For months, Texas Republicans have anxiously awaited the arrival of national resources to help boost Ken Paxton, one of the GOP’s most vulnerable Senate candidates.
Trump got a lot of voters to flip to him in the 2024 election, including flipping some traditionally Democratic districts in South Texas that are close to the border with Mexico. These areas have much higher than average proportions of first and second generation immigrants. Between the current state of the economy and immigration enforcement tactics that somehow surprised Trump voters, they are significantly less popular nationally than they were in 2024, and the candidate is also well known and deeply unpopular with his own string of corruption charges and scandals. This race in particular is a statewide vote in Texas, so even in the best of climates a win for a Democrat was going to be a long shot, but it’s close enough to scare them. So to answer your question directly, I think in this case they are just hoping to keep enough of their previous voters to still win.
The borser districts are traditionally democratic. They flipped because the republican rhetoric around an invasion is real to them, they get migrants through there all the time. And nationally minded democrats come trhough trying to get elected on gun control and amnesty. It was a bad mix. But now the leopards are eating their faces on several factors. The most the republicans are hoping for is depressed turn out, and outright suppression.
Trump got a lot of voters to flip to him in the 2024 election, including flipping some traditionally Democratic districts in South Texas that are close to the border with Mexico. These areas have much higher than average proportions of first and second generation immigrants. Between the current state of the economy and immigration enforcement tactics that somehow surprised Trump voters, they are significantly less popular nationally than they were in 2024, and the candidate is also well known and deeply unpopular with his own string of corruption charges and scandals. This race in particular is a statewide vote in Texas, so even in the best of climates a win for a Democrat was going to be a long shot, but it’s close enough to scare them. So to answer your question directly, I think in this case they are just hoping to keep enough of their previous voters to still win.
They’ve all but lost the Hispanic vote. They discovered that the Leopards are actually eating their faces.
The borser districts are traditionally democratic. They flipped because the republican rhetoric around an invasion is real to them, they get migrants through there all the time. And nationally minded democrats come trhough trying to get elected on gun control and amnesty. It was a bad mix. But now the leopards are eating their faces on several factors. The most the republicans are hoping for is depressed turn out, and outright suppression.
That seems fairly reasonable. It’s the uncertainty of it not yet being in the bag that niggles and motivates them?