Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
So we thought we’d check on the state of things with Nancy Zdunkewicz, a Democratic pollster who’s based in Texas and knows the state well. Nancy, thanks so much for coming on.
Sargent: It is competitive, and it’s been a long time. So let’s just quickly recap what the polls are saying right now. Marist has Talarico up two points on Republican Ken Paxton, 47 to 45. Siena Research Institute has Talarico up four, 48 to 44. A Republican pollster, Trafalgar, had Talarico up four as well. YouGov had it at plus three.
Zdunkewicz: Yes, and I am also seeing this same margin in my own polling. And yes, that is within the margin of error, technically. But what sets this apart for me is that this is the first time that a Democrat has ever led a Republican consistently throughout the entire general election campaign.
Sargent: Right. So basically what you’re saying is that what really sets this apart is that every other time we’ve had a Democrat who appeared to be mounting a strong challenge, that Democrat wasn’t leading in every single poll.
Zdunkewicz: So as you go throughout the general election campaign, you are going to expect to see undecideds go to where their homes are. This comes along with general voter education and people starting to tune in, because, believe it or not, not everybody’s lives revolve around politics.
And so what we saw was that they had to spend a ton of money. Hundreds of millions of dollars just got spent in a month. And that allowed you to pick up a point, two points, to bring home some people who, let’s say, at the end of the day, were pretty much always going to vote for a Republican, or maybe already voting for Republicans for other offices, too.
So Trump exploded on Truth Social over this race. He accused Texas Senator John Cornyn and GOP strategist Karl Rove of sabotaging Paxton’s chances. Trump raged that James TalaFREAKO is a “radical left lunatic”, and said:
Trump went on and on like that at really great length, like really losing it, calling Talarico “FREAKO” again and again. Nancy, what do you make of that?
Sargent: I’m glad you brought up Trump’s role in this. I think it’s worth reminding everyone, this is Trump’s fault. He ordered Texas Republican voters to support Paxton over Cornyn, and Cornyn would probably have had a much easier time here.
Zdunkewicz: I’ve never seen so much money get so little. It has not produced an improvement in Ken Paxton’s favorability. It has, yes, maybe increased Talarico’s negatives a little bit, but he continues to be popular. People are actively voting because they like somebody this year in Texas. And then they actively dislike this other guy.
But as more people learn about him, the more they dislike Ken Paxton. So you see this opposite dynamic working, where we have a popular Democrat, we have a uniquely unpopular Republican, and all of this money has really not gotten them much in terms of making James unpopular.
Nancy, I’m not sure what Trump’s referring to there, but it’s pretty sad that he’s trying to declare by decree that Talarico’s campaign is over.
People are extremely disappointed in the president. They think that the economy is doing horribly. The more that he shows up, the more he reinforces this overall political environment that is demoralizing Republicans and fracturing independents and really motivating Democrats to come out in November and to vote to stop the Trump-aligned party.
Zdunkewicz: Republicans are a majority of the electorate in Texas. I’m not talking registered Republicans. I’m saying people who say that they identify actively as a Republican or lean Republican: 52 percent. Fifty-four percent say that they always or usually vote for Republicans.
And I think that that is pretty darn close to what I’m hoping for, to get to a plurality plus one, or, you know, hopefully 50 percent. Just as a reminder, in a state like Texas, where you have a third party on the ballot, you don’t need 50 percent of the vote to win.
Let me ask it this way, then. Where do you want to see Talarico improve right now to feel a little bit better about where things are? Like, I think this is very close. It’s on a knife’s edge. Just in granular terms, where does he need to kind of bump himself up a little more in order to make us all breathe a little more easily?
I’m thinking a lot about the voters that are in places like, you know, Cypress, and, you know, suburbs within Harris County. These are going to be more college-educated voters. For the first time already, we are seeing a Democrat tied with college-educated voters in Texas, with white college-educated voters.
Sargent: So basically what you want to see here is, you want to see Talarico just pad his numbers with white college-educated voters in some of the suburbs of Texas. Is that basically where we are?
Sargent: Listen to this exchange between Republican Congressman Pat Fallon of Texas and a Fox anchor. It starts with Representative Fallon insulting Talarico and goes on from there.
Fox anchor (voiceover): But Congressman, let me challenge you on that. You can say he’s out of touch, and I know where you’re coming from on that, but he seems to be in touch with perhaps a majority of the people who are going to vote in this election. I guess I’m trying to understand—if the polling is somewhat accurate here, and we can debate that—has the character of Texas, has all the migration from places like California, is it changing the character of your state enough that a guy with all of the, let’s call him, defects that you just mentioned there can still resonate with maybe a majority of people who are going to vote in that state?
Sargent: So I think this is really striking, Nancy. Note how baffled they seem about the fact that their smears of Talarico aren’t sticking. It kind of calls to mind something you said a little earlier about Talarico’s campaign. This is a guy who’s really, really successfully carved out a very unique and independent kind of image for himself in a state like this.
Zdunkewicz: Yeah, as I said before, it is still a Republican state. And so if we make this a contest between a Democrat and a Republican, it’s just not going to ever work out in someone’s favor.
And I think that people are really sick of a politics that is about scoring political points, and are ready to hear something that feels more authentic. When you can go back not to somebody’s political ideology, but to understand I think I know where they’re coming from and how they might make a decision, because I feel like I know who they are, like, where are they grounded? And when that resonates with, you know, how you were raised, that really means something to a lot of people.
They can’t possibly understand why so many people might just like somebody because they think maybe we should help people, and we should be good, and that we shouldn’t call people names, and that that might be a better way of doing politics.
Zdunkewicz: Yeah. Yeah, the things aren’t sticking to him. He built up a really good foundation that people felt like they understood. And so when people throw these things out, it just doesn’t stick.
And so they focus a lot on these anti-trans attacks and these sort of masculinity attacks, and they just really are lacking credibility. And it’s because the shoe’s on the other foot now. It’s really interesting to see in polling just how little credibility some of these negatives had that were so tarnishing only two years ago.
Zdunkewicz: It was so great to join you today, Greg.
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