Florida and Texas: Rising Battlefields?
September 7, 2024
I warned you something might come up and delay my next post on new donation tools for you. I was going to hold off on this post for a bit but new polling from Emerson changed my mind. This quick post will need a follow-up to better explain what may be going on in Texas and other places that are threatening to upend expectations this year. But the polling needs to be addressed first.
You may be surprised to hear this, but Texas and Florida are starting to look like battleground states. The polling in both states has been inching narrower and has been floating around Trump +5. That might seem like a big advantage, but consider this: what would the pundits - what would you - think if Harris were only up by five points in California or New York? It did seem like perhaps these numbers were perhaps fleeting, but today we got two new polls in Texas that show the race remains close. Emerson has Trump up by four points while the University of Texas/YouGov has him up by five points. However, Emerson’s four-point result is without pushing leaners. When pushed, Trump has less than a three point lead. The same is true in Florida; Trump has a four point lead without leaners and about a three point lead with leaners.
538 Polling Averages
Silver Bulletin Averages
To be sure, the forecasting from The Economist assumes these states to still be safe for Trump. I wonder if the latest polling will change those presumptions. Maybe they want to wait for a few more polls, but I think it’s clear that both of these states are at least Likely Republican rather than Safe Republican at this point. And so do Sabato and Cook. If we do see some more close polling in these states, I would move them to Lean Republican.
Getting back to the polling, Emerson polled California and Ohio as well. Emerson has Harris up by 22 points in California and Trump up by 10 points in Ohio. You might wonder why Emerson bothered to poll both of those states, clearly safe for the respective parties. My guess is they did so because they were seeing something in Texas and Florida and wanted to gut check the polling with some states where they do not believe the out-party has a chance for an upset. The California and Ohio numbers roughly track what we would expect to see, so the Florida and Texas results are noteworthy. So, maybe Emerson is onto something. It also helps that UT released a poll the same day that confirms Emerson’s results.
The races for Senate in Texas and Florida also appear close. In fact, Emerson has Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) up by just one point. There is a lot of strange things going on in the Senate races. Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) looks like the race might be starting to get away from him. Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE) may be facing a serious threat from the independent candidate (there is no Democrat in this race). Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) holds leads against Democrat Colin Allred, but he falls well below 50% and it appears Allred has a lot of room to grow. Texans don’t know him, but they all know Cruz. In Florida, Scott could very well lose this race. Former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) had a very good poll the other day, but otherwise he seems only within striking distance of his Demoratic opponent, Angela Alsobrooks. Everyone is focusing on the races we expect to be competitive, but there are creeping possibilities for several upsets.
In 1980, few saw the Senate upsets that hit on Election Day. Republicans picked up 12 seats that year, defeating such big names in the Democratic Party as George McGovern and Birch Bayh. Ten years ago few would have thought that Iowa and Ohio would be as solid Republican states as they now are. Sometimes the political landscape can change overnight, other times it takes a few cycles. Florida has been a close states for a long time, even though Republicans have been on the winning side in the past few elections. Texas, however, has been slowly getting more Democratic in election after election.1
Here is something to consider. Maybe we are seeing some realignments we were not expecting this year. What if some or all of the Blue Wall states go for Trump while Harris wins Texas and Florida? That trade-off would be terrible for Republican presidential prospects. The Blue Wall states together have 44 electoral voters. Texas and Florida have 70. If that happens, a lot of folks will probably think in retrospect that we should have seen it coming. It is not a likely scenario, but the polling suggests it is not implausible. That’s quite impressive on its own.
Texas has shifted Democratic in this century. The Republican nominee has won in every presidential contest since 1996: R+21 pts in 2000, R+23 pts in 2004, R+12 pts in 2008, R+16 pts in 2012, R+9 pts in 16, R+5.5 in 2020.
Yay!