TX-SEN: True to Form

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Surprised no one posted the actual poll:

Cruz 47, Beto 40

From what I can gather this is quite impressive for Beto but not 'Scott Walker "we need to wake up"' impressive. If this was TN or CO or another more elastic state I'd be willing to say Beto is within striking distance. As this is Texas, however, I can't help but think that even a perfect storm would leave Beto 3-4 points short; not because he's somehow inadequate, more because those last few points are particularly sticky for a Texas Dem.

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... which would indicate a degree of elasticity, no?

I'm not going to die on this hill. You're right that there are more elastic states than TN, though one wonders if the upheavals of the past few years (AL-Sen, 2016 Pres in MI/PA) indicate a need a redefine just what we consider 'in/elastic' in the first place.

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Beto will win this race on election day, not by daily tracking polls, in which failed to predict the chances of Gillespie against Warner. Which it will be an upset if Beto were to win

Even in the 2016 presidential election most of the polls were predicting that Hillary Clinton would win before the whole world was stunned when Donald Trump won the election thanks to Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. So even there, the polls failed to predict the outcome of the presidential election.

So we should expect such surprises for the 2018 midterms.

We *should* expect surprises in the 2018 election, as with all elections, but doing so on the basis of polling error in 2016 is unfounded.

The polls in 2016 showed Clinton with a 1-3 point lead in the popular vote and she ended up with a 3 point lead in the election. It wasn't the polls that failed in 2016, it was the interpretation of them by forecasters, most of whom did not appreciate how tenuous Clinton's lead was in the states you mentioned.

Anyway, back to Texas: is there any possibility that Cruz could depress his own turnout by being insufficiently hard line about the ICE child refugee prisons and family separation policy? It seems like the sort of thing that Texas Republicans would take the most extreme positions on, but Cruz has been somewhat soft on the issue.

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Dems lead the GCB in an ABC poll by a 14% margin.  I assume some of that 14% trickles down to Texas.  Maybe we'll even see a Beto lead in some polls soon.

With how things are going on the GCB and in the Beto trend in polls, we may have Beto leading by election day. Thats wishful thinking though.

Yes.  I'm still bullish on my prediction that Cruz wins by 3-5% based on current polling.  The national environment may be nasty for Republicans, but I still don't think it's bad news to be a Republican in Texas...yet.

Fair, but it's equally valid to say that if Cruz was going to lose, what has happened so far is pretty much what you would expect to see at this stage. Give it another few weeks. If Cruz continues to deteriorate, or there's a major event that works in Beto's favour, that'll be the next step.

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Beto was interviewed on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night.

He did all right, I guess. He's very telegenic and came off as sort of adorkable in the first few minutes. That said, he also seemed kinda nervous and snapped into what I assume is his stump speech for most of the interview. He delivered his lines well but seemed like a garden variety politician to my ear. Maybe people from Texas would respond to this sort of thing better?