How Much Trouble Is Ted Cruz Really In?

FiveThirtyEight ^ | August 31, 2018 | Dhrumil Mehta and Janie Velencia

[2ndDivisionVet]

Welcome to Pollapalooza, our weekly polling roundup.

Poll of the week

A new Texas Senate poll came out this week showing Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke within 1 point of Republican Sen. Ted Cruz. It gave new life to a familiar question: Could Texas finally flip blue? Normally, this would be the point where we lecture everyone about the dangers of putting too much stock in one poll. But this poll wasn’t even much of an outlier — it came on the heels of a few others that also show O’Rourke within a few points of Cruz. That’s an awfully close race for a state that President Trump won by 9 points in 2016. Is it time to start betting on a Democrat in Texas?

We still say you should hold onto your chips.

OK, first the new survey: Emerson College’s poll of registered voters, conducted online and through robo-calls, reported 38 percent support for Cruz and 37 percent for O’Rourke, well within the poll’s 4-point margin of error. About a fifth of respondents remained undecided.

Emerson was the sixth consecutive pollster in our database to find the Texas Senate race within single digits....

[spintreebob]

Is Texas like Georgia? Millions of jobless Rust Belt workers, mostly Democrats, fled to job creating Red States (TN, NC, GA, FL, TX and others).

Here in GA, the Republicans and Conservatives are asleep at the wheel of a fast moving economy. Only Democrats are reaching out to welcome the newbies.

Nobody is asking the newbies to consider why there are no jobs in Rust Belt cities and why there are jobs in Red states. Hopefully, enough Rust Belt refugees will figure it out on their own. But don’t count on that.

Meanwhile, AFP, Heritage, CATO, Tea Party, and the GOP are busy preaching to the choir.

[Sontagged]

"You know very well that I was one of the original supporters before Trump jumped into the race. You were and maybe still are a bundler for him--paid or volunteer was never made clear. I gave hundreds of dollars to Lyn' Ted. He proved a habitual liar and I eternally regret that misspent money. I may eventually get it back through the cost of spam his campaigns keep sending. I switched to Trump almost on the day he announced. Never looked back. Trump trounced everyone, including Lyn' Ted so spectacularly that they all should be resigning and find new careers.

You know, overall, Lyn' Ted never apologized for his lies and actions, not once. Part of why he is so unlikable.

While I like 2nd Division Vet very much, I also discovered he may be bundling for Ted back in the day. Not sure if he survived the Cruz FR purge at that time.

Hey 2nd Div Vet, tell lyin' Ted to apologize and fess up about all his weird behaviours and actions in '16...

...like letting Glenn Beck perform some weird initiation ceremony over him with George Washington's compass?

... like lying to The Conservative Treehouse about having the numbers for the nomination?

...like lying about his former CIA staffer tweeting first in the Iowa Caucus, so Trump would lose the first round of primaries?

... like having his chief staffer excoriate Sarah Palin for backing Trump?

Weird weird weird and lyin' weird Ted.

[digger48]

This is just the media doing the same thing they did with Abortion Barbie.

Every 2 years, Texas is turning blue...

until it doesn’t

[robowombat]

This election will force the Democratic Party to reform back to its roots rather than slip into a Socialist left.

I don't think so. The crazy left are the dynamic base of the party. Either they will nominate a Sanders clone in 2020 or the party pick will sound like crazy Bernie to try and get the base out. The result will look like 1972 for the Dems but I suspect it will just generate more of ‘where is our Watergate dreaming’. Until the Dems hit rock bottom they won't start trying to behave normally. The big problem is half the GOP at least are Uniparty squishes and can't be relied on to be anything but greedy cowards.

[PAR35]

Jimmy Carter

How many times did you meet Jimmy? He was a lousy president who surrounded himself with, and took advice from, incompetents, but he was personally likable when I met him four decades ago.

[BobL]

“For anyone interested, Cruz didn’t endorse Trump until five weeks before the election, many months after his “Vote Your Conscience!” speech at the RNC convention, of which Hillary retweeted mid-speech.”

Thanks for the details. I think a lot of us remember that Cruz made an ass of himself at the Convention, but don’t remember (or didn’t care) about what came next, especially that it took him nearly 1.5 months to figure out that he was putting his own re-election (and hence career) at risk by being such a dufus towards Trump.

As to me, I was busy putting in a new sewage line at that time, far more desirable than trying to track the daily Cruz drama.

[Drew68]

I think he will win re-eelction, and he should. We need him in the Senate. But this just shows that he’s basically not very likeable. Many of us felt this way in the primaries, and evidently it is also true to some extent in Texas, even though I suspect these polls are garbage.

I think he will win only because President Trump had to travel down to Texas to drag his sorry ass across the finish line. If Cruz wasn't in trouble, Trump wouldn't be doing this.

He's basically neck and neck with Beto in a state that Trump carried by 9 points and Governor Abbot is leading the polls for reelection by 20 points.

[Conserv]

Sounds like you’re in love with Beto.

But, sorry, your crush is toast.

[sergeantdave]

FiveThirtyEight is sure-fire troll bait. It attracts FR’s usual smelly clique of defeatists and hand-wringers to perform flops for us on fainting couches.

[mrsmith]

Their summary of August polling vs election results is TERRIFIC!
https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/data/blob/master/august-senate-polls/august_senate_polls.csv

Dems are nearly always too high in the August polls... well. it’s fund-raising time LOL!

* notice in the article they don’t say who the Aogost polling errors favored *

[Retvet]

If he is in trouble, he’s wouldn’t be if he didn’t flip-flop,

[2ndDivisionVet]

I wrote a twice daily report on the Korean DMZ that landed on his desk. I ran PT with him once but didn’t talk to him.

[Wallace T.]

My guess is that a full bore Trump endorsement will make the difference between a squeaker that Cruz would barely win and a 10+ point victory margin. Then he may be a candidate for a Supreme Court vacancy should Ginsburg or another justice retire or die. After that, Lieutenant Governor Abbott could be appointed as his successor.

[zeestephen]

I think Cruz, and future GOP presidential candidates, are in big political trouble in Texas.

(1) Cruz is a mediocre candidate.

(2) And 52% of Texas residents are Black or Hispanic.

Whites - 42.0%

Hispanic - 39.4%

Blacks - 12.7%

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/tx,US/PST045217

[Reno89519]

Great observation, the Democrats today have a “crazy left” base whereas years ago they had a union base, workers as much as anything else. The identity crisis is going to take a few years to work out as the older, more moderate Democrats eventually move on. Unlikely a viable third party will form so Republican’s will benefit. Should the Democrats get truly saddled with the “crazy left”, we’ll likely hear talk of a Republican majority for a generation. Live long enough and the cycle is bound to happen.

[wmileo]

If Cruz is in trouble it is of his own doing starting with the shutdown of Government during the Obamster's presidency and continuing during the 2016 GOP Nomination campaign through the Convention and after running up to the Election.

I want him to win because we need a majority in the Senate to get Judges and possibly new personnel at the FBI/DOJ

[Osage Orange]

I think Ted ought to fund his own campaign.

[Don Corleone]

Vote! Vote! Vote as if your life depends on it. It does!

[lone star annie]

No we don’t love him here! Many Ted lovers in 2016 are still not happy with his stunt at the convention. If he wins it is because we need the seat to stay GOP.

[Teacher317]

No we don’t love him here! Many Ted lovers in 2016 are still not happy with his stunt at the convention. If he wins it is because we need the seat to stay GOP.

No some idiot zealots don’t love him here! Some Ted lovers in 2016 are still not happy with his stunt at the convention, and have no concept of the fact that a lifetime of Limited Government work is not invalidated by one (likely poorly-advised) Campaign month.

(There, fixed it for you.)