TX-Gov: ChismStrat/Blueprint (D): Abbott + 19

[MT Treasurer]

Very telling that this same poll only finds Trump ahead of Biden by 6 points in a hypothetical 2024 rematch (44-38), which really contradicts the posters who are implying that this poll was designed to favor Republicans. Again, a case can be made that the Trump years were an unusual drag on the TX GOP and that Trump himself was an atrocious candidate for the state who underperformed rather substantially in a way other Republicans (including DeSantis) wouldn’t. While the state will likely still drift into Battleground status in the medium term, the popular (and at times smug) comparison between "GA 2016" and TX 2020/today was extremely superficial and often resembled wishful thinking. There was no room for any impactful pro-R countertrend in GA after 2016 the way there is in South TX/the RGV/metro parts with a high concentration of Latino voters in TX, and there’s nothing like the lopsided Atlanta-based migration of core Democratic groups (esp. AA voters) going on in TX (nor does any metro in TX hold the same power over the entire state that Atlanta holds over GA). Obviously many Democrats are migrating to TX, but if the pool of migrants is just way more diverse overall and consisting of a higher share of R-leaning and swing voters, it’s not going to be nearly as beneficial to the party. This is not even to mention that we’re dealing with entirely different partisan baselines in both states.

I maintain that MN is a closer analogy to TX than GA (or AZ) in that both MN and TX are states which should be competitive in major wave elections and cannot be taken for granted by the dominant parties, but which are not going to flip in any close-ish national election in the foreseeable future (although I do think MN is closer to flipping in a "neutral" year than TX is in spite of the 2020 trend in MN).