Will Texas Voters Kick Ted Cruz Out Of The Senate?

Texas is a red state, but Republican Ted Cruz is very unpopular - and this year he's in the closest race of his life. He could actually lose! Here's how Olivia Messer and Billy Begala at MSNBC see the Texas Senate race:

There’s a reason no Democrat has accomplished a statewide victory in Texas since 1994.

Pulling off such an upset would require a uniquely talented politician running an almost perfect campaign. That candidate would need to display discipline, calm and poise. Be telegenic and quick on the feet. The candidate would need to be thoroughly Texan and have an identity infused with elements of the state’s cultural zeitgeist. The person would need to run in a halfway decent national political environment. And even with all of those boxes checked, that rare Democrat would still need to square off against an extraordinarily disliked Republican running a lackluster campaign without much support from the person's own colleagues.

Enter: Rep. Colin Allred.

Allred’s remarkable debate performance Tuesday spawned a flurry of Instagram slides, TikTok videos and X posts. Both in Texas and nationwide, news feeds have been flush this week with clips of the former professional football player rebuking Sen. Ted Cruz for hiding in a “supply closet” during the attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol — a riot by a mob that Cruz himself helped whip up. Others showed him repeatedly referencing the time Cruz flew to Cancun, Mexico, as hundreds of Texans died during the middle of a winter freeze, or hammering him on his abortion stance — an issue critical to white female voters who have been abandoning the GOP in droves. 

But an impressive debate performance alone is not enough for a Democrat to win a state like Texas. However, polls, fundraising and a changing political climate have all looked promising for Allred. Today, Texas Democrats are in an extraordinary situation, one that has proved elusive over the past three decades: They have an actual chance of winning a statewide race.

As of Thursday, FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls had Cruz stuck at 48.4%. A Morning Consult survey released Thursday showed Allred down by just 1 point. An internal memo from the Senate Leadership Fund — the Mitch McConnell-aligned super PAC focused on electing Republicans to the Senate — had Cruz up by only 1 point. A different polling memo released by the National Republican Senatorial Committee omitted any information on the race. If the numbers were too bad to share, that’s certainly a worrying sign for Cruz. . . .

The last time Texans had a race this close, this late in the election, was Cruz’s re-election bid in 2018, in which he narrowly beat O’Rourke by less than 3 points. But that year, the senator’s polling looked rosier then than it does today. In the world of campaign politics, any incumbent stuck under 50% in the polls when votes are days away is leaving the door open to a loss. . . .

To get to 50% + 1, Allred will need to run up the score in urban centers, especially among voters of color. He’ll also need to persuade swing-y South Texas Hispanic voters and he’ll need to do that while maintaining the favor of white, college-educated suburban voters.

It’s a huge mountain to climb — and one that hasn’t been summited in 30 years. But if Allred doesn’t emerge victorious, he’s still carried Democrats further than any other candidate in recent memory.