It's a Number Game: TEXAS TURNING BLUE?! Republicans Facing an Election NIGHTMARE

Ryan Girdusky (0:01)

Welcome back to A Numbers Game with Ryan Girdusky. Thank you guys for being here. I have a weather advisory I want to start the show with. If you live in Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, or Texas, these big states that have these big midterm elections, you are apparently having a massive storm hitting your state in on Tuesday. There will be a lot of rain coming in through the entire Plains states and the Midwest. If you live there and you're planning on voting on election day, make sure you make a plan and try to go vote early so you're not bogged down in bad weather. My advice, always try to vote early. It helps when election day, when things go wrong and trust me, as someone who's done hundreds of elections, things always manage to go a little wrong. My monologue today is I'm going to ask the question, is Texas really turning blue?

It's a Republicans relationship with Texas is very unique. It is the state that anchors the presidency, the most amount of house seats. If you had to say a state that identifies as what a Democrat would identify, what they probably say in New York, California, they might split their answer. If you ask what state represents the Republican Party, they would almost unanimously say Texas. It is a very weird relationship that it identifies with the state and the party. I was on the phone this week with a few consultant friends of mine from Texas, very smart people, and they were talking about a state house race that one of them was working on. It was a district that Trump won by well over 15 points. In their internal polling, Trump is now dead even, which no one's surprised really. We have inflation, we have the war, we have high food prices, we have all the corruption stories, yada, yada, yada, yada. We've heard it all. We know why Trump is polling poorly. The poll also that Ken Paxson is negative 14 in his personal approval rating, which once again, we kind of heard all the stories, why corruption, shitting on the wife, all the trips overseas, yada, yada, yada. We know why these unique individuals are not polling thoroughly in these red states and Trump being the president, how it's anchored the way down all the Republicans running for office this year. But what gets a little crazier is federal races and state races are very different, right? We have a Republican governor of Vermont, we have a Democratic governor of Kentucky. Americans are much more independent when it comes to voting for governor than they are for federal offices.

Governor Greg Abbott had an approval rating of 50%.

And that's not high in a district he won by well over 20 points. Not great. And I've been speaking to a lot of people, and there is a larger problem that I am noticing when it comes to Texas. Yes, Ken Paxton is in trouble. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. We have months and months and months of polling. Paxton has not led in... Paxton has led in three polls since June, right? We know we can see everything that's happened for such a long time.

However, no one running for office in Texas this year is polling with Texas size Republican leads. Nobody. There was in this one particular district, which a district once again the Republicans won by 20 points sometimes, Paxton was winning by four, Abbott was winning by 10 And there was another 10% in both voting categories that were undecided. Well, who were those undecided? They were likely Republicans. Republicans which were questioning, do I even show up this year? And that's why Abbott's lead has been mostly in the single digits for most of the year. And it's not just this district, it's state wide. A new Texas Southern University poll found that Tallarico is beating Paxton by two points, which once again, we have seen before. But Abbott is only beating his Democratic opponent by three points, 50 to 47%.

Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has a four point lead, Republican nominee Maez Middleton running for Lieutenant Governor has a four point lead. Don Huffines, who is running for Comptroller, is in one of the best places. He has a six point lead. Beau French, who would be sailing to an easy victory had he not decided to go on Twitter to talk about Indians going to a football game is only leading by a point he could very well lose. Nate Sheets is at 48% of four points for agricultural commissioners race and Don Buckingham is leading by six for the land commissioners race. That's, that's, I mean, there's some solides in some of those races, but also this is Texas. This is a state that Republicans in these lower level statewide offices should be holding by double digits. I mean, it's not like the land commissioner is a hot button seat. Aside from Beau French's tweet, you've probably never heard of half of these people. They are just generic ours to most Republicans. But the big question is, are these late deciding people, these late deciding Republicans going to vote to cast a ballot? They will almost surely be voting Republican if they vote. But will they vote? As of the middle half of last of this week, there are only 400,000 Democrats who voted in the 2024 election early who have not voted in this election yet. But there's 1.1 million Republicans who are so far who voted early in 2024, but have so far sat out of this election. This is especially high in rural districts. Now, day nine of early voting was very, very good for Republicans. I don't want to convey the opinion that it's all doom and gloom. Republicans have been showing up in larger and larger numbers as the days go on. So maybe there's this drumbeat to show up to get out to pull their own ranks. But we had a lot of days of just Democratic dominance. If that negativity though does bear fruit, if those Republicans just don't show up and several statewide offices go Democrat, and it's not all about Trump, and it's not all about Ken Paxton, my question is why? I hit the phones and I started breaking down the data. The Republicans who voted three of the last three elections, they're voting at like 86% the rate of 2024, right? Which is good. But those who voted in two out of three or one out of three of the last three elections are voting at 50%, right? Maybe it's because of Trump. Maybe they just don't like Donald Trump, that is enough to convince them to hey, let's sink as many races in Texas as possible. But I don't think so. I don't think that that's the truth. I just, I have a very fundamental problem saying, there must be a bigger issue going on. And I think I'm right. I think this is why so many Republicans are having a problem with casting a ballot and showing up to the Texas GOP this year. First reason, property taxes. From 2015 to 2025, total property taxes collected in the state jumped by between 75 to 81% in 10 years. Huge local issue. The cost of property taxes is just ginormous now in Texas. And there's this notion going on, this is my second reason. There's a notion that Republicans are really only listening to their donors. Now, that is not unique to Republicans. That is not unique to the state of Texas. I, as a lifelong New Yorker, Bill de Blasio used to give contracts when he was mayor to hotels that housed homeless people. They got millions of dollars in contracts, and they were his donors. We see this all the time, where everyone's scratching each other's back and the taxpayer gets screwed. We have seen this. What's going on right now in Texas, around the GOP is unique.