I mean, I guess they are. They’ve seen what has happened around the country, in other elections and other red places. I don’t know how worried they are, or how worried they should be.
This is a Red State where Trump remains popular among most Republicans and even some Democrats, a state that he won in 2016 by a slimmer margin that Republican Mitt Romney had four years before. And while political consultants for both parties agree he will be a drag on Texas Republicans in November, the growing question is just how much.
Fact: For the first time in a decade, Texas Republicans are having to worry about the vote drag their president could have on elections, much as Democrats suffered through eight years of Barack Obama, whom Texas Republicans loved to hate.
“Trump won’t be as much of an effect as he is in some northern states, but he will have impact here,” said Mark Jones, a Rice University political science professor who has been monitoring the “Trump effect” in Texas races for months. “In some of the down ballot races in Texas, the strategy you’re seeing is a modest embrace of Trump. … Republicans with strong brands like Abbott are not going to tarnish themselves by agreeing with him.”
Even so, Abbott confidantes privately acknowledge he likely will be re-elected by a slimmer margin than four years ago, when he beat Democratic rising star Wendy Davis by 20 points. They blame Trump.
“It’s not a question about whether there will be a Trump drag in Texas, the only question right now is how big it will be — and how many Republican incumbents will be in trouble,” said Harold Cook, a political consultant who is a former executive director of the state Democratic party.
“If you’re a member of Congress or state Senate or House incumbent who has a credible Democratic opponent, and you’re in districts that went for Trump less than 7 or 8 … points, you better be out working your ass off to get re-elected.”
I don’t disagree with any of this, but it’s hard to contextualize. The last two midterm elections in which there was a Republican President were 2002, when Dubya Bush was very popular, and 2006, when his approval rating had crashed and Rick Perry was fending off multiple challengers. The former was a great year for the GOP here and the latter was a lousy year for them (downballot, at least), but neither is a great comparison for this year. In the limited polling we have, Trump’s approval ratings are good with Republicans, terrible with Democrats, and not great with independents. How that compares with 2002 and 2006, I couldn’t say.
I think everyone expects Democratic turnout to be up this fall from previous midterms. The problem is that Democratic turnout has been so consistently crappy in previous midterms that there’s a lot of room for turnout to improve without making that much difference. We’d need to boost our baseline offyear performance by about fifty percent, to get to around 2.7 million, to really see significant gains. The good news is that basically everything would be competitive at that point, from the statewide races to a half dozen or more Congressional seats to enough legislative seats to make 2019 look like 2009. The bad news is that we’ve never come withing hailing distance of such a total, and Republicans have every reason to feel confident that it’s all just talk since we’ve never done anything like it.
So I just don’t know. I’m optimistic in general, and I really think good things will happen in Harris County and other areas that have been trending blue. I wish I knew how to quantify it, and I wish I knew how confident to feel beyond that.
One could compare Texas to Arizona and what are finding there? http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/new-az-poll-shows-another-special-election-upset-is-possible.html
I think that the Democrat has a good chance of upsetting the Republican, The D’s poll numbers have been trending up.
The Texas Republicans are worried they have stopped most of the hating brown people rhetoric as they are realizing that the 30-40% minority vote for them is shifting. They can only espouse so much hate before people realize hey those Trumpkins don’t like us.
The Republicans have pandered to the Spanish surnamed people in Texas in the past, but with the election even the governor got into spitting out hate. I think he is aiming to run for president so he has to pander to the racists, they won’t ever accept him he is married to one of those brown skinned persons.
We just need the Russian puppet to keep being himself, he will turn off the independent voters. Here in Texas the Trump party has lost most of the minorities as Trump keeps attacking them.
Wow, have not called the Trump supporters enablers of moral deficiency, and Russian supporters who hate America, did good this morning.
Texas Republican: Likes Mexican food, just not Mexicans.
Just read today that Beto is getting closer to Cruz, https://www.salon.com/2018/04/18/texas-showdown-ted-cruz-is-now-running-neck-and-neck-with-his-democratic-rival/