TX-SEN JMC: Cruz +7

[KingSweden]

JMC is not Cruz’s pollster, that’s WPA.

Still - suggests the CV is right on this race. Competitive, but Cruz is plainly the favorite.

[KingSweden]

Cruz is likely not in any trouble, but it's interesting that a seven-point lead for Cruz means he's safe, but a four-point lead for McCaskill doesn't even mean that she's got 50/50 chances of holding her seat. Hmmm...

[KingSweden]

There’s some really goofy crosstabs - Cruz doing counterintuitively well with black people and young people, Beto doing oddly well with whites.

[KingSweden]

I don't hold it against people who think Cruz is safe. Democrats haven't won a statewide race in TX in over 20 years, and even in traditionally GOP states that lean even more Republican (Dakotas), Democrats have had more success. Sometimes a lot, like ND. The point being that Democrats may be able to make inroads in the Texas electorate, but it'll probably be hard to secure those last half dozen points or so that they need to win.

I'm taking a "see it to believe it" approach to Texas, although it would be easier to buy into if Beto started leading in a bunch of decent polls in October.

This is (per usual with Virginia) the most sensible take, and more or less where I am too