Texas 2022 megathread

[MargieCat]

In the 2018 senate race, Cruz defeated Beto by 2.6% percentage points.

In the 2018 governors race, Abbott defeat Valdez by 13.3 percentage points.

I expect Abbott to win in 2022 by around 10 percentage points.

It's probably not worth contesting heavily.

Now Paxton and Patrick are a different story.

[MargieCat]

In the 2018 senate race, Cruz defeated Beto by 2.6% percentage points.

In the 2018 governors race, Abbott defeat Valdez by 13.3 percentage points.

I expect Abbott to win in 2022 by around 10 percentage points.

It's probably not worth contesting heavily.

Now Paxton and Patrick are a different story.

Who may be the best democrats to beat Paxton and Patrick? I definitely see those races being extremely tight, likely to the point of flipping.

I'm hearing a lot about a former mayor of Galveston, Joe Jaworski, challenging Paxton.

Never heard of him before.

Not sure who is running for lieutenant governor.

[MargieCat]

Safe R

Do you think Abbott is a lock in the primary? I used to, but am not so sure after COVID-19.

I think he is.

He has a primary challenge from Chad Prather and maybe someone like Allen West will run against him.

Ultimately, he will win the primary.

[MargieCat]

Domains purchased in the names of Beto, Abbott, and West (I'm assuming Royce West).
https://twitter.com/CATargetBot/status/1367686354604199937

[MargieCat]

Allen West would be a disaster as the Republican nominee for Governor of Texas. I'd go as far as to say the race would be at least Tilt D with him as the Republican nominee.

My ultra-rightwing neighbor (who doesn't know I'm a democrat) was complaining that the democrats stole the election and spouting off conspiracy theories about dominion/smartmatic. She was calling Lina Hidalgo a communist witch that stole her election in 2018 and helped the democrats steal more races.

She had Abbott and Cruz signs in her yard back in 2018.

I told her that she needs to support Allen West in the primary because Abbott is insufficiently conservative

[MargieCat]

If I had to guess, Huffines and West will likely split the MAGA vote and make Abbott the winner.

I don't think that Huffines and West's combined vote share even comes close to Abbott's.

I bet Abbott gets more than a majority with both establishment support plus the Trump endorsement.

[MargieCat]

Can anyone vote in either primary in TX or is it restricted by party?  Like could Dems sabotage Abbott by voting for West?  In Virginia you can just take either primary ballot (when the GOP decides to actually have primaries that is).

Yes.

In Texas, we don't really have partisan registration.

Everyone is independent. But once you vote in a party's primary, you are with that party for the calendar year. You can't vote in the runoff for the other party.

[MargieCat]

Can anyone vote in either primary in TX or is it restricted by party?  Like could Dems sabotage Abbott by voting for West?  In Virginia you can just take either primary ballot (when the GOP decides to actually have primaries that is).

Yes.

In Texas, we don't really have partisan registration.

Everyone is independent. But once you vote in a party's primary, you are with that party for the calendar year. You can't vote in the runoff for the other party.

Damn, why is Lincoln Project not all over this yet.  This calls for Dem dirty tricks.

Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that Allen West would lose in the general.

I wouldn't even be shocked if some Biden-Cornyn voters voted for him if he got the nomination.

[MargieCat]

About won by 13 points in 2018 which was a blue wave and also Beto was running as a senate candidate that year

Could Abbott in a more favorable year for republicans such as next year win by 15-20 points?

I think he wins by a smaller margin than 2018.

Probably somewhere between Trump and Cornyn's margins in 2020.

[MargieCat]

I heard from a source close to Beto that he is going to run against Abbott.

[MargieCat]

https://twitter.com/statesman/status/1468679311796600832

[MargieCat]

https://twitter.com/statesman/status/1468679311796600832

Beto not good enough for her?

Oh who am I kidding, she's gonna raise an embarrassingly low amount of money and lose the primary to Beto by a massive landslide. Probably won't even crack 10,000 votes, and neither will Deidre Gilbert.

Deirdre is not even running for the Democratic nomination anymore.

She is running as an independent.

[MargieCat]

Joy should have entered the race before Beto, if she truly wanted the nomination.

Beto would have probably gotten the state party behind her, as he was pretty hesitant to declare and there was a lot of pressure placed on him to enter. No one else wanted to be a sacrificial lamb.

[MargieCat]

Just learned Chad Prather did not file his candidacy, meaning he's out of the race. Who is he more likely to endorse: West or Huffines?

He did file.

[MargieCat]

I live in a upper middle class community in West Houston. Located in Lizzie Fletcher's district, this is an ancestrally republican area that has trended more blue in recent years. The precinct even voted for Biden.

During election time, the neighborhood is always full of conservative political signs. Even in off years (school boards, city council special election, etc).

Most of these republicans even have signs for downballot races, such as state legislators, county treasurer, county D.A., constables, etc. You end up seeing houses with like 12 political signs.

Four years ago, there were tons of signs for Abbott, Patrick, Cruz, Culberson, etc.

Driving through, I was shocked to see signs for Don Huffines. None yet for Abbott.

These are high-propensity voting baby-boomers.

I think Huffines might actually be gaining traction with the voters who show up to primaries.

[MargieCat]

If Dems can't pull ahead in Harris County early vote soon that should be a big warning sign for them.

Not like TX will be particularly competitive in 2022 nor does it have many competitive House districts, but if Rs can still outright win Harris County that suggests a lot of the gains they've made this past decade are not certain to hold as strongly as many here have projected.

There are about 32k mail ballots outstanding that have not been returned and republicans have a lead of about 6k.

I expect chunk of the mail ballots to arrive over the next couple of days and they will skew democratic.

[MargieCat]

The more I look at the swing map, Beto 2018 is basically Biden 2020 with a more "normal" Dem performance with minority voters across the state.

I really do wonder how much of the heavy rightwards shift we saw in a lot of very D minority communities was at least in part specific to covid and higher turnout. There def is a case to be made that less frequent black or hispanic voters tend to be less firmly in the dem column (but still lean Dem overall, especially if it's in a city).

Secondly in all the major metros, there's def a ring of suburbs where Biden slightly outperformed Beto, but not by much. I wonder how much of that could be turnout differentials vs growth vs genuine unique appeal from Biden to these communities.

If Beto is able to get a universal overperformance of Biden by just like 1-2% in most rural areas, that would be extremely powerful is TX rurals are EXTREMELY R throughout, especially in the eastern part of the state where they're relatively dense rurals too.

Still think Abbott will win but there def is a clearer path for Beto than say Christ or Whaley

I also wonder if part of it was due to Trump's incumbency and name recognition.