If our headline caught you off guard, then strap in. We’ve got a lot to catch you up on!

At the time we’re putting this out, the race for control of the Senate clearly favors Republicans. Working with 49 seats to begin with, they have what is essentially an automatic gain in deeply red – truly maroonish – West Virginia. Even if you assume that Democrats win the races in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, and Maryland – any one of which may as well be a polling error away from a slip up – that leaves Democrats in desperate straits; they need to protect their strong incumbent in nevertheless Republican-leaning Ohio, their strong incumbent in clearly Republican-leaning Montana… oh and win the White House. That’s a lot of defense, and a lot has to go very right for it to pay off. But, if they’re feeling cash rich, candidate rich, and opportunistic, Democrats have two hedges. They could compete in Florida (see our article on why Democrats shouldn’t get their hopes up there) or they could try to pick off one of the least popular senators in America, Texas’ Ted Cruz.

If you read our article on the presidential race in Texas, you may know where we’re going with this – it’s not so much that Texas favors Democrats, it’s that it’s the clearest target, and it’s at least moving towards them. Texas is a giant state (the second largest!) and we can apply a lot of the same research to the Senate race, so we’ll start by reiterating some of the trends driving the state leftward – not because candidate quality doesn’t matter, but because it probably matters a little less in a state this big, and it’s easier to explain why Ted Cruz is vulnerable once we get all of the scene-setting out of the way.

Migration to the state, urban growth, and urbanization generally have clearly thrust Texas towards Democrats. You could absolutely argue with the numbers here, but a crude assumption, with the knowledge that around 500,000 people have moved to Texas every year over the last four years, seems to suggest (given the liberal cities are experiencing the higher growth rate), an increase in the Democratic margin by around 400,000 – that alone would shift the state about four points towards Democrats.

Then there are issues like abortion, which Texas thrust itself into the center of, and may also drive a backlash against Republicans. Though there’s not a lot of evidence for this (it certainly did not manifest in 2022, for example), it is telling that Texans by and large overwhelmingly oppose the state’s near-absolute abortion ban and generally favor less strict abortion laws. Still, 2022 was a slightly-Republican-leaning midterm year, and it’s at least notable that incumbent Texas Governor Greg Abbott (and who was reelected with a near 11% margin of victory) probably slightly underperformed the state’s partisan lean (of note, he did worse in 2022 than he did in 2018, despite 2018 being a year that strongly favored Democrats up and down the ballot). As more stories about the consequences of Texas’ abortion law have come to the forefront of the national conversation, there is a case to be made that, as time goes on, these issues have become more salient, and it may move the needle – if only slightly – in the state. 

Less obvious boons to Democrats include the Biden administration’s investment in renewable energy, which delivered billions of dollars to Texas, already (perhaps surprisingly) a titan in the green energy space (it’s plausible that those investments ultimately pay off in delivering some votes). Then there’s the fractured state Republican Party which faces staff shortages, fewer funds, and has more closely tied itself to the far-right, which – even though it won’t make much difference at the top of the ballot – may turn off disaffected Republicans.

Before we get carried away, let’s reiterate that no matter which way you cut it, Texas is clearly a Republican-leaning state, and continues to be. Joe Biden only got somewhat close to winning the state after he won the national popular vote by a relatively large 4.5% (the second-largest presidential margin in the last six elections). Even if Texas shifted four more points because of hardy urban growth, it’d still take a stunning Democratic overperformance nationally to eke out the narrowest possible win. Second, though urban growth buoys Democratic vote share, the “red wall” of rural Texas has proven remarkably resilient. Though these voters are increasingly making up fewer and fewer of the total vote, for the time being, they are decisively more Republican-leaning than urban or suburban areas (in 2020, rural areas in the state were about 3-1 in favor of Trump, whereas cities were about 4-3 in favor of Biden). 

Texas also has a large Latino population, which may have shifted to become more Republican over the last few years. Though Biden won 58% of Latinos in the state back in 2020, he notably underperformed Hillary Clinton’s performance with these voters, particularly in poorer and Latino-heavy areas in South Texas. These areas became the epicenter of a notable shift towards the right, and the continuance of this trend in the 2022 midterms suggests a more consistent pattern. Largely, this is attributed to concerns about immigration, the economy, and jobs – all issues which Republicans tend to poll better on, even in this cycle. However, Texas’ sheer size obfuscates this to some degree: Biden (and Democrats generally) still did well with urban Latinos back in 2020, and it’s unreasonable to lump the entire demographic into one simple narrative or even one grand trend. So, let’s take a look at our candidates.

As mentioned at the top, Ted Cruz isn’t exactly the most lovable man in America. Though he’s enjoyed some higher marks in approval recently, he’s been underwater for most of his time in the Senate (never once scoring majority approval, at least according to the University of Texas at Austin’s recurring poll). In his recent Senate career, he’s taken not-so-enviable positions on the 2020 election, January 6, then January 6 again for calling it a “terrorist attack” (much to the disdain of far-right Republicans) before backtracking (calling his own words “sloppy” and “frankly dumb”), gun violence, abortion, and trips to Cancún during a statewide emergency. There’s something almost refreshingly shameful about it all, as Cruz is often derided not just by Democrats, but by his own party to boot. And yet, he hangs on.

But, Texas’ move leftwards makes Cruz’s insistent conservatism increasingly untenable. He came within a few points of losing his seat back in 2018 when faced by a bullish challenge from Congressman Beto O’Rourke. O’Rourke kept Cruz to below a 3% margin of victory, the closest margin in a Senate race in the state since the 1970s. As the state has not exactly moved rightward since, is Cruz even more vulnerable this year? In theory yes, but the fact you’re not seeing headline after headline about the Texas Senate race the way you were six years ago is telling.

For one, let’s talk about the Democratic challenger this year, Dallas-area Congressman Colin Allred. Though he is a former linebacker for the Tennessee Titans and boasts executive branch experience to boot, Allred is not the media-savvy, headline-grabbing household name that O’Rourke was. He can partly blame the national environment, as 2018 was a midterm year, whereas this year the race in Texas – even if it is competitive – has been overshadowed by the presidential election. Another is that Democrats are desperate to play defense: races in Ohio and Montana, where Democrats are praying they can protect their incumbents, are soaking up most of the media. But nonetheless, Allred lacks name recognition, and he’s relied more on a broad-based advertising-type campaign than the “barnstorming every county” strategy employed by O’Rourke. Paid advertising is probably a more effective way to do that, but it also means Allred receives less media coverage nationally, and the viral moments that O’Rourke could use to draw in out-of-state coverage and dollars aren’t going to occur. Making matters worse, Cruz is outspending Allred by about 70% (by the end of the 2018 election, by comparison, O’Rourke had nearly doubled Cruz’s total disbursements). Texas has a lot of media markets – so this may give Cruz a slight leg up, even if Allred begins to get media recognition. Either way, it’s clear that Allred does not quite have the campaigning chops that O’Rourke did.

But Allred seems to be holding his own – kind of. Though he has yet to lead in a single poll, he is reliably keeping Cruz to single digit margins. In a sense this is probably just where the race is: Texas leans Republican, the generic ballot doesn’t overwhelmingly favor Democrats by more than a point or two – ergo, Ted Cruz will probably carry the state by 5-10 points. This is not to say it’s because Ted Cruz is a strong candidate. He’s not – he’s underwater with independents, Latinos, suburban voters, and women, four of the most important voting groups in this election (and, every nationalized election, for that matter!) – but he is running in a more favorable environment than 2018, against a slightly weaker opponent, and the state continues to lean red at large (even if it’s moved considerably leftward). Even if Allred, who is Black, can turn out more African-American votes than Democrats anticipate (around 12% of the state’s population, and the largest Black population in terms of raw numbers), and keep much of the O’Rourke or Biden coalitions in tact, the national environment will keep him from crossing the finish line.