Some cold hard reality for Texas Dems

Tough day yesterday, with the Q poll showing the Zodiac Killer ahead of Beto by nine points, and then the stunning-not-so-stunning loss by Pete Gallego in the special election to replace convicted felon Carlos Uresti in west Texas.

SD-19's geographics are a close match to CD-23's, so this portends ominously for Gina Ortiz Jones against Will Hurd in 49 days.  She's the one wearing black on Gallego's left (foreground), at last night's wake victory party concession speech.

Lots of bragging by Team Pachyderm about the win.  It sets up the Texas Senate nicely in 2019 for a two-thirds majority to ram through their usual agenda of large piles of extremist elephant shit.  Texas Dems got outmaneuvered on the special election cycle (that's how Abbott rolls; he'll do it again to TX-6 as soon as Sylvia Garcia wakes up and submits her resignation in a way he feels is acceptable), and then were outspent and outhustled.

.@texasdemocrats statement on their loss of #SD19 starts w/ hard truth. Statewide Rs showed up; @GregAbbott_TX w/ a score of paid staffers, @DanPatrick w/ campaign in-kind donations, @JohnCornyn & @tedcruz w/ support. $$$ & staff frm statewide D candidates just couldn’t compete. pic.twitter.com/yBsgbJDGoo

— Phil Prazan (@PhilPrazan) September 19, 2018

Gallego is a three-time loser and his political career is mercifully over, but hang this loss around the necks of Gilberto Hinojosa and Glen Maxey, who quite obviously didn't see it coming and/or didn't do nearly enough to stop it.  Oh, and maybe Bexar Democrats could stop fighting with each other long enough to mobilize turnout and win an election.  That's probably too much to ask for as well.

As for Beto ...

Quinnipiac polled likelies, which is a better barometer than 'registered', so this nine-point deficit is blacker than the usual dark cloud.  A week ago, however, Joshua Blank and Jim Henson at the Texas Politics Project -- they're the guys at UT that also do the Texas Tribune's polling -- busted Beto's axles with these numbers.

A series of recent articles focused on Republican concerns over Senator Ted Cruz's reelection chances has Democrats beaming, and national reporters falling all over themselves to get in front of the possible defeat of Cruz in deep red Texas. The attraction of the storyline for editors and reporters is obvious enough, and poll numbers showing low single-digit leads for Cruz provide a ready rationale for ever more breathless speculation on Beto O'Rourke's chances of pulling off an upset. But a look at recent election outcomes and some simple back-of-the-envelope math highlight just how unlikely an O'Rourke victory is in Texas.

While "unlikely" doesn't mean impossible – this is where we usually insert something about a "non-zero probabability" – the magnitude of the change in the patterns evident in recent Texas elections would have to be historic. If we consider recent midterm elections since 2010, the average Republican vote total has been 2,798,519 votes, which we can round to 2.8 million for simplicity. The average Democratic vote total in those races has been 1,846,459, which we can round up to 1.9 million (again, for simplicity). This means that Democrats, on average, have to make up approximately 900,000 votes to get in the range of a tie in Texas. What would this take? (The table below also includes presidential results from 2016, just to provide context, though those results are not factored into these averages).

Go look at the table at the link.  The bold emphasis next is mine.

A good starting point is one of the underlying assumption of many assessments of O'Rourke's chances: the potential migration of votes from the expected GOP vote either to O'Rourke or to the Texas army of the non-voting. The most recently released poll, as of this writing, showed 15 percent of likely Republican voters saying that they'll cast a vote for O'Rourke. According to a few different analytic approaches using University of Texas / Texas Tribune polling data of registered voters, as well as Texas Lyceum data of registered and likely voters, the size of the poll of potential Republican cross-over voters is probably closer to 6 percent. This estimate is drawn from current polling, which almost certainly reflects a different underlying population than the likely electorate once general election voting begins, so the size and magnitude of the shift in this data may or may not emerge in actual voting. But assuming just for the sake of this exercise that O'Rourke has or will convince 15 percent of Republican voters to cast a vote for him (which would be quite impressive), we can subtract those votes from the average Republican vote total and add them to the average Democratic vote total, resulting in 420,000 votes shifting to the O'Rourke column. This would cut his likely deficit to 480,000 votes.* While this 15 percent estimate seems high given the context (and divergence of) the polling data, it tests the outer limits for one of the clear concerns of Republicans in Texas and elsewhere: the possibility of either a lack of enthusiasm or outright discontent leading to an increase in Republican non-voting among usually reliable midterm voters.

In addition to discontent with Cruz amongst Republicans, O'Rourke would also have to turn out Democrats at significantly higher rates than normal. So let's assume, again for the sake of argument, that Democratic turnout increases by 20 percent, which would add another 380,000 votes to O'Rourke's total. Even under this optimistic scenario, combined with the outer-bound estimate of Republican defections, this surge in turnout would only result in a decrease in the overall expected gap between O'Rourke and Cruz to 100,000 votes – a little more than 3.5 percent under our rough turnout assumption – still in Cruz's favor.

This simple, back-of-the-envelope calculation using incredibly optimistic expectations (if you're a Democrat) about the electorate shows why, when experts are asked about O'Rourke's chances at toppling Cruz, they are so cautious in feeding the hype. Even under extremely rosy circumstances, O'Rourke needs BOTH a momentous shift in voter sentiment, AND a momentous shift in Democratic turnout: possible, but still not probable.

Given the trend lines revealed last night, some anecdotal evidence like this from RG Ratcliffe at Texas Monthly, and our election in Texas may be over before the voting begins.  (Aside to Frances at Crooks and Liars: No, this is not how Beto will win Texas.  GOP crossovers are not enough.  He needs engorged voter turnout, most of it from Latinxs, and he is probably not going to get it.)

Guess we'll wait for Kuff to lengthily excerpt something tomorrow the Houston Chronicle published this morning on both these topics.  This is all he's good for today on the SD-19 result, though he expressed confidence yesterday morning about the outcome, which looks laughable in hindsight.  In the meantime, Gilbert Garcia for the SAEN breaks down how Flores won.

He's also mocked out the latest NYT poll result for TX-23 -- Hurd 51, Ortiz Jones 43 -- which likewise appears almost ridiculous now in the morning after the SD-19 debacle.  Maybe it's a good thing he has nothing to say yet about the Q poll.

(Lately I'm just embarrassed for that guy and his blog.)

Texas Democrats need to use these two items as a serious wake-up call for November.  Can they get their act together and salvage some wins before the GOP breaks the Blue Wave completely here?

Not looking too hot this morning.

Update: Shortly after this was posted, a Reuters/Ipsos poll was released showing Beto with a two-point lead over Cruz among likely voters.  Somebody has to be an outlier; maybe both.  An 11-point swing between two typically highly-regarded pollsters, taken back-to-back, is patently absurd.  This is the sort of thing that makes me question the validity of polling science altogether.  Look for heavy spin -- translation: fundraising emails in your inbox.  FWIW, Reuters has Greg Abbott leading Lupe Valdez 50-41, matching his smallest lead to date.  So this is either grand news for Team Donkey (only English speakers were polled) or there's some false hope being generated.  I report, you decide.

The Texas Dems I'll be voting for

The National Rifle Association has endorsed the state's top law enforcement official, who because of his felony indictments cannot own any guns himself.  Ken Paxton is the nuttiest of gun nuts anyway, declaring after the shooting at the church in Sutherland Springs that if more parishioners had been packing, fewer of 'em would have been sent to Heaven early.

Ken Paxton -- and 19 other GOP state AGs -- are asking the federal courts to end the pre-existing conditions acceptability requirement for Obamacare.  Ken Paxton's ultimate goal is to kill Obamacare altogether, and he is actually succeeding in doing so piecemeal.

Obamacare is on Paxton's list of ten things he despises (so are debates).  Paxton, with his lazy eye and slow drawl, is a caricature of a Texas Christian conservative gone badder than any cartoon villain: corrupt, venal, stupid, and built to stay that way.

Justin Nelson, his Democratic opponent, is by contrast solid and well-qualified and has done the hard work of getting publicity without a lot to show for it (although what he has earned has been very favorable).  I could pick a couple of nits over the use of 'access' to health care' on his website, maybe his clerking for Justice O'Connor back in the day, but those are minor enough for me to let slide.

We need Paxton removed, and we can't count on the Texas courts to do it for us.

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State Comptroller Glenn Hegar hasn't written any steamy novels or left state websites unsecured for hackers to run wild and free like his predecessor Susan Combs, but I'm still voting for Joi Chevalier in the statewide race that has gotten the least attention of any this cycle.  This puts me in agreement with Ted at jobsanger, which is a rare thing.

Democratic Land Commissioner challenger Miguel Suazo just secured the endorsement of Jerry Patterson, the former GOP LC who gave up the job four years ago to run in the scrum of the LG primary.  Incumbent George Pee Bush has alienated more conservatives than just Patterson with his screwball Alamo business despite winning the March primary over "Hogleg".  (Chris Elam, mentioned in the TM link, used to blog from Sugar Land under the title 'Safety for Dummies', which he scrubbed off the Web long ago.  A devoted Tom DeLay acolyte back in the day, it seems as if Elam's mentors have all let him down.  Somebody should ask him where his support goes these days, if one can't tell from where he's drawing a paycheck.)

Suazo has made hay with Bush also fumbling Harvey relief, but the young Democrat has an "all of the above" energy strategy which doesn't particularly suit me.  It would be awfully difficult for a Texas land commissioner to stand against the fossil fuel companies and expect to get elected.  He favors wind and solar and renewables, so I'll swallow hard and click the box beside his name.

Roman McAllen is running against incumbent Republican Christi Craddick, daughter of former Texas House Speaker Tom, for Railroad Commissioner.

A governing body for the state's oil and gas interests -- shockingly, fewer 5% of Texans even know that much about it -- where cronyism and corruption is the rule, McAllen stands out for his blunt talk about the truths associated with the Railroad Commission.  He's been endorsed by the Sierra Club and Our Revolution ETX.  Let's see if we can get just one vote out of three on the TXRRC that isn't bought and paid for by O&G.

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One more, separate post.

The Weekly Wrangle

September 16 was Mexican Independence Day, according to Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, so the Texas Progressive Alliance hopes all Texans were able to proudly fly their flags yesterday.  Here comes the blog post and lefty news roundup from a busy week passed.

A US Border Patrol supervisor was arrested in Laredo for the murders of four women in what officials are calling "serial killings".

Authorities issue more search warrants as the investigation into the murder of Botham Jean by a Dallas police officer continue.  Experts are disagreeing on the credibility of the officer involved.

The Texas SBOE chooses to remember the Alamo's heroes, but ignore the historical contributions of Helen Keller and Hillary Clinton.

Houston's ABC affiliate KTRK reports the Cajun Navy has headed toward the Carolinas to utilize experience gained during Harvey to help out the victims of Florence.

Southwest Key, the company that wants to house immigrant children in a facility in downtown Houston, has sued the city claiming that the permitting process required to open it has been an "improper political exercise" that has been "motivated by hostility" toward federal immigration law.

And Texas Monthly's Bob Moore has the story about Tornillo's tent city for unaccompanied immigrant children doubling its capacity.

As we barrel toward our first US Senate debate this Friday night, the latest developments in the race between Ted Cruz and Beto O'Rourke include:

-- Cruz mailing out campaign solicitations marked "Official Travis County Summons".  State legislator Gene Wu says that's a violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act.

-- SocraticGadfly wondering why states' rights wingnuts like Cruz can't talk more about the truly overlooked Ninth Amendment and less about the un-overlooked Tenth Amendment, especially in judicial confirmation hearings.

-- And Sanford Nowlin at the San Antonio Current taking the measure of O'Rourke.

Off the Kuff published interviews with Congressional candidates Steven David (CD-8, incumbent Brady) and Adrienne Bell (CD- 14, incumbent Weber).

David Collins wonders if voters actually care about foreign policy positions when assessing Congressional candidates, and Zachery Taylor asks if oligarchy is creating another wave of fake progressives (and if so, for what purpose).

Grits for Breakfast collates some criminal justice reform implications associated with a few of the fall Texas Senate races.  Texas Public Radio covers the last days before the special election for SD-19 between Bill Flores and Pete Gallego.  And the Texas Tribune reports that Texas Republicans are worried their supermajority in the upper chamber will be lost.

Raise Your Hand Texas reads between the lines of the Texas Education Agency's budget request.

Save Buffalo Bayou thinks the recent 'A' given Galveston Bay's water quality is misleading.

Texas Vox separates energy subsidy myth from fact.

BeyondBones catalogs what the devastating fire at the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro means to the world.

Kevin Curtin at the Austin Chronicle says goodbye to the iconic Threadgill's World Headquarters.

Stace at Dos Centavos wrote about an old friend's biography, which won a major literary award.

And Harry Hamid found a life away from blogging, but doesn't feel like he's through blogging.

Sunday Gale Force Funnies