The following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 19 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
In the last few days, Donald Trump has repeatedly erupted over the Texas Senate race. He’s unleashed wild rants about Democrat James Talarico, calling him juvenile names and raging at Republicans who, in Trump’s mind, are to blame for the strength of Talarico’s campaign. It sure looks like Trump is panicking about Texas, yet the polls are sending a mixed picture. Talarico is still up, but the race seems to be tightening. And a huge amount of Republican money is still set to pour into this race.
So we thought we’d check on the state of things with Nancy Zdunkewicz, a Democratic pollster who’s based in Texas and knows the state well. Nancy, thanks so much for coming on.
Nancy Zdunkewicz: Hi, Greg. Thanks for having me. It’s exciting to get to talk about my home state being competitive!
Sargent: It is competitive, and it’s been a long time. So let’s just quickly recap what the polls are saying right now. Marist has Talarico up two points on Republican Ken Paxton, 47 to 45. Siena Research Institute has Talarico up four, 48 to 44. A Republican pollster, Trafalgar, had Talarico up four as well. YouGov had it at plus three.
Nancy, bottom line, the polling averages have the race narrowing to a Talarico lead of 2.6 points. That’s basically a knife’s edge, isn’t it?
Zdunkewicz: Yes, and I am also seeing this same margin in my own polling. And yes, that is within the margin of error, technically. But what sets this apart for me is that this is the first time that a Democrat has ever led a Republican consistently throughout the entire general election campaign.
It’s Paxton who’s picking up an inch here, an inch there. This is basically the mirror image of what my polling looked like for Colin Allred at this point two years ago.
Sargent: Right. So basically what you’re saying is that what really sets this apart is that every other time we’ve had a Democrat who appeared to be mounting a strong challenge, that Democrat wasn’t leading in every single poll.
And here Talarico is leading. You see maybe Paxton pulling back a few Republicans here, a few Republicans there, but it’s just sort of staying more or less where it’s been. Is that your feeling?
Zdunkewicz: So as you go throughout the general election campaign, you are going to expect to see undecideds go to where their homes are. This comes along with general voter education and people starting to tune in, because, believe it or not, not everybody’s lives revolve around politics.
And so we expect that we see this. It actually makes me nervous when I see a large number of people who say they’re undecided, because I know that they’re actually ultimately going to vote for the Democrat or the Republican.
And so what we saw was that they had to spend a ton of money. Hundreds of millions of dollars just got spent in a month. And that allowed you to pick up a point, two points, to bring home some people who, let’s say, at the end of the day, were pretty much always going to vote for a Republican, or maybe already voting for Republicans for other offices, too.
Sargent: Right. It’s the huge influx of money that’s starting to pull a few people back.
So Trump exploded on Truth Social over this race. He accused Texas Senator John Cornyn and GOP strategist Karl Rove of sabotaging Paxton’s chances. Trump raged that James TalaFREAKO is a “radical left lunatic”, and said:
“If Paxton loses, it will be because of WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Political Hacks like Cornyn and Rove, who have ineffectively opposed me for my entire political career.”
Trump went on and on like that at really great length, like really losing it, calling Talarico “FREAKO” again and again. Nancy, what do you make of that?
Zdunkewicz: Gosh, you know, he really shot himself in the foot here, didn’t he? He didn’t need to endorse Paxton in this race. He helped secure his nomination in the first place. So maybe he’s feeling a little bit insecure about his poor decision-making.
Sargent: I’m glad you brought up Trump’s role in this. I think it’s worth reminding everyone, this is Trump’s fault. He ordered Texas Republican voters to support Paxton over Cornyn, and Cornyn would probably have had a much easier time here.
And there is a deep perversity about this that’s just Trump all over. Trump forced Paxton on everyone because he thinks Paxton is loyal to him. And now that Paxton could lose, he’s blaming it on everyone but himself.
Zdunkewicz: I’ve never seen so much money get so little. It has not produced an improvement in Ken Paxton’s favorability. It has, yes, maybe increased Talarico’s negatives a little bit, but he continues to be popular. People are actively voting because they like somebody this year in Texas. And then they actively dislike this other guy.
In fact, people are increasingly learning about him—which is crazy to think that not everybody knew who this was after all of the impeachments and all the money spent during the primary.
But as more people learn about him, the more they dislike Ken Paxton. So you see this opposite dynamic working, where we have a popular Democrat, we have a uniquely unpopular Republican, and all of this money has really not gotten them much in terms of making James unpopular.
Sargent: It’s wild. Trump exploded again on Truth Social, saying this: “James Talarico, who was running for U.S. Senate against the greatest attorney general in the history of Texas, recently stated, with a large mask covering his face as he spoke, that fossil fuels are destroying the planet. No more drilling for oil in Texas. That should be the end of his campaign.”
Nancy, I’m not sure what Trump’s referring to there, but it’s pretty sad that he’s trying to declare by decree that Talarico’s campaign is over.
Zdunkewicz: But it’s not particularly effective in a state where we see 54, 55 percent say that they dislike the president. In fact, please, come to Texas. Come campaign. Come campaign here. It’s not going to be helpful at all.
People are extremely disappointed in the president. They think that the economy is doing horribly. The more that he shows up, the more he reinforces this overall political environment that is demoralizing Republicans and fracturing independents and really motivating Democrats to come out in November and to vote to stop the Trump-aligned party.
Sargent: Let’s talk about why this race is tightening. Marist is a quality survey. It had Talarico up by two points. It had him 52 to 30 among independents, which seems like a healthy lead. And it has Talarico winning eight percent of Republicans. I’m wondering whether Talarico is still not winning enough Republicans to really put this thing away. Can you tell us what you’re seeing?
Zdunkewicz: Republicans are a majority of the electorate in Texas. I’m not talking registered Republicans. I’m saying people who say that they identify actively as a Republican or lean Republican: 52 percent. Fifty-four percent say that they always or usually vote for Republicans.
So if you look at the 52 percent who say that they identify as a Republican, the thinking here is you need 91 percent of those voters, plus those strong margins with independents, in order to win in Texas. And eight percent is where, you said, one of the polls, the Marist poll I believe, has him. That’s where I have him.
And I think that that is pretty darn close to what I’m hoping for, to get to a plurality plus one, or, you know, hopefully 50 percent. Just as a reminder, in a state like Texas, where you have a third party on the ballot, you don’t need 50 percent of the vote to win.
Sargent: Right. So I guess what you’re saying is that Talarico, if he’s getting around eight percent of Republicans right now, we’re getting very close to what he needs, especially with the double-digit lead he has among independents.
Let me ask it this way, then. Where do you want to see Talarico improve right now to feel a little bit better about where things are? Like, I think this is very close. It’s on a knife’s edge. Just in granular terms, where does he need to kind of bump himself up a little more in order to make us all breathe a little more easily?
Zdunkewicz: Right now we’re seeing some healthy two-to-one margins with Hispanic voters. I’m feeling very good about where South Texas is, and where these Hispanic-majority districts and the increasingly Hispanic and growing areas that are sort of the suburbs along I-35—doing quite well there.
I’m thinking a lot about the voters that are in places like, you know, Cypress, and, you know, suburbs within Harris County. These are going to be more college-educated voters. For the first time already, we are seeing a Democrat tied with college-educated voters in Texas, with white college-educated voters.
That has always been the distinction for people in the Midwest, is that you would see white college-educated voters were kind of increasingly the backbone of the Democratic coalition. And yet in the South, that was not the case. But we’re seeing this now. And I think if we can continue to do that, that would be pretty impressive.
Sargent: So basically what you want to see here is, you want to see Talarico just pad his numbers with white college-educated voters in some of the suburbs of Texas. Is that basically where we are?
Zdunkewicz: Yeah, the suburbs are so diverse in Texas that I’m just going to say college-educated voters in general.
Sargent: Listen to this exchange between Republican Congressman Pat Fallon of Texas and a Fox anchor. It starts with Representative Fallon insulting Talarico and goes on from there.
Pat Fallon (voiceover): So this little radically woke soy boy is completely out of touch with Texans, and he’s lying to them, trying to fool them, selling them snake oil. Say ‘no’ for me.
Fox anchor (voiceover): But Congressman, let me challenge you on that. You can say he’s out of touch, and I know where you’re coming from on that, but he seems to be in touch with perhaps a majority of the people who are going to vote in this election. I guess I’m trying to understand—if the polling is somewhat accurate here, and we can debate that—has the character of Texas, has all the migration from places like California, is it changing the character of your state enough that a guy with all of the, let’s call him, defects that you just mentioned there can still resonate with maybe a majority of people who are going to vote in that state?
Fallon (voiceover): No, I think he will lose. But to your point, it is a tight race.
Sargent: So I think this is really striking, Nancy. Note how baffled they seem about the fact that their smears of Talarico aren’t sticking. It kind of calls to mind something you said a little earlier about Talarico’s campaign. This is a guy who’s really, really successfully carved out a very unique and independent kind of image for himself in a state like this.
He talks a language that I think sounds new to a lot of people, maybe doesn’t sound like the language of a Democrat to the ears of many people in Texas. And there you can kind of get a sense of why Republicans are spending hundreds of millions of dollars calling him trans or whatever the hell they think they’re calling him, freako or whatever. And that stuff isn’t really sticking. What do you make of all that?
Zdunkewicz: Yeah, as I said before, it is still a Republican state. And so if we make this a contest between a Democrat and a Republican, it’s just not going to ever work out in someone’s favor.
And so instead, this race has been defined not as Republican and Democrat, but right and wrong. And by having a really strong moral core, a really reason for running that is based in his faith, in a state where this resonates with a lot of people, that has allowed him this opportunity.
And I think that people are really sick of a politics that is about scoring political points, and are ready to hear something that feels more authentic. When you can go back not to somebody’s political ideology, but to understand I think I know where they’re coming from and how they might make a decision, because I feel like I know who they are, like, where are they grounded? And when that resonates with, you know, how you were raised, that really means something to a lot of people.
As I said before, he is actively liked here. And so when they throw out all of these insults, and they’re, what, that he’s too nice? God forbid. I think we’re all hungry to turn the page and have a politics that is less nasty and less full of hate. And I don’t blame people like the congressman and Donald Trump for being blind to it, because that’s where their politics is grounded in.
They can’t possibly understand why so many people might just like somebody because they think maybe we should help people, and we should be good, and that we shouldn’t call people names, and that that might be a better way of doing politics.
Sargent: That is so beautifully said. And I’m going to throw this out there. Every time Trump unleashes some deranged, crazed rant like that, it just reminds everybody of what they don’t want. And it could in fact make Talarico look good in comparison.
Zdunkewicz: Yeah. Yeah, the things aren’t sticking to him. He built up a really good foundation that people felt like they understood. And so when people throw these things out, it just doesn’t stick.
And the other good thing is, you know, I want to give all that credit where it’s due, but I also want to acknowledge that the terms are different than they were two years ago, because now Democrats aren’t in charge anymore. Republicans are in charge.
And so they focus a lot on these anti-trans attacks and these sort of masculinity attacks, and they just really are lacking credibility. And it’s because the shoe’s on the other foot now. It’s really interesting to see in polling just how little credibility some of these negatives had that were so tarnishing only two years ago.
Sargent: It really is extraordinary. It’s going to get tight, though, and a lot of money’s going to flow. So folks, just buckle up and be ready for this. Don’t freak out. Nancy Zdunkewicz, thank you so much for coming on. That was fascinating stuff.
Zdunkewicz: It was so great to join you today, Greg.