Dan Pfeiffer

We have not won statewide office of consequence in this century.

And obviously the closest that a Democrat has come was Beto O'Rourke losing by 2.6% to Ted Cruz in 2018.

This is a different world.

2018 was a good environment for Democrats.

2026 is a great environment for Democrats, as we sit here today, at least.

This is a hard thing for me to say, but Ted Cruz is much more likable and has much more likable and more popular than Ken Paxton.

This blew me away.

In September of 2018, Ted Cruz had a favorability rating that was nine points above water.

Yes.

Ken Paxton, depending on your poll, is 5, 7, 10 points below water and will never be above water.

He will never see the surface.

The most important thing here is

is that there is a demographic pincer movement happening in Texas in this moment.

So in 2016, Hillary Clinton did better in Texas than almost any other state.

It's a state where she actually had the largest improvement over Barack Obama in 2012.

It's one of the very few states and maybe the only state where she did better than Obama did in 2012.

And the reason that happened is she blew the doors off Latino voters.

And Trump won by a decent margin because white voters of all stripes, college educated and working class, voted for him in mess.

What has changed since 2016 is those college educated white voters, of which there are a ton in Texas, particularly in the cities and suburbs around those big cities, have moved dramatically in the Democratic direction.

And then starting in 2020, Latino voters moved towards Trump.