Abbott wins by double digits.
This is a man who won by 13 in a blue wave year, so I don’t agree with these approval polls. These are actually even more egregious than the Florida 2022 polls I’ve been putting on blast recently.
Keep in mind Lupe Valdez was about as unenergetic as they come. All democrats need to do is nominate someone who can energize turnout (and especially anger turnout with the power stuff, they'll absolutely make it a big issue in '22) and Abbott's MOV could easily go down to high single digits, which is about where I expect.
Beto, despite his controversial past statements, still has a base. Yes it may be almost 100% made up of teenagers who can't vote, and #resist libs in the suburbs of the big cities, but it's still a base nonetheless. I'm confident Beto can energize turnout FAR better than Lupe Valdez did in 2018.
And remember Beto overperformed Valdez by about 10% in 2018, though Cruz definitely had a lot more baggage than Abbott back then.
Or maybe Matthew McConaughey runs as a third party and all hell breaks loose.
