TX (UT-Tyler): General - Cornyn +11, Primary - Hegar +12

[VAR]

University of Texas at Tyler
June 29-July 7
1909 RV
MoE: 2.2%

Cornyn vs. Hegar
Cornyn 37%
Hegar 26%
Other 6%
Undecided 31%

Cornyn vs. West
Cornyn 37%
West 25%
Other 6%
Undecided 32%

D Primary
898 RV
MoE: 3.3%

Hegar 32%
West 20%
Other 10%
Undecided 37%

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/public-health/2020/07/12/joe-biden-builds-lead-over-donald-trump-in-reliably-red-texas-as-voters-sour-on-handling-of-virus/

[VAR]

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/20200712_TX.pdf

Among likely voters in the general election:
MoE: 2.4%
Sample size: 1677

Cornyn 42%
Hegar 29%
Other 5%
Undecided 22%

Cornyn 43%
West 28%
Other 6%
Undecided 23%

Among likely voters in the primary runoff:
MoE: 3.4%
Sample size: 829

Hegar 35%
West 22%
Other 11%
Undecided 32%

Thank you for this! I think Hegar’s going to lose by double digits. Here’s the math:

34% of Dems are undecided. If they all would choose Hegar, she’d gain 12.6 points and jump to 41.6%. But I don’t think they’ll all choose Hegar, so let’s make that 40.4%.

20% of Reps are undecided. If they all would choose Cornyn, he’d gain 8.4 points and jump to 50.4%. He would win the election.

31% of Indys are undecided. If they would break for Cornyn 60-40, he’d gain 3.5 points and Hegar would gain 2.4 points.

Cornyn 54/43.

[VAR]

With such a high amount of undecideds and the fact that Hegar is relatively unknown compared to Cornyn (who a lot of people apparently haven't either made their mind about yet as he's polling a bit far from 50 for an incumbent) and the fact that we still have a while before the election, I don't understand why anyone's predicting a double-digit Cornyn victory which won't even happen anyway.

Did I predict a double-digit Cornyn victory without paying attention to the data? No, I didn’t. I tried to estimate who the undecideds will pick as we get closer to the election. You can call my analysis flawed, but I don’t think just criticizing the result is helpful.

Also, my double-digit Cornyn victory prediction was based on the LV sample which has Cornyn leading 43/29. The RV sample indicates a high single-digit Cornyn victory. Maybe that’s why you found it improbable.