during that period.

Yeah. I

[00:15:42] Joshua Blank: mean, again, he was as high in June of 2014. He was as high as 80 percent favorable ratings among Republicans. And by June of 2016, kind of in the, middle of this, he went down to 55%.

[00:15:55] Jim Henson: But his numbers then, you know, he takes another little dip during, you know, the unfortunate vacation choice during winter storm Uri, but he’s recovered more or less since then.

He’s not come back to his previous heights, but he’s still pretty

[00:16:11] Intro: close though,

[00:16:12] Jim Henson: in the high seventies, mid to high seventies, consistent among Republicans. And that’s right.

[00:16:16] Joshua Blank: And, and, you know, and the thing is, is, you know, being, you know. So a couple things. One, I mean, just to add to that primary piece, I mean, one of the 2016 primaries was that anybody was going to outflank Cruz on immigration and Trump did that.

So in addition to sort of, I think, you know, the fact that he was dealing with all the negative barbs from Trump, he also wasn’t able to distinguish himself in the way that he really probably had a strength, which was on this sort of singular issue of immigration, which Trump And I mean, so a lot of things going on there.

I mean, how did he end up recovering from all this? Well, one, you know, he basically made up right with, with Trump. And then ultimately he became one of his, you know, big defenders, both, you know, in terms of the election, but also during the impeachment, really notably in a way that’s kind of come back around in this campaign in a bunch of interesting ways with this podcast where he was doing these sort of nightly podcast during the impeachment.

And then it’s continued on with these in a way that’s given him a really Direct line to a lot of his most committed supporters.

[00:17:11] Jim Henson: Yeah, and it’s been us, you know, I mean, it’s not

[00:17:13] Joshua Blank: I

[00:17:15] Jim Henson: mean, look, it was a smart move. It’s worked for him. Not rocket science, but still says, yeah, but you know, yes, as we, you know, yeah, yeah.

Start a podcast. Um, nonetheless, you know, it, it proved helpful for him. And, you know, as we look at his favorability and previous job approval numbers, you know, he’s been, you know, skirting, I think in kind of net positive territory overall. Yeah. Which I mean, again, in Texas, you know, kind of a achievement for somebody where, you know, in kind of.

You know, moves against the democratic argument that everybody hates. Well, that’s the

[00:17:51] Joshua Blank: thing. That’s where it really flies in the face. Yeah. That’s where you fly in the face of this whole idea that like, you know, everybody hates Ted Cruz, but his job approval numbers look pretty okay for anybody in a competitive state.

It’s like, well then I guess that’s not true. Right.

[00:18:04] Jim Henson: So then we look at Colin Allred, right. And Colin Allred, you know, very different story in the sense of, you know, a much, you know, a much more recent entrant and still Entering into Texas, the mental real estate and political awareness of Texans. Right. And that’s really, to my mind, the big part of the all red story up to Labor Day.

[00:18:25] Joshua Blank: Yeah. I mean, if we look at, you know, if we look at our polling, you know, in August of last year, 64 percent of voters couldn’t offer an impression of all red either way, favorable, unfavorable, you know, anything. And that’s been cut in a half by August of this year, it’s down to 32%. Right. And so that’s the work of campaigning.

This is the expense of Texas. You know, this is the difficult. It’s a mix, right? It’s a lot of Democrats sort of learning who he is and most likely forming positive opinions of him. And it’s also Republicans forming negative opinions of him because that’s what the campaigns, you know, are about. Um, but ultimately this has been, you know, I mean, this is sort of the, the difficulty I think for Democrats always is that, you know, somebody jumps in the race, they look like an okay candidate and then everybody complains that they’re not doing enough.

You know, for months and months and months and months. And, you know, honestly, this is the stuff that actually these candidates need to do is they need to show up and, you know, at the college campuses, they to go to the democratic clubs. They do the kind of stuff that essentially doesn’t move the big public needle.

No, it doesn’t move the big public. And I think part of this, Jimmy, this goes back, I mean, we’re not, you know, This kind of goes back to the O’Rourke thing. I mean, and again, it goes back to people’s expectations. It’s like, you know, if you’re waiting for Colin Allred to, you know, do an Ollie on a skateboard in the Whataburger parking lot, like, you know, you’re probably gonna have to keep waiting, right?

Like, that’s just not something that most candidates can do. That was one of the things, I mean, of all the things that I think, uh, Aurore unfairly gets credit for he does fairly get credit for creating his own media moments, you know, based on his instincts, I think, during that campaign in a way that I think really worked for him.

But that’s not normal, right? You know, most people just need to grind it out, right? One of

[00:19:56] Jim Henson: the, yeah. Use Ollie and grind. You like that? Look at this. You grew up in New York.

[00:20:01] Joshua Blank: I grew up in New York, man.

[00:20:03] Jim Henson: Um, and I meant that as like, as a guy that, skateboards were skateboarding was invented in California.

Really? I think. So anyway, um, but I digress, um, you know, I, I think that, you know, the story of, you know, kind of watching all red and watching, you know, this contrast with 2018 and O’Rourke, you know, it also then, but it also raises this issue of, you know, You know, the big perpetual Democratic dilemma and the decision that all read made with the support of national Democrats in terms of this perpetual question, do you run to the left or do you run to the center left or, you know, even if, you know, all read the already campaign probably doesn’t even want to call it the center left.

I don’t think that. But, you know, they made a clearly an early commitment to a certain strategy here, which I would summarize is, you know, I am progressive enough, but basically moderate. And, you know, they’ve stuck to that.

[00:21:03] Joshua Blank: Yeah. And I mean, I, it’s hard not to look at this and, and. And assume that part of this is, you know, learning, you know, a reaction to prior campaigns, because I mean, there’s one thing that you kind of know, I mean, if you go into the election, whether it’s in Texas or somewhere else, you know, the Republican messaging is it relates to the Democratic candidate is that this candidate is the most liberal person you’ve ever seen in your life.

And we kind of joked about this before. It really doesn’t matter who the candidate is. Right. I mean, it could be Bill White. It could be Barack Obama. It could be better a Rourke, right? It doesn’t make a difference. This is the most liberal candidate you’ve ever seen, you know, on the face of the earth. And so I think in some ways, you know, Democrats always have a hard time with, you know, it’s like, well, And I think this is tough within the party and within, this is partially also within the financial universe of the party, right, you know, do you embrace this idea that, you know, well, Texas is really this progressive place.

We just need to like excite those progressive voters to turn out. And so therefore, if we give them this vision, they’ll show up, even though they never have. Right. And the flip side is, well, if that, if we know what their strategy is, and we walk into that strategy, how’s it worked out for us so far? And the answer is not very well.

And so you are seeing a movement here. I mean, I think, you know, you’re seeing this reflected at the national level a little bit too. I mean, I, you know, this is one of those, I don’t really know how much of this is local versus national. And I’m thinking about the immigration issue here in particular, because you’re seeing national Democrats really moderate on Moderates an interesting word there.

I’m not sure if that’s even right, but let’s just say take more, uh, aggressive stances on immigration policy than they have in the past. And we talked about this in this podcast and it’s clearly a reflection of, you know, I think something’s going on in the electorate, it’s going on with democratic voters.

And clearly if it’s going on with democratic voters, like in Ohio, it’s going on here even more so. And so I think Allred was really quick to jump on that. But it is one of those things where, you know, until the Democrats win an election, you’re just like, well, we’ll see how this works. And so how

[00:22:56] Jim Henson: is this all shaking out?

I mean, look, what we’re seeing now in the in the most recent polling is this race, you know, tightening. It’s been You know, we had the race at eight among registered voters in the last week of August, and I think, you know, I haven’t looked directly at the timing of all the ad buys, but my sense is, you know, the doll red ad buys in the state were beginning to increase, and they really ramped up after that.

Yeah, right. You know, you probably was ramping up as we were in the field in the last, you know, 10 days in August, nine, 10 days in August. And, uh, and during late during and after Labor Day, it’s just cranked up as I’ve been going around doing talks in different parts of the state. You know, I mean, I’ve, you know, my audience participation, you know, trick has been okay.

You can admit it. No judgment. Raise your hand if you watch cable news and or, you know, any kind of network news and, you know, You know, people kind of reluctantly have to go. No, no, no one’s going to shame you. You can admit it. And, you know, in the trade groups I’ve been talking to, you know, it’s slightly old, you know, median age is probably older than the talk in the government department yesterday, the panel in the government department yesterday.

And you get a lot of people raising their hands. Okay, keep your hand up. If you’ve seen a calling all red ad, right, right. I had a couple of people like raise their hand, raise their other hand up because they’ve seen so many. Now the cruise campaign is also cranking up their advertising and you get that back.

But I mean, You know, at this point, the purposes of that original, certainly that initial round of intro ads by the all red campaign,

[00:24:31] Joshua Blank: you

[00:24:32] Jim Henson: know, the one that had them there with, like we talked, it came up last week of the week before with, you know, uniform law enforcement and, you know, the message on the screen saying, you know, I’ve, you know, with hit the voiceover, I vote against the president when I think he’s wrong kind of thing.

You know, has been going on, you know, as you said, he’s very, he’s got a very well funded campaign. They’re not lacking money right now. And you know, it’s almost certainly moved the needle, right. In terms of what we saw in terms of the number of uncommitted democratic voters that we saw in the last week of August.

And

[00:25:08] Joshua Blank: I think that’s really the fundamental and key point to understand here, right? Is that that’s right. Is like this has moved the needle in particular among. Democratic voters, right? There’s no indication in any of the polling that we’ve done, you know, on this race over the last year that you see Republicans

[00:25:25] Jim Henson: going, you know what?

I hate Ted Cruz. I’m going to vote for call it all red. Yeah, sorry. That’s

[00:25:28] Joshua Blank: nowhere in the data again. Republicans, Republicans are very happy with Ted Cruz. They’re very likely to support him. And you know what this race looks like. And honestly, this is what most, you mobilization game, right? Republicans can turn out their voters.

They’re very likely to win the election because, you know, on both sides. You know, again, both levels because that’s what they’ve done in the past. They’ve shown that they have enough voters and that they have the ability to turn them out. So at a rate that Democrats are unable to at this point, right.

[00:25:55] Jim Henson: But, but Democrats are now pouring a lot of resources into this and we’ll see at the, if, if pouring those resources in, in a di you know, I would say in addition to the advertising also, you know, creates more ground game.

[00:26:08] Joshua Blank: Yeah. And I think this is where the tricky part is, is it, you know, it’s easy to look at the polling data and to draw a line, you know, through, uh, all red support and say, well, clearly he’s got, you know, quote unquote momentum, which is in and of itself a complicated idea. You But the idea is that something is happening in the race is like sort of shifting in his direction.

And that’s the way the language works, too, right? I mean, when the Cook Political Report shifts its definition, I’m putting that in quotes, shifts its designation of the race from, you know, likely Republican to lean Republican, people innately say, oh, this is moving in all reds direction or, oh, this is slipping away from Cruz.

But again, I just going to like caution against that interpretation at this point, only because what we’re really seeing is we’re seeing the democratic voters who have not been paying attention to this for a year and a half, who are now starting to see ads all the time, who are now getting mailers, the block walkings going on.

They’re saying, Oh, yeah. And we like to, you know, the way we joke about this or talk about, you know, You get reminded why you’re a Democrat. You get reminded why you’re a Republican. And then, you know, this kind of gets us back into what we’re looking at here, which is, you know, the spread when we look at all the polling that we’ve seen, especially in the last month, which you’re kind of getting to, is, you know, Cruz leading by somewhere, you know, except for one outlier poll, Cruz leading by somewhere between two and five points.

[00:27:17] Jim Henson: But I think the data point we want to look at too, I want to add to that is, you know, as of our August poll, in the trial ballot, there were about 20 percent of Democrats were uncommitted.

[00:27:29] Joshua Blank: Right.

[00:27:30] Jim Henson: Either said. I haven’t made up my mind or someone else and when we looked at the favorability rating of all red, even a little higher than that, I think it was about 24 percent or so we’re in those two kind of, you know, either I’m neutral or I, I don’t know.

Right. And so there is some share of people and I think we, you know, we said in the poll release, you know, at that time you could, you know, Call that you know you could argue that either way for calling already. He’s got room to grow. Yeah, and I think what we’re seeing is More, you know, there’s more room to grow.

[00:28:04] Joshua Blank: Yeah

[00:28:05] Jim Henson: You know or you know, they’ve still got a lot of work to do

[00:28:09] Joshua Blank: Yeah,

[00:28:09] Jim Henson: right or you know the to it not even or and they’ve still got a lot of work to do if they’re gonna close It well does seem to me that they’re doing the work and they’re spending the money To your point, I guess I would say, you know, there’s another dynamic that I would layer on top of your you know You The talk about this being a mobilization election, and I think, you know, it is going to, of course, all elections are mobilization elections to some degree, particularly now in a more ideologically sorted, polarized, blah, blah, blah.

But there’s another interesting thing going on here that goes back to the arc of Cruz’s trajectory, which is, if you look at recent elections, I mean, sure, statewide Republican candidates have aired a mixture of Red meat, more targeted to the Republican base, mobilization ads. Couple with negative advertising against whoever the opponent was.

You know, thinking about, you know, the Greg Abbott immigration based ads, things like that. And with a little, with a little bit of more Business development, you know, more what you might think of as a more mainstream appeal. One of the things that’s very interesting about this campaign to me is that the candidate based ads, not the attack, you know, bracket off the attack ads, which are something different, but the candidate based ads in both campaigns are both moving toward the middle.

Yeah. And that is a little bit different, right? I mean, we’ve expected Democrats to have to move closer to the middle because they have to make up for the deficit that you’re talking about. But I think The interesting factor here is it’s been a while since I’ve seen an election in Texas where there’s, where the Senate, where the the, the gravity of the middle is quite as powerful as it seems right now in this Senate campaign.

And I think one of the keys to that is looking at the uncommitted voters and looking at independence. There’s none of those cases where, you know, if you listen to this podcast regularly, A, you might need help. I don’t know. But B, you know, you’ve heard this before, you know, For the first 10 or 15 years that I was involved in, you could safely ignore independence and campaigns.

I think safely, you know, particularly Republican campaigns ignored independence and moderates. If you look at the numbers among independence and moderates, and they’re not the same thing, but starting with independence already is running stronger among independents. Now, again, 9 percent or eight or 9%, I think of our last sample, usually not more than 11 to 14%.

Not a big share, you know, uh, a group that we expect to break disproportionately among true independence in a Republican direction. And it’s not looking like that in the Cruz all red race. Now that’s going to move around because they’re independence,

[00:31:03] Joshua Blank: right?

[00:31:04] Jim Henson: But I mean, that is an another interesting factor in terms of our kind of like, look, this is a mobilization election.

There’s, there is a little something else going on out there that I mean, I think you pointed out in terms of, you know, Republican efforts in the Valley, which are part PRs. You know, I think you were talking about this on podcast a couple weeks ago. I agree with that, but also part. You know, trying to carve out little, you know, a little more attention to finer slivers of the electorate than we were seeing 10 or 12 years ago.

And I think we’re seeing that in really stark terms in this all red cruise race. And it, and it speaks to, you know, the part of the cruise trajectory that we didn’t mention, which is. You know, the clearly calculated effort by the Cruz campaign that started a year and a half ago. If you go back and see the earliest stories clearly being encouraged by the, by the Cruz campaign about how Ted Cruz now like loves to work with Democrats.

[00:31:57] Joshua Blank: Yeah. He’s really more bipartisan than you now.

[00:31:59] Jim Henson: Yeah. And. I think that’s another interesting overlay to our, to our assumption about, you know, the mobilization part of the election, which again is the, is the predominant part of this.

[00:32:10] Joshua Blank: Yeah.

[00:32:11] Jim Henson: But I think it’s one of the hangovers from 2018. If you’re in the Cruz campaign, hey, you know, maybe we need to pay a little bit more attention to these smaller chunks of voters.

And it speaks to the larger discussion that you’ve been doing all this county level research on in terms of what’s going on in Texas in terms of partisanship.

[00:32:27] Joshua Blank: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know It’s interesting. I mean, I think, you know, the way you set that up is interesting, and it is kind of, in some ways, both things.

I mean, what’s interesting is that The way that Texas is increasing competitiveness is manifest in itself, right? And part of it is that we spend most of these podcasts talking about the role of the Republican primary in sort of setting the agenda of the politics of the state. And, you know, we have this interesting system, right?

Where where that That happens, right? Then we have these elections, and then we have all the governing takes place, right? During the legislature, and we have a break. And then this process plays out again. And what’s interesting is, you know, nothing has really changed in the Republican primary to sort of moderate the image or decisions of any sort of Republican statewide officials.

If anything, the

[00:33:11] Jim Henson: other direction.

[00:33:11] Joshua Blank: Exactly. If anything, it’s actually moved in the other, in the other direction. It’s actually getting harder, you know, essentially to take even anything approaching a moderate position on anything, right? And then still survive a Republican primary. But that’s taking place at the same time as the state is becoming more competitive, right?

And so that’s sort of, you know, I think, what’s interesting is that, you know, to your point, if anything, I always love to say, I say this on this podcast sometimes, and I think this is true, is like, I like to watch the campaign’s behavior as a way to sort of learn from their behaviors what, the way that they view the electorate.

Right. So when you’re watching both all red sort of tacked to the middle, I mean, it’s an acknowledgement by all red. Look, you know, Democrats can’t just turn out quote unquote liberals in Texas. Like Texas is not some liberal utopia. It’s not the next California. Like that’s just not going to fly here. We have plenty of data like, you know, but for crews to then also actually make the same calculation in some ways that, you know, Hey, the guy that he has been for most of his career really, you know, aggressively.

Probably not the guy that, not

[00:34:09] Jim Henson: as workable as it was 10 years ago,

[00:34:10] Joshua Blank: not as workable as it was 10 years ago. And then to your point, there’s, you know, some of this data that kind of flows out there. And I think it speaks to a lot of the, kind of the, what’s going on right now where we would look at, you know, efforts by re by Republican state officials to tamp down registration efforts in some of these big counties.

I mean, one of the things when I look at sort of the data that exists is I have to kind of imagine that if you’re a. Uh, campaign professional right now, looking at statewide results, there’s a lot of uncertainty out there. And this is not to say I don’t think Republicans are still in in the comfortable position.

I mean, I still think that they’ve got a very good chance of winning it both at the top. But you look at the numbers and it just sort of says why they’re nervous, right?

Yeah.

And so just a couple of these numbers, you know, just to give an example, we just look overall, you know, You know, if we look at it, I’m just using 2012 as a baseline, right?

So 2012 versus 2020, looking at these presidential races, and we look at the change in votes, you know, uh, overall, between those two elections, Republicans gained about 1. 3 million total votes between 2012 and 2020. Democrats have gained 1. 95 million, so about 650, 000 additional votes. Where did those votes come from?

Mostly from the big six, the big six counties. Republicans gained 300, 000 votes in those counties. Democrats gained about 1. 1 million votes in those counties in the suburbs. Republicans have gained a little over 500, 000 Democrats have gained over a little over 625, 000. The only place where Republicans went out on this is in the rural parts of the state where they’ve actually increased their vote total by about 300, 000 to about only 48, 000 for Democrats.

So this is to say just in and of itself, you say, like, okay, well, you can see, you know, these are sort of the big picture. It’s getting more competitive. This is what it looks like. Right. And then we’ve talked about this a couple times. This blows people away. Sometimes I bring this up. I say, you know, in Harris County, where all this focuses and where a lot of the registrations are taking place just generally because it’s contribution to the state population.

Mitt Romney lost that county by 971 votes. Which I think blows people’s minds when you say it. Trump lost it by 162, 000 votes in 2016, and by 217, 000 votes in 2020. When we look at the other big counties, we don’t have to go through all of them. But this pattern repeats itself, and so I think when you’re saying like, Oh, you know, why the sudden interest in what Bexar County is doing to register people, or what Travis County This is what it is, because I think in some ways, if you look at these same trend lines that we’re looking at here, I actually think these are somewhat more meaningful in a lot of ways than the polling trend lines, because I think of everything we’ve talked about.

This is where the uncertainty actually comes from. It’s, you know, what is turnout going to look like in Texas, but also what’s it going to look like in Harris, Bexar, Travis, Dallas and Tarrant counties? What’s that vote split going to look like? And for Republicans, you know, to the extent that they are. Uh, investing money in South Texas, really what they’re investing money is in rural parts.

I mean, this is again, this is trying to maximize their, their, their share of the rural vote. And I think the other thing that I just sort of, you know, putting together the various pieces and strands that are sort of coming together and sort of thinking about politics over the last few weeks, it also is hard not to think about the role that state level organizing is going to have in all of this.

I mean, one of the interesting things going into this election is the extent to which uh, The Republican Party organization, the state is in a much weaker position than it has historically been in. And that really is an impact that has an impact down ballot. I mean, that’s where, you know, in terms of giving money to the county parties, giving money to local candidates, you expect the state party to kind of have a role in that.

And right now, the state party is a little bit in, you know, I’m gonna say a little bit in disarray still. Um, um. And from what you can tell, there’s a lot of complaints coming from Republican county chairs about sort of the money that’s coming out. Well,

[00:37:30] Jim Henson: and I think, you know, one of the things that’s been interesting in, in looking at some of the campaign finance reporting has come out of this and looking at some of the data and, you know, we need to probably dig some of this out, I think over time, which is that you’re seeing a lot of people this cycle giving money directly to the county parties and bypassing the state party.

[00:37:51] Joshua Blank: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:37:52] Jim Henson: Right. And I, and, you know, look, I, I don’t want to pick on the Republican solely, but you know, it’s not like the Democratic Party apparatus is not subject to a lot of criticism and a lot of dissatisfaction among Democrats. Yeah. You know, not all of that. You know, I, I think if anything, because of the sharp ideological tenor of the split in the Republican Party and the way that, you You know, the Republican Party of Texas as an organization has become kind of another quasi organization on the far right in the Republican universe.

We’re hearing more about that. And people are just more used to the to the state Democratic Party being You know, underfunded and ineffectual.

[00:38:35] Joshua Blank: Yeah, but I think that’s what’s interesting about this moment. Again, I don’t, I don’t think it’s really going to matter. But I mean, going back and then looking forward, I mean, going back, you know, not to be like, Oh, the political science, but I mean, when the political science looks at sort of, you know, the Republican sort of reascendance in the South, a lot of, you know, that also looks at the role of party organizations and the professionalization of Republican county party organizations and the important role that that played in the party.

And then right now, you know, you kind of look at. Again, just just this moment where we are and I see, you know, it’s hard for me not to look at that story and look at sort of the, you know, probably 10, 10 million plus dollars that Democrats are looking to throw into Texas right now, and the million that you know, Republicans are advertising spending in South Texas.

And to some extent, it’s sort of it’s odd. I mean, to your point, you know, it’s odd to see Republicans tacking to the middle, you know, in a general election, the way that we’re seeing. It’s also odd to sort of even be talking about the Republican Party organization is somehow or unprepared or, you know, less than because we’re so used to doing that with the Democrats here.

Right.

[00:39:34] Jim Henson: Well, and I and I think that, you know, I mean, it’s not like Republicans are lacking money in this state. It’s just that the channels for that money are different and you know, we’re and we’re not even touching on. You know the politics and the political economy of the campaign consultant class

[00:39:51] Joshua Blank: Yeah,

[00:39:51] Jim Henson: and that layer and you know, and it’s you know political science I mean, we know that there has been a shift towards these campaign organizations towards consultants towards You know, and that that is a huge center of gravity, but those that competition is also subject to the cleavages within the party and that we’re seeing in the in the Republican party as well.

I think we stumbled upon a good topic for another time to talk about this some more. But so to wind this up, I mean, you know, I think we’ve hit a lot of the things we kind of wanted to hit on. I mean, I think the natural thing would be for people to say, Hey, how about a prediction having been, you know, dinged by my colleague Brian Jones as part of the collective judgment yesterday in that government department panel for, you know, being too locked up in predictions and not being institutional enough, but I, you know, and I don’t want to make a prediction in this race, but I do think that, you know, this, I will be interested, obviously, in seeing our next set of polling when we switch to our likely voter model.

And when the, you know, because the timing is now appropriate and we start seeing more, you know, I don’t have any doubt the trend is so clear and I’ll be shocked if we don’t see You know, the number of undecideds or the people that seem like they haven’t made a judgment call about calling all red, you know, not, you know, go down pretty significantly in our next poll and what that’s going to look like as other people begin to make up their mind a little bit more and we’ll probably do a force in this poll and all this kind of thing.

So, but, you know, I think it’s fair to feel like this race probably is in single digits as of now, and I think one of the things I’ve been, you know, because we’re talking about resources. You know, it’s hard not to think back, you know, again, to 2018 when there was a coordinated last minute push to turn out Republican voters on election day based on Republican concerns about where the early voting turnout was high.

You know, that weekend between the end of early voting and the Tuesday of in person voting. And I, you know, I don’t know what it’s going to look like, because early voting hasn’t started, but I think you have to, you know, you have to expect that Republicans, because of The fundraising advantage, the experience, the advantage of incumbencies, the advantages of incumbency that we will see another last minute push like that, that is well coordinated and well funded.

Um, but you know, to the earlier discussion, the vehicle for that in 2018 was not mainly the parties. It was the campaigns of the statewide. I’m sure there was coordination statewide party, but you know, the impetus for that came from decisions made. Among the statewide candidates with the governor in the lead.

[00:42:46] Joshua Blank: Yeah,

[00:42:47] Jim Henson: and his campaign in the lead

[00:42:49] Joshua Blank: Yeah, I mean, you know, it’s funny You know to the extent that we haven’t had like a podcast just directly on this senate race even though like this has actually generated a lot of attention and You know in some ways I can’t help but sort of look at it almost from my own perspective It’s like why haven’t we talked about this, you know yet when we have We just haven’t

[00:43:06] Jim Henson: dedicated a whole no No, that’s what I mean

[00:43:07] Joshua Blank: though But just dedicate the whole a whole time, you know whole time to it and I think you know to some extent, you know waiting waiting for the race to mature and kind of Kind of see what happens.

I think, you know, uh, there’s that piece of it, but you know, what I think is also interesting is that, you know, the fact that it’s not. Super interesting. I mean, it is, right? This is an interesting race and it’s interesting over the horizon and the time period. But in some ways, if Cruz ends up winning this race by, you know, let’s say three to six points, somewhere between where he won last time and where Trump won last time, let’s just say, right?

You know, Democrats will be disappointed. Cruz will be fine with it. He doesn’t care, right? He’ll win. He’ll move on. He’ll have done better than he did last time. Clearly. It’s another dot on the trend line, right? And it’s another thing where you say, what’s a normal Texas election look like? And I mean, it just wasn’t that long ago that we were looking at 20 point gaps, right?

[00:43:56] Jim Henson: And, you know, I mean, to the point of Democrats being disappointed, a lot of Democrats would be very disappointed. But I also think a lot of Democrats are already talking about 2026 and jumping in the statewide races in 2026.

If we stay on the trend line or even stable from the last couple of cycles, you know, we are going to see very crowded primaries in both sides in, in 2026. And I apologize to everybody for raising 2026 already, but you know, I, I think, you know, if, if this all shakes out the way it looks right now and we see low, low to medium single digit.

wins by Republicans at the presidential and the Senate level. And, you know, more or less stasis in the legislature. Uh, you know, buckle up for 2026. That would be my view. So with that, Thanks for being here today, Josh. As always, thanks to our excellent production team of the Dev Studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin.

All this data and much, much more at texaspolitics. utexas. edu. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with another Second Reading Podcast. The Second Reading Podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.