TX-SEN 2024 megathread: The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Scott Kelly or Colin Allred

Colin Allred would be a great pick, he literally won a D +1 district in suburban DFW by over 20 points this year. Insane.

I believe he was redistricted to a safe seat under the new map for this decade. His old seat under the 2010s map was very competitive.

No, I'm not aware of this at all, AFAIK the Seat that Allred just won by 20+ points is the exact same seat that Pete Sessions won by 20+ points in 2014 and hasn't been changed since 2013.

Every seat changed lol, Texas was gerrymandered and Allred was given a D sink. He won by 31 in a Biden +34 seat. That’s still a good performance, but he’s not in a competitive district anymore.

F in Chat for Antonio Swad's chances of getting into Congress in a D pack.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Scott Kelly or Colin Allred

Colin Allred would be a great pick, he literally won a D +1 district in suburban DFW by over 20 points this year. Insane.

I believe he was redistricted to a safe seat under the new map for this decade. His old seat under the 2010s map was very competitive.

No, I'm not aware of this at all, AFAIK the Seat that Allred just won by 20+ points is the exact same seat that Pete Sessions won by 20+ points in 2014 and hasn't been changed since 2013.

Every seat changed lol, Texas was gerrymandered and Allred was given a D sink. He won by 31 in a Biden +34 seat. That’s still a good performance, but he’s not in a competitive district anymore.

Link to these changes? While I know it isn't the most reliable, wiki seems to say that he's still representing the same district. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas%27s_32nd_congressional_district

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/be/Texas_Congressional_Districts%2C_118th_Congress.svg/2524px-Texas_Congressional_Districts%2C_118th_Congress.svg.png
This is the post-2022 map.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Allred or Kelly would be amazing recruits. I kinda want Kelly just because it'd be funny to see not just two brothers, but twin brothers, serving in the same chamber together. It'd only be the third time brothers served in the senate together too (Ted and Bobby Kennedy in the 60's, Theodore and Dwight Foster in the early 1800s)

Cruz is favored to win, until we see proof to the contrary. It would not hurt to get our best candidate, though I would miss Colin as my rep.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Allred or Kelly would be amazing recruits. I kinda want Kelly just because it'd be funny to see not just two brothers, but twin brothers, serving in the same chamber together. It'd only be the third time brothers served in the senate together too (Ted and Bobby Kennedy in the 60's, Theodore and Dwight Foster in the early 1800s)

Cruz is favored to win, until we see proof to the contrary. It would not hurt to get our best candidate, though I would miss Colin as my rep.

There has been evidence of split VOTING and the most likely red state to flip is obviously, NC because of Josh Stein is running for Senate, Manchin, Tester won in 2012/2018 but we lost IN, ND, MO and FL in 2018 if the Economy improves as I have said it's not based on now TX can see like MT, WVa split voting and KY, Beshear is favored to win and KY is a 20 pt R state like WV and users think WVA is safe R

It won't be 7.7% unemployment and by then we would of gotten 20K loan Discharge but of course today Cruz would win because Beto lost by 11

We do have a ton of turf to defend on the 2024 Senate map.
As for TX, anyhow, my prediction that Beto might make it close utterly flopped and the last polling bore out basically none of my expectations. My home county even gave a solid margin to Abbott. The D base here just does not seem huge enough for Cruz to be massively vulnerable yet. But Cruz is truly polarizing in a way Cornyn and Abbott aren't. Yes, the man has his zealous defenders...many of them...but maybe a Dem who can work the swing vote has a chance. Cruz did do rather weakly in 2018...

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I sincerely doubt that Ted Cruz of all people is gonna outrun Trump

He won’t. He’s probably the safest bet of any Republican Senator to underperform.

Unfortunately, that's likely far from enough to even make him not well-favored for re-election. But your post here is intuitively correct to me.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I sincerely doubt that Ted Cruz of all people is gonna outrun Trump

He won’t. He’s probably the safest bet of any Republican Senator to underperform.

Unfortunately, that's likely far from enough to even make him not well-favored for re-election. But your post here is intuitively correct to me.

All it would take is Biden to lose Texas by around 3% or so, and I think that would be enough for someone like Scott Kelly or any random Democrat veteran to topple Cruz. I think in a Biden v. Trump rematch, -3% is well within the range of likely outcomes.

I don’t think the accelerating trends in DFW and Austin are showing any signs of stopping. Houston is the big wild card.

Trump winning by 3% feels hard to conceive. The state seems to be moving towards Ds, but not quickly enough to make that feasible.
If Beto got within higher single digits or so like I anticipated before Election Day 2022, I would probably be more optimistic here.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I sincerely doubt that Ted Cruz of all people is gonna outrun Trump

He won’t. He’s probably the safest bet of any Republican Senator to underperform.

Unfortunately, that's likely far from enough to even make him not well-favored for re-election. But your post here is intuitively correct to me.

All it would take is Biden to lose Texas by around 3% or so, and I think that would be enough for someone like Scott Kelly or any random Democrat veteran to topple Cruz. I think in a Biden v. Trump rematch, -3% is well within the range of likely outcomes.

I don’t think the accelerating trends in DFW and Austin are showing any signs of stopping. Houston is the big wild card.

Trump winning by 3% feels hard to conceive. The state seems to be moving towards Ds, but not quickly enough to make that feasible.
If Beto got within higher single digits or so like I anticipated before Election Day 2022, I would probably be more optimistic here.

How is TX being a 3% Trump win not feasible? Just get simillar leftward shifts out of most suburbs again and don't collapse by another 50 in RGV. Also Beto 18 already proved it's possible for a D to hold Rs below 3% statewide in the right circumstances at the federal level.

Trump's exact margin in TX in 2020 was R+5.58, which is simillar to how GA voted in 2016.

Huh. I had forgotten how relatively small the margin was in 2020.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Not gonna quote 2016’s long post, but I think it’s funny to think that Ted Cruz is somehow more popular than he was in 2018. Did we just forget his Cancun vacation in the middle of the worst snowstorm in living memory all of a sudden?

That said, I don’t think a sitting House member would be the best D challenger to Cruz. I think it would be someone like McRaven or Kelly, but no idea if they are actually interested.

I doubt many voters ever actually cared about the Cancun thing to the point of refusing to vote for him over it.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

If I understand correctly, the moment Texas turns democrat it's game over for the republicans right ?

This is undoubtedly true at the Presidential level.  Republicans have no reasonable paths to a victory without Texas.

In an election where Republicans lose Texas, yes, they have no path to victory. But Texas turning blue in one cycle wouldn't make it become permanently blue overnight, it would become a swing state (probably THE swing state).

This is true.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

I got an ad from Julie Johnson (running for office in TX-32) where she calls herself a progressive fighter. It's kind of funny, because if anything I'm not the kind of person enamored with that sort of branding. Not good targetting lol.