Polls & Predictions | Battleground Texas

The countdown is on, and the stakes in the Lone Star State have never been higher. From top ticket races to the latest polls, campaign ads, and candidate interviews, we're tracking every move on the road to November. This is Battleground Texas. Hey everybody, I'm Stephen Dial in Dallas. I'm Greg Grugan in Houston. Rudy is off, so joining us is Rice University Baker Institute fellow and author Bill King. Let's rock. The newest numbers out today keep the blockbuster Senate race a dead heat. But this is the first we've seen in a while which Republican Ken Paxton is leading. In the survey from Qantas Insights, Paxton holds a razor-thin one-point lead over Democrat James Tallarico. The poll of likely voters places Paxton at 49 percent and Tallarico at 48 percent. With the number of undecided voters shrinking rapidly, pollsters say this race is coming down to the wire and will heavily depend on which campaign can maximize base turnout. Tallarico will be in College Station tonight, and just a couple of hours ago, Paxton made the campaign rounds in the Houston area. In the next four days, we have an opportunity to do just that. But every poll in this race shows this going down to the wire. Early voting ends today. So please, if you haven't early voted, get out today. And for all of those who have done that, get every one of your friends and family to the polls by November 3rd. So I'm going to ask you to do three things today, and I've been asking this across the state, everywhere I've been for the last three or four months. First, pray. Pray for Texas. Now today, the Tallarico camp is pushing an interview with former Texas Ranger David Maxwell, who served as Paxton's director of law enforcement for six years. Maxwell is speaking out about alleged loyalty tests and his refusal to intervene in a federal investigation, saying integrity has to come first, and throwing his support behind Tallarico. You know, in my line of business, in my experience, It means so much to see someone who's sincere. Now, I have been around politicians my entire life. I've served five governors. Thank you. I've been around four presidents. They're all very interested in Texas Rangers. But I say that to say this. He's so different than other people I have encountered in politics. I think he's the man who needs to go to Washington, D.C. and Ken Paxton needs to go home. In the race for governor, Republican incumbent Greg Abbott is maintaining a steady edge over his Democratic challenger, Gina Hinojosa. The newly released poll from Quantis Insights shows that Governor Abbott leading state representative Gina Hinojosa by five points. The statewide survey puts Abbott at 51% and Hinojosa at 46%. On social media today, the Abbott campaign posted I posted an interview of Hinojosa where she's being challenged about. Her reported support of Austin cutting police funding. But in what way did I support it? Did I have a press conference? I didn't vote on it, that's for sure. I'm not an Austin City Council member. So it is not right to pay me with supporting something like that. No, that is not true. On August 20th. 2020, you posted on social media, tell me how it makes sense to push Austin, Texas for diverting some police money to other public safety priorities. When Austin spends more per capita on police than any major city in Texas, we will still be spending more than most. That's not a defense of the city council cutting that money. It sounds like it is. What that is, is local control. And I don't think our local community should be punished by the state for local control. And listen, that kind of- Sounds like defense. The local leaders that we elect, what's that? It sounds like you're defending it. It is a defense for local control in that we should not punish local leaders or local communities for doing what they need to do to be safe. On this last day of early voting, Hinojosa is counting on a little star power posting. Today is the last day to vote early, so take it from Jack Black and visit IWillVote.com to make a plan and cast your ballot, Greg. Yeah, while early voting has been swift, rain could impact Tuesday's general election day. Joining us to talk about what we can expect is meteorologist Ramisha Shade. Ramisha, break down what people can expect across the state and the best timing to cast your ballot come Tuesday. Well, I hear that a lot of folks, Greg, took advantage of early voting across Texas. And you know what? That's a good thing because Election Day weather looking like it's going to be a bit of a mess. We're talking about the threat for heavy downpours, maybe one to three inches of rain, strong storms and then a nice cool down. But this front is coming down. At a bad time when it could impact voter turnout. So models are indicating a strong cold front for our election day on Tuesday. Showers and strong storms are going to be possible. I think the biggest impacts for Austin and for Dallas are going to be Monday night through Tuesday morning. But for Houston, it could be almost the entire election day on Tuesday as this front is going to take a little longer to make it into H town. So I want to hop over to our GFS Model Futurecast and break this down for you. The timing hour by hour. Notice a line of showers and storms rolling through Dallas Monday night, 10 p.m., and then pushing out early Tuesday. So I think weather in Dallas from mid to late morning through the afternoon on Tuesday looks pretty good. It's going to be breezy, temperatures dropping, but not much rain and storm action. In Austin, it's going to take the front a little bit longer to move through. I think Tuesday morning could still be a little soggy and stormy. But for Houston, the rain really. It really doesn't pick up until about late morning on Tuesday and could last through the afternoon and evening. And we could get maybe one to three inches of rain and the potential for some strong, possibly damaging wind gusts and some hail as well. We're not out looking for a huge, severe risk at this point, but we can't rule that out, Greg. So one to three inches of rain, heavy downpours, wet roads, low visibility, not what you want to deal with when you're trying to go out and vote. Hopefully things won't be too bad, but Like I said, hopefully folks took advantage of early voting. Yeah, appreciate the heads up, Ramesha. Good motivation there to get to your favorite polling place in the next few hours. Stay with us, Battleground, Texas. We'll be back on the other side of this break. Welcome back. After a heaping helping of bad news, the Qantas poll putting Paxton a whisker ahead of Talarico had to be welcome news for the Republican. But, and it's a big one, Paxton needs a powerful day of turnout to pull this one back from the brink of disaster. Bill King, you've been watching very closely multiple data crunchers, all of whom suggest the anti-Paxton headwinds are increasingly formidable. Yeah, there's two or three things that are important. One, the Republicans are not going into Election Day with their typical pad. They've typically been five or six, seven points ahead going into Election Day. They're only one point up. As of today, I'm talking about the people that have voted in primaries. We have a huge chunk. 2.3 million people that have no primary voting history. We have no idea how those people are voting. But historically, they voted Republican. But the polling shows that they're pretty fed up with Republicans, and so that's not a sure thing either. You've also got the problem that about 8% of Republicans are still saying that they'll never vote for Paxton. So he has multiple headwinds, and that's why you're seeing all the prediction markets, predicting by fairly large margins, that Talarico is going to win. All right, Stephen, by the end of the day, we should have a much better idea how big a mountain both of these candidates have to climb. As Bill was talking about, the Kalshi odds have it 72 to 28 for Talarico. Does that sound about right to you? Yeah, and it's weird because I'm hearing so many people and a lot of the number crunchers saying all signs point to an upset in history in Texas. I'm still holding my breath, and I hope I'm not holding my breath for too long. I'll pass out. But I, this morning, talked to the Collin County Election Administrator. That is Ken Paxton's home district. Collin County is known to have literally like 80% of their voters turned out. early, not on election day, and they were expecting 65 to 70% early vote in election day turnout. They're telling me that they think it might just be 60% turnout. And so if numbers are low in his home county, I'm wondering what that may say for Ken Paxton. Oof, scary for Paxton. Bill, in the governor's race, Abbott has been pressed hard, but we'll have far fewer We were Republican defectors. Do you think that will likely spell the difference in that race? There's two advantages that Greg has over Paxton. One is 88, 90 percent of Republicans say they're going to vote for him. And, you know, Paxton's got a significant percentage are saying they're not going to vote for him. The other thing is that he's not doing nearly as badly with independents as Paxton's doing. The last Mark Jones poll had him down, I think. Two with independents, where Paxton is down 17 with independents. All right, Stephen, I've said it before. Fear is a powerful motivator. Is the fear we heard from folks like Don Huffine is going to drive the kind of final day turnout that can help Republicans escape? I wonder if it's too late and we were talking during commercial Ted Cruz just came out with some in my opinion sounds like fear tactics saying that he thinks there's a chance Democrats can win all the statewide races. Fear could bring turnout but we just talked about weather. And so what if that turnout is too late and then people not wanting to stand in line in the rain. So we'll see how messy it'll be on Tuesday. All right. Coming up, we're going to talk about the youth vote, and we'll have another roundtable. Stay with us. Welcome back. With early voting in its final stretch across Texas, campaigns are closely watching one critical demographic, the youth vote. Strategists say engaging younger voters could be a major factor in this year's tightest statewide races. We sat down with some young voters about the misconceptions and reality of the youth vote. What do you think some of the misconceptions maybe people who have voted for years or older people in general have about your generation, especially when it comes to you guys voting the first time? Maybe that we're just voting to vote and we don't care who we vote for, probably. I'm sure a lot of them don't even think we vote. They probably don't even think that's a thought in our mind cuz especially with all the stuff that our generation has going on, you really wouldn't think that that would be a thought in our mind. Yeah, cuz most teenagers our age are probably worried about Parties and all that video games and all that type of stuff. I also feel like the difference between like the older generation and us is like social media. They automatically think well oh they just saw this on TikTok or they just saw on Instagram and we're just gonna vote because we saw this. No we made like our own we did our own research we see what is happening in our communities and we're seeing the problems that we need to fix. And I feel like sometimes the older generation they're stuck in like the old generation so they're not like Really coming up to times with weird, like, there's a lot of new tricks and tips that we can learn just off voting. We can go on, social media is so accessible. Anybody can go on their phone and find how to vote, where to vote. It's just very simple, I feel like. And I feel like other people as well, like, even our generation, like, I know, like, nine. Yeah, and, like, 90% of my friends, like, either they can't vote or they just won't. Yeah, they just won't vote. They don't even think about it. Yeah, you're talking to, like, an old head, and he's like, holy new gen. You know, like, they're just not going to, I don't know. It's just, like, a very, it's hard. It's kind of hard to convince our friends to vote. Because, like, they don't think that's something important. Because some of our friends haven't even turned 18. Yeah. So it's kind of hard to get a lot of people to come with you and vote. But I feel like y'all should definitely try. Yeah. Try to get all your friends riled up to vote. Make it a little party. Hey, and it was a little party up here in North Texas. Some Dallas high school seniors did a march to the polls. Greg, it seems like every cycle we talked about, if young voters can be a factor, is this year any different? Somewhat surprisingly, no, at least here in Harris County, where 18 to 29-year-old voters have cast only 5.9% of the ballots. Stephen, that's down from 8.8% in the 2022 midterm. Now, of enormous interest to me is Bill King's soon-to-be cohort of 75 and older, who are kicking ass at 16.6% this year, up from 13.5% in 2022. What does this tell us? Hell if I know, other than of the two groups with time on their hands, one knows how to productively use it, and the other is still figuring it out. I will say, if Tallarico loses, the post-op debrief will include the now age-old question, why can't we crack the code with kids? Stephen? Yeah, seems like every cycle. Bill, let's talk about some X factors. Today is the last day of early voting. It's likely Dems will still have some type of lead statewide when it comes to the number crunchers. Will it come down to the election day turnout? Well, the Republicans have actually taken a small lead in the last couple of days, so today's numbers are really going to be interesting. I'll tell you one stat that I think we need to be very, look at it very hard. We have, we know that there's about 2.8 million people that have not voted, that have previously voted in one of the two primaries, and there are about 500,000 more Former Republican primary voters and there are former Democratic voters, which indicate that the Democrats did a better job of getting their people to the early vote this time. So I think we need to see what today's numbers are. Then we need to see what happens on Election Day. Typically, Republicans have done a little bit better on Election Day, not by huge amounts, but as close as this race is, any little advantage could make the difference. Greg, Harris County has showed up in big numbers, more than 900,000 people early voting. If Democrats win statewide, or let's just talk about Tarrant County, will the Democrats have to thank Harris County? Well, I'd say in part, yes, but it's looking more and more like rural Texas is underperforming for Republicans for a variety of reasons. Data centers, power lines, costly tariffs, and the high cost of fuel. Most of those components can be traced back to one man, Donald Trump. So if there's blame to be assessed, start with the guy in the White House, the one who has thus far over-promised and under-delivered on prosperity. Bottom line, Republicans need an Election Day outpouring of support in the Texas countryside and the city. If they get it, they may just squeak by. But if it's lackluster, Katie, bar the door. Stephen? Bill, what do you think? Yeah, look, I think this is going to be a different kind of election than we've had over the last couple of decades, for sure. We've got about 2.2 million people who've already early voted that don't have any primary history. We really don't know anything about those people and how they might have voted. The polling seems to indicate that to the extent those are independents, that they're pretty mad at any kind of incumbent. And so they're breaking pretty hard against the incumbents. But at the same time, we don't know for sure what the makeup of that group is. Then we'll have another probably 2 million voter on Election Day. And of course, who turns out to that? So when you've got numbers as close as we've got them in these polls and in the turnout so far, anything really could happen on Election Day. Okay, our parting shots when Battleground Texas returns. Welcome back. This is the portion of battleground that we reserved to settle all outstanding business with a few parting shots. I'll go first. How big is the Democratic turnout been in the urban centers? Well, here in Harris County, the data guys tell me Republicans are on track to lose every single race. An absolute local wipeout with no survivors, not a single judge, nothing. Pretty darn crazy, given Democrats on commissioner's court have raised property taxes. Get this, 41% on the average homeowner over the past three years. I guess the pandemic crime wave and the onslaught of undocumented folks are kind of ancient history. All right, that's what I got, Stephen. Bill, what you got? You know, I am just sick, sick, sick of the dirty tricks that are going on. You know, we saw this news story come out in the New York Times, actually in Alaska, where the Democrats were absolutely involved in putting somebody on the ballot that had the same name as the Republican. Here in Texas, we now find out. That millions of fake transgender mailers were mailed out. And it's now been tracked back to a potential connection between Paxton and Elon Musk. A lawyer showed up here in Austin representing the group that sent out the mailers who happens to be one of Musk's main lawyers. And this is what happens when you've got two parties that care more about winning than they do serving the American people. They resort to anything to hang on to power. It's all about that power, Bill, all about the power. My thing is simple, guys, we are finally almost at the finish line. It's been a long, bruising election cycle. Now, duh, we love sitting here talking about this every day. But man, for our viewers, I know y'all are tired of the commercials, you're tired of the mailers, you're tired of the mudslinging. Guess what? It's almost over. Today is the last day to early vote. And then you can take your chance on election days raining across the state. So just keep that in mind. And I wanna say early happy birthday to our guy, Greg Grugan. All right, that's all the time we have to see this episode of our past ones. Go to our station's YouTube channels and keep the conversation going by interacting with us on social media. One more show to go before Election Day, Jay. Join us Monday at 3, live on Fox Local. Until then, vaya con Dios from the Fox Texas Trio.