Civiqs: Cruz +2

[Zaybay]

Cruz is favored to win reelection, but I will say this, it wouldn't totally blow me to the far end of Mars if Beto won by a point. The heavy campaigning has not even started yet, and Beto is in good condition for it, Strong Lean R as of now.

[Zaybay]

This is both believable, and unbelievable. The cross tabs are pretty good, except for an over polling of millenials, but they could turnout at a higher rate this year. Hispanics moving to 70-30 is believable, though this would suggest a lot of movement. Overall, too favorable to Beto, but not as bad as the Gravis one.

Then again, I think people here forget that the main campaigns have not started up yet, in any of the elections. People saying Cruz will win by double digits when the most favorable polling for ruling party in the election cycle, the summer before the election, has the race at Cruz+7. Cruz is likely to go down from here, not up, especially since Beto has the funds to do so. So far, I would say this race ends at a 53-47 win for Cruz, but it could easily go into Beto territory.

[Zaybay]

Pending crosstabs and based on other polls, I think this is a junk poll. Yes, junk polls can favor Democrats as well.

We have crosstabs, its in the Civiqs twitter.

[Zaybay]

Just wait till the campaign really starts getting heated and Beto's mugshot gets spammed on the airwaves. If Beto didn't have his criminal conviction hanging overhead, I think he'd pull off a very narrow win. Of course, this is the age of Donald Trump, so who knows anymore...

If thats all Cruz can throw at him, then he is screwed. Going negative has not worked for Cruz at all(remember the "fake name" thing?), and Beto's problem currently is name recognition. And its not like Beto is a sitting duck either, he has as much funding as Cruz, and can go toe to toe with him. I dont believe he will win in the end, losing by a close margin of around 52-48, but I would not be surprised if polling close to election day would show this race as a tossup.

[Zaybay]

Looking at the Civiqs poll and Gravis, Ive started to notice terrible problems in this Gravis's methodology(what else is new).

Looking at how things are broken down by race

Gravis:D/R
Whites-40/54
AA- 66/33
Latinos-31/59
Asians-63/36

Civiqs: D/R
Whites-29/65
AA-78/14
Latinos-70/25
Asians not shown

The fact that Gravis shows Latinos as lean R, African Americans as a 2/3s group, and Whites as almost even makes me lose hope that this poll really is good.
Civiqs however has pretty believable demographic numbers, though I wish that they showed Asians.

[Zaybay]

This assumes the Dubya coalition is faltering. Not gonna happen, folks. Cruz is getting 40% of Latinos at least. Move on.

why do you exist?

[Zaybay]

I'm feeling a bit bipolar on that 70/30 number among Latinos, but:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

But...the other thing bothering me is the education breakdown: should it be this close in a state like TX if Cruz is winning college educated voters by around 15 points?

While many have pointed out how Dems are gaining in college educated voters, and how they turn up in midterms, that doesnt mean they are in the majority. Only around 39% of the US has one, and the percentage in TX is around 27%. Its also important to note that in this poll, Dems are losing whites, and whites constitute most of those degrees. The Dem base in the state are Latinos and Blacks, who have a lower higher education rate.

Also, this is just my opinion, but I believe this poll is closer to the current state of the election than most others. The crosstabs check out, and it shows Dem movement in the correct groups, whites with college degrees. The Gravis poll is just bad, looking at the crosstabs, especially since Rs are winning Latinos in that poll by a 60/40 margin.

This would also explain much of the actions Cruz has taken this year. He has been treating Beto extremely seriously, attacking him early, and Cruz has asked for help from donors. This is not the act of someone confident in his victory. He also was the only R asking voters to vote for Lipinski over the nazi. Why? Not even moderates had done this. Its because he can use this, it makes him look like someone willing to cross the line of partisanship. Its fuel for his campaign.

Those of us who are thinking this race is likely R, or going into the double digits has clearly been smoking that "Ds can never win TX" propaganda. Many of the polls that are great quality or have crosstabs that make sense have this race as either close or with a high amount of undecideds. Polls that dont(Gravis) have terrible crosstabs and dont align with what we know about TX. And whats important to note is that in most states, The campaigning hasnt started yet!. Bredesen is not going to win by 10 and Heller is likely not going to lose in a close election. Beto and Cruz have barely spent any money on ads, and even then, its pretty even in terms of funding. In August and early fall, we will see shifts(mostly to the Ds) due to campaigning, and the other factors we know will occur(raising health care prices, tariffs causing some economic pain). This race is not decided, Cruz has the advantage, but who knows if he will keep it.

[Zaybay]

Snip

I believe your missing something in all of those election polls you posted.
1. Besides 2008, all occurred in either R wave years, or neutral years. And TX 2008 is a different state than TX 2018, just look at the Rust Belt, AZ, GA.
2. In every poll, the Democrats have gotten the amount the polls said they would. The reason why they always fall is that undecideds have gone for the R each time.

I also think you are missing where most of the D vote gains have been coming from. Similar to CO, its the growing metropolitan areas of Houston, Dallas, FT.Worth, Austin, San Antonio. The suburbs have also been slightly converting over in TX. Its a GA situation, I guess you could call it.

TX minorities have also been voting in larger numbers over the years, its just that the oldest generation, which was D heavy, was dying off. Now, The greatest is gone, and so is the older silent, and now its Baby Boomers who are getting too old. This is where a shift occurs in demographics. Contrary to popular belief, AAs have pretty great turnout in the south, its just that you cant see that because the DixieCrats keep dying off, and are replaced by R baby boomers. Hispanics have a below average turnout rate, but that can be easily motivated to vote.

I would also like to point out that the idea that Rs can carry the state just by going off of the rurals and white vote is extremely hard. The rural areas, while plentiful in TX, have no one in them. Contrary to popular belief, most of the margins in TX come from the suburbs, not the rurals. If you were to look at the counties and how they voted in 2012, 2010, 2008, or even 2006, you would see that many city counties are rather evenly split or R. Tarrent County was still R in 2016. Think of it like CA in the 1990s, the suburbs rule the state, and the cities dont have enough of a D leaning to move it the opposite direction. The problem with this strategy is that the cities are rappidly bluing, and causing major movement in the state. Here are the presidential numbers of TX from 2000 to 2016(rounded to the thousand)
2000
D-2,434,000
R-3,800,000
2004
D-2,833,000(+399,000)
R-4,527,000(+727,000)
2008(D WAVE)
D-3,529,000(+696,000)
R-4,479,000(-48,000)
2012
D-3,308,000(-221,000)
R-4,570,000(+91,000)
2016
D-3,878,000(+570,000)
R-4,685,000(+115,000)
As you can see, the R numbers have actually been stagnant for a while, and its been the Ds who have seen voter fluctuation and gains. Its also important to note that 2016 was a poor year for D turnout, and so these numbers could be have been larger with a better candidate.

I am not saying Beto is going to win by 10%, what I am saying is that he has a chance, and that TX will not always be an R state.

[Zaybay]

Snip

I dont want this to keep going back and forth, so ill just do a quick write up.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I will admit the Rust belt was a poor choice, but GA and AZ match what is occuring in TX perfectly. All three states are R states, with large swaths of rural areas. Each one has a metropolitan area(or multiple) that are bursting with transplants and people. They all have R suburbs that have been trending D overtime. They all have a minority group that constitutes the majority of the D base. And they are all inelastic, not supporting Ds in decades(AZ has one of the largest streaks of going without a D senator).

You must be logged in to read this quote.

This is a good point, but its important to note that much of the D base in TX is not registered to vote. Most polls take info from RV, and so it would not pick them up. What is likely occuring is a combo of both of our ideas, undecideds break GOP, and Dems are over supported a bit.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

didnt want to take up too much space.
White flight does exist in TX, though the way you say it, it seems that the only thing occurring. Its not. If that were the case, we would see a similar margin every time in TX. But, as I posted, Hillary Clinton made a large gain in voters. The devil is in the details, as while overall turnout is largely the same, the margins are vastly different. According to your numbers, in Dallas county, the margin for Hillary Clinton went from 113 to 198, a shift of 85K voters. There is also a gain of 16K voters in Collin county, which is less than the 12K shift in Wise county. And in other counties, such as Harris, the margins went from 19K, to 162K, or an overall change of 143K. This can be seen in other counties too, a large gain that the rural areas partially offset, but not by enough to matter.
While I dont want to go through the counties of TX and deduce the changes in votes as you have, I can use congressional seats to get a similar result. The 7th, and 21st are both rated in a competitive categlory. These seats are here for basically the first time. These seats were safe R going into 2012, Safe R going into 2016, and Hillary won both of them. This can mean two things.
A. Whites in these two suburban seats are becoming more Democratic
B. The Hispanics in these two districts voted en masse
Whichever explanation you pick, it points to a shifting TX
I also think its a bit unfair to take numbers from 2008(a Dem year where the GB was around D+8) and 2016(where it was a modest R+1). It would have been better to take 2012 numbers, as that was a neutral year, and show the change better.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

This seems to have a poor understanding of how and why voters vote. Hispanic voting is not gradual, rather, its exponential. The reason the Hispanic vote is smaller than their population is due to age. Many Hispanic voters are rather young, and so cant vote, or are in the millenial group, which have terrible turnout. As they come of age though, especially in this time, they will vote in larger numbers.
According to 2016 numbers, Hispanic turnout was around 41%, White turnout was 64%, Black turnout was 57%, and Asian turnout was 47%. If Hispanic voting were to increase to 43, or even 45%, then the state would be a lean D state.
And what is also interesting about those numbers is how they shaped up in 2012. In 2012, Hispanic turnout was 38%, white turnout was 61% , Black turnout was 63%, and Asian turnout was 42%.  Just some food for thought.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

To your first point, yes, the Dems have not been close to R numbers. But what is important here is the growth. 2016 was a neutral year with poor Dem turnout, and they gained around 600,000, and the Rs gained 100,000. Thats around a 500,000 gain every 4 years.
This would make TX a D state by 2024, and a tossup/tilt R state in 2020.
And to your second point, I used presidential numbers because they show a true pattern of growth. Most are neutral years, except for 2008, which I labelled as such, and so show growth at a better rate. If I used midterms, the numbers would be biased as the two previous midterms had the Rs with large leads on the GB, and 2006, the last major Dem year, had a TX that had voted the largest margin in favor of the Rs. Its also really hard to figure out the turnout in a midterm year, so I decided to forgo it.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I would just like to note first of all that the GB currently is 8 in favor of the Dems and is likely to increase in their favor for a multitude of reasons.
 Your second point is rather flawed. The state just cannot afford to stay R at its current rate. While it may take a while, maybe until 2024, demographics, the growth of metros, and the maximizing of rurals just cant sustain it. That is a fact, that both GOP and DEM politicians and operatives know. It is occurring in both AZ and GA, and those states are already becoming tossups. Its just unsustainable.
If you would like to reply to this, I recommend not quoting the entire thing and doing snips instead. Saves space on this forum.

[Zaybay]

Here are the presidential numbers of TX from 2000 to 2016(rounded to the thousand)
2000
D-2,434,000
R-3,800,000
2004
D-2,833,000(+399,000)
R-4,527,000(+727,000)
2008(D WAVE)
D-3,529,000(+696,000)
R-4,479,000(-48,000)
2012
D-3,308,000(-221,000)
R-4,570,000(+91,000)
2016
D-3,878,000(+570,000)
R-4,685,000(+115,000)
As you can see, the R numbers have actually been stagnant for a while, and its been the Ds who have seen voter fluctuation and gains. Its also important to note that 2016 was a poor year for D turnout, and so these numbers could be have been larger with a better candidate.

I am not saying Beto is going to win by 10%, what I am saying is that he has a chance, and that TX will not always be an R state.

So let's go back and take another look at these numbers. If you put them all in a spreadsheet and then draw a linear best fit for both the Democratic votes and the Republican votes, it looks like this:



i.e. if you extrapolate linear trends of vote gains, Texas is safe R/lean R until 2040, and is only a tossup (not even lean D, much less safe D) by 2040. That hardly looks like a blue state.

If you throw out the 2000 data and start with 2004, it crosses in 2032.

If you throw out both 2000 and 2004 and start with 2008, it crosses in about 2070...


Believe me, I would like to be wrong about this, but there is just no real support in previous election results to think that Texas is quickly shifting blue.

It is possible, of course, that it could shift more quickly, but if so, the shift will not be based upon just extrapolating previous Dem gains. It will be a different magnitude/degree/trend of Dem gains than has been seen before over the past decade or two. The best case for this happening is the possibility that Republican gains in rural and exurban areas have finally been maxed out, and that White millennials in TX replacing older voters in the electorate will start voting significantly less heavily R than their parents/grandparents. But even if that is the case, it is hard to see that coming into effect sufficiently to make TX a tossup (or lean D) before 2028/2032 or so. Which is not soon enough to make a difference for 2018, or 2020...


Other sunbelt states, such as Georgia (or Virginia) are different. In those states, demographic change turns more quickly into Democratic gains, because the demographic trends are based more on African American population growth and White Liberal population growth. Because African Americans and White Liberals vote at much higher rates than Hispanics do (especially Texas Hispanics), those states have much more of a substantive and faster Democratic trend. For example, GA is on track to pretty much be a tossup by 2020, and has been on that track since at least 2008, for a candidate who can get Obama-level turnout from African Americans and/or Clinton level gains among suburban whites. But for Texas, the timeline is more like 2040 or so.

Colorado is also different, because Democratic gains there are largely based on white liberals/moderates in Denver/Boulder flipping Dem. Minority/Hispanic growth makes some difference, but is comparatively small and slow (like in Texas). If you cut out East Texas, West Texas, and South Texas and had a state centered on Austin, the trend there would be a lot more similar to Colorado.

Arizona is also different because Democratic gains there... have not yet actually materialized... If Democratic gains do materialize there, it seems to me that this is again mostly a result of a shift in White voters, flipping from R to D (similar to Colorado). Yes, Hispanic population growth helps, but only on the margins. Presuming Sinema wins, she is not going to win just because Hispanics suddenly start voting in huge numbers in AZ. She is going to win because suburban whites are turned off by Trump and flip Dem, and because (in comparison to Texas), Arizona has many, many fewer exurban White Rs and rural White Rs.

While Arizona has also been fairly inelastic (similar to Texas), in comparison to Texas it has more of a recent history of splitting tickets and occasionally supporting Democrats. White voters (in particular white suburban voters) in Arizona have previously been much more elastic than white voters in Texas, and willing to elect people such as former Governor Janet Napolitano. AZ was also considered sufficiently elastic to be briefly somewhat contested in the 2004 Presidential election, and probably voted a bit more R than it otherwise would have in 2008 (McCain homestate) and 2012 (Romney mormon vote), so on a baseline level it is a tad less Republican than the last decade's Presidential results would indicate.

From 2004 - https://www.thenation.com/article/arizona-turning-blue-kerry/

Whereas white suburbanites in AZ voted sufficiently for Napolitano for her to win in a less rural/exurban state than Texas, white suburban voters in Texas would previously never have considered voting for a Democrat for anything, going back to roughly 1970 or so.

Im sorry, I just cant resist.
First of all the graph, I would just like to know
1. Where did you make that, I would love the software
2. Do you think voter growth is linear? Cause in the sunbelt, its not. Its, as SCNCmod put it

I think the increase in voting age minorities in Texas is increasing at a somewhat parabolic rate (so  simply extending graph lines of past numbers would be an inaccurate indication of future numbers).

He is indeed correct. In sunbelt states, the latino age is relatively young compared to that of the anglo age. This is one of many reasons Latinos have such a low vote rate. But, as I pointed to before, it is quickly increasing. From 2012-2016, it went from 38% to 41%, a rather large increase when considering the population size of the demographic.
City growth also occurs parabolicly. As a city gets larger, it attracts more people, and as it attracts more people, it gets more votes, and gets bluer. While cities in the north(like my state's city of Boston) have stagnated or grown rather slowly, the cities in TX have grown rapidly.
Its also noteworthy that you added 2008 again into the linear chart. While, yes, it is a presidential year, it screws with the data, as the year favored Ds immensely. Taking it out shows a much more parabolic shape of the D data, which is what demographic trends would show.

I also think you are missing how parabolic the other sunbelt states D growth has been. Its just that most are hitting the end of their parabolic growth
GA
2000:
D-1,116,000
R-1,419,000
2004:
D-1,366,000(+250,000)
R-1,914,000(+495,000)
2008:
D-1,844,000(+478,000)
R-2,048,000(+134,000)
2012:
D-1,744,000(-100,000)
R-2,078,000(+30,000)
2016:
D-1,877,000(+133,000)
R-2,089,000(+11,000)

AZ
2000:
D-685,000
R-782,000
2004:
D-895,000(+200,000)
R-1,104,000(+322,000)
2008:
D-1,035,000(+140,000)
R-1,230,000(+126,000)
2012:
D-1,025,000(-10,000)
R-1,233,000(+3,000)
2016:
D-1,161,000(+136,000)
R-1,252,000(+22,000)
I think its interesting that 2004 was the last big R vote dump in all three states, what happened?
I think its also interesting to note that while the D numbers are growing, the R vote remains largely stagnant.

Anyway, my point is that all of these states are seeing parabolic growth, due to many factors that I have previously listed. Now some might say, "That growth will only impact things down the line, not in 2018" theres more.

If we take a look at midterm performance in TX, its pretty bad, for both sides. Only around 33% bother to show up and vote. This is usually the white anglos in the suburbs and cities. How does O rourke win, simple, though it is difficult:
1. Cut margins in rural areas: even the slightest bit of defection is useful. This was the point of his all county tour earlier this year.
2. Maximize the city vote: With TX's low turnout, any more voters he can get can tip the scale. While the blue wave will get most of these voters(and new ones) to the polls, it doesnt hurt to create a GOTV effort.
3.Make yourself known: This is the actual main issue that plagues Beto, and the biggest obstacle for him. Cruz knows this, and is terrified at the thought of a well known Beto, and has been playing extremely defensively because of that. No debates, no ads to highlight his opponent, nothing. Rourke will need to use his money to get people to know him and energize folks.
4. Money: judging by the fact that Beto brought in $10 million in just the second quarter, I doubt this will be a problem.
5. Get out the Hispanic vote: This will be a bit harder, but it can be done. Beto is putting a lot of work into this, and even knows fluent Spanish as a bonus. Even if he can get 5% higher turnout than in 2014 for Hispanics, it should make him golden.
Those are it,really. And normally I would say no one can do this, its impossible. But Beto is really checkin off the list.


Also, can you believe he got $10 million in just the 2nd quarter?! Thats insane!