The Hill practically had an orgasm reporting that Joe Biden’s lead has “evaporated” in Texas. The New York Post blared that Biden’s “five-point lead” there has “vanished.” It’s desperation time for right-wing media.
The truth is much different. FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls for Texas has Donald Trump up by a single point. One month ago, they had Trump up by 0.9 points. The highest mark Biden ever hit was an 0.8 point lead on July 28. Texas has been in a dead heat for a while now, and neither candidate has created any significant gap in support.
In fact, the idea that Biden has somehow blown a lead in Texas looks even more ridiculous if you look at the RealClearPolitics average of polls. Their preference is to bias things in the Republicans’ favor, which is why they currently show Trump with a 3.5 percent advantage in the Lone Star State. They’ve never shown Biden with a lead there, although they rated the race as tied at 45 percent to 45 percent on July 13 and 14.
The Texas Democrats are bullish on their chances, however. As Forbes reports, they’ve been a flurry of activity:
The party reached out to 1.2 million unregistered Texans, in an effort mainly aimed at younger voters and voters of color, from Monday, Aug. 31 to Friday, Sept. 4, according to information provided to Forbes.
The effort was the biggest in party history, and comes as polls show a near dead-heat between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden in Texas, which a Democrat hasn’t carried in a presidential election since 1976.
A Dallas Morning News poll released Sunday showed Trump with just a 2 percentage point lead over Biden, while the president holds a 3.5 percentage point lead in the RealClearPolitics polling average.
The 1.2 million Texans that Democrats reached out to exceeded the party’s goals of reaching 1 million unregistered voters.
Because Texas doesn’t have online voter registration, it wasn’t immediately clear how many of those contacted were actually able to register, but party spokesman Abhi Rahman told Forbes the number could be in the “thousands.”
For accuracy, I should note that the Dallas Morning News/UT Tyler Poll showed Biden actually ahead by one point among registered voters. He was trailing by two with “likely” voters. That discrepancy is precisely why contacting over a million unregistered voters could be enough to change the outcome.
So, we see two conflicting responses from the right. RealClearPolitics makes no effort to adjust their average to account for bias or polling quality, and they’re not above dropping a favorable poll for Biden from their averages. This allows them to show a better situation for Trump than we’ll see from Nate Silver’s more rigorous and objective operation at FiveThirtyEight. Thus, they’ve consistently had Trump with a lead in Texas while FiveThirtyEight has occasionally had Biden narrowly out in front. RealClearPolitics is more about shaping perceptions than accuracy, and they want to help Republican candidates.
Yet, The Hill and the New York Post are about spin, pure and simple. Their audiences want good news, so they’re told that Trump has big momentum, when in fact the race in Texas has been unchanged for a month.
The result is that the GOP poll average has had Trump with a lead all along, but the GOP news outlets say Biden was the one with lead, but he’s now lost it.
The Democrats have their own polling, and they sense that Texas is within their grasp. They’re not sitting around trying to mold perceptions, but they’re actually working their tails off to odd thousands of new voters to the rolls.
I know who I’d put my money on.
Biden winning TX would be one of the most important elections in history.
One can only admire the heroic TX Dems, whatever happens.
All comes down to the ground game. Lots of Indian Americans in places like Houston that are generally not politically active. Trump courted their support in 2016, at least in NJ and it is astonishing the Democrats did not do more on the outreach side to the Asian community, which could have cost them MI for instance. Biden could be running ads on Sling TV to target that demo assuming there’s surplus cash. And a couple of events with Kamala even just videoing in will help to turn TX blue.
Two GREAT groups working to turn TX blue that could use financial support (I’m a monthly small dollar donor):
Annie’s List (working to elect progressive women in TX): https://annieslist.com
Jolt Initiative (working to elect Hispanics in TX): https://www.joltinitiative.org
One additional advantage of winning Texas: they process their ballots before election day, along with Arizona and Florida and North Carolina. This is great because if any of these states are called for Biden on the evening or the morning after, it’s game over regardless of PA, MI etc.
Does AZ really count early? Sinema’s win took quite a while to validate in 2018.
I am going by this article from Forbes https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/danielcassady/2020/09/05/election-2020-battleground-states-heres-how-theyll-count-mail-in-ballots/amp/
I believe that processing means that the verification is done so that it can be counted along with walk in ballots at the same time on election night.
Something good is about to happen. Either Biden is going to win Texas, or the GOP is going to sink resources here which they’d ordinarily spend in the midwestern swing states they won in 2016. Either way it helps Biden.
Since everything’s online now, I’m going to contact the Texas Democrats and start making phone calls. Each thing we do alone is a drop in the bucket but as part of a larger effort, our efforts can have real impact.
A few thoughts.