The numbers are moving rapidly, and it’s bad news for Democrats.
Transcribed by Otter.ai:
Welcome to The Luke Macias Show. Today is the first day of early voting. By the time you’re listening to this, it’ll be the second day of early voting, or the third or the fourth, depending on when in the week you consume The Luke Macias Show.
But here’s the reality: The last week we have seen nationwide, a pretty significant polling shift towards Republicans, okay, and this is encouraging in many ways. And we’re gonna break down just a little bit of that for y’all here as we enter into the final stretch.
So, first and foremost, one of the things to remember is that things were looking really good for Republicans in the first half of the year. And then there was the Dobbs decision. And what Dobbs did is that it energized significantly the left base, and it’s not that it didn’t energize people on the right—people like myself, who were very encouraged that unborn human life is more protected today than it has been since the ’70s in the United States of America. That’s a huge encouragement.
Here’s the problem: I was already motivated. And you were probably already motivated. And so, unless you’re somebody who’s left of center that happens to enjoy listening to this podcast, in which case, we love you and appreciate your willingness to listen to this … But those of us right of center were already motivated. And so, it didn’t make us more motivated; we were already coming out. But the Democrats did see a surge in their momentum and excitement on their side, which … their side was not excited. It’s very hard to be the party led by Joe Biden and to be excited about coming out to vote. And that’s just a problem that Democrats should have foreseen when they elected him as their nominee.
But we’re heading into a midterm already set to be against Democrats, the Dobbs decision happens, and that starts to tighten the polling a little bit. So, Republicans are still clearly going to win. In the later part of the summer, it was probably less anticipated that Republicans would win the Senate, or a lot of people saw a scenario in which Democrats held a 50/50 split, with maybe us trading Nevada and Pennsylvania.
But here’s what the last several weeks has brought about. And this is something that I think Trafalgar was one of the best polling firms—probably one of the most respected polling firms in the nation, especially for Republicans, but even people who just see pollster that really gets it right, often—is that they pointed out that the undecided voters, throughout the later half of the summer, fundamentally didn’t like the Democrat Party. And that that was a problem that Democrats, if they did not fix, would ultimately see the polling move against them in the fourth quarter.
Now, this is not done. Nobody knows what’s going to happen in the next two weeks. And two weeks is a long time in election-speak. The amount of money spent in the last two weeks of an election—since I’ve run a lot of campaigns, I can tell you—the amount of money spent in the last two weeks of an election is more than what was spent in January through August of this year on some of these campaigns. If you’re running a congressional race, January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September … often those entire budgets, for nine months, are spent in the last two weeks. So, there’s a lot of movement that still could happen.
But the undecided number is ticking down. In the early part of the summer, you have still 15 percent sometimes undecided in some of these polls. And now you’re getting into the single digits, where there’s 6, 7, 8 percent undecided. And what’s happening is that the entire time during that summer, when you looked at those voters who were voting for the Republican for Congress, or the Republican for attorney general, or the Republican for lieutenant governor, across the nation and in Texas … if you ask them about issues, they fundamentally didn’t trust the Democrat Party. They didn’t trust them on public safety issues. They didn’t trust them on guns. They didn’t trust them on education. They don’t trust them with the budget. They don’t trust them in general cultural issues. They don’t trust them on the foreign affairs side. They don’t trust them on the border. I mean, honestly, even the abortion issue is a 50/50, and the gun issue. So, these are the two issues the Democrats are like, “Oh, we’re with the middle-of-the-road moderates on this issue (of gun control … [and] they’re not for a ban on abortion).”
But here’s the problem. Those voters in the middle are split 50/50. Half of them will tell you … and when I say split 50/50, here’s the way the questions are often asked in these polls: Which of the parties do you trust when it comes to gun policy? Which of the parties do you trust when it comes to abortion policy? Now, what does that mean?
It means that independent voters, for the most part, they don’t want a ban on all abortions—you just have to understand that. Be comfortable with that as the reality. And here’s the truth: They don’t want abortion up until the moment before birth. So, you asked them, “Which of these two camps do you trust more?” And they’re going, “Well, I’d really like less abortions. And I think if I had to pick one of the sides, I’d go with the side that wants to end abortion.” And then some of them go, “Well, I don’t like abortion up until birth, but I’m so fundamentally committed to this idea.” Or maybe, unfortunately, “I have aborted a child.” Maybe there’s some guilt and shame associated with that. “And so, I’m going to side on the left side on this issue.”
But fundamentally, these voters as a whole trust Republicans more than Democrats in this election cycle. And what it looks like is that in the final chapter, the fourth quarter, when they all have to pick a team to cast a vote for, they’re coming on the side of the Republican Party. So, the last two weeks we have seen this, both nationwide, all of a sudden states like Georgia, Arizona, [and] Pennsylvania are looking way better when it comes to Republicans. Even New Hampshire is looking very good as a potential for Republicans to win a United States Senate seat. If all of those fell, you would have a 54-seat Republican majority in the Senate. And then on the same side, you come to Texas.
Now, before I go statewide, I want to talk about Mayra Flores, who won a special election in a more Republican seat, which caused a lot of waves. But now she is in a district against Vincente Gonzalez, which Joe Biden won by I think over 13 points … maybe even over 15 percentage points. And there are three competitive congressional districts in South Texas. And Democrats actually stopped spending in the Monica Dela Cruz seat. Monica Dela Cruz is running in a district, a newly created congressional district, which Trump won by 2 percentage points. And that is so Republican that Democrats have pulled out; they’re like, “There’s no way we’re going to win this seat.” And they’re still spending. But Mayra Flores, on the political report, is now in a district—even though Joe Biden won this district by over 13 or 15 percentage points—they believe that it leans Republican.
It is likely that Mayra Flores wins; that is how big of a shift you’re seeing in South Texas towards the Republican Party. And that is a shift that was started by Donald Trump’s very strong stance on the border, his willingness to go down and call the cartels what they are (terrorists) and say, “We are going to go after … we are going to end the invasion. We are going to put people back in Mexico. We’re going to stop the flow of illegals coming into this country.”
That position—which is opposed by white, upper-middle-class, New York Times-subscribing, masters-educated white women and men—is appreciated by Hispanics. The thing that they would turn around and say, “This makes the Republican Party racist.” Racist against who? Latinos, Hispanics, or Latinx—so my friends call them … Latin X, Latinx. They go, “Well, what about those people?” Yeah, they don’t think it’s racist. In fact, they’ll prove to you that they don’t think it’s racist, because they’re moving more Republican than any other group of voters in the United States.
So clearly, they don’t think that closing the border and actually having a border means you’re racist. By the way, if you don’t have a sealed border, you don’t have a border. If I told you, “I have a roof. Well, every time it rains, a bunch of water comes in. Well, I have a roof.” I don’t even know if what you have is a roof. I think what you have is like a light covering. Just because you have something over … if it’s completely open, I don’t know. Or this is a really bad roof. We could even have a philosophical discussion. Is it a roof if it’s not actually doing what a roof is supposed to do? And the same can be said for a border.
So, Mayra Flores is in a district that was handily won by Joe Biden. And actually at this moment in time, the assumption is that she actually is in a great position to win that seat. And the next two weeks are going to be really pivotal. And I hope that each and every one of y’all is spending whatever time you’re going to spend doing whatever you want to do, applying it. You know, once we’re across the finish line, it’s done.
So, what does this mean for statewide these shifts that are happening? Okay. So, we have had three polls that have come out in the last week that have shown the nationwide shift happening also in Texas. So, through all of the summer, let’s say Greg Abbott was consistently at like five points up. Dan Patrick, 4. Ken Paxton, 2. We finally see a lot of these voters breaking Republican, which is where the underlying momentum said they were going to move, but they’re starting to actually move because they have to actually vote.
So, the University of Texas and Texas Politics Project released the highest estimate, which was that Greg Abbott was up 9, Dan Patrick was up 15, and Ken Paxton was up 14. That really hurt Democrats; in fact, Beto O’Rourke and Wendy Davis and all these statewide Democrats released their own poll—this like Democrat-leaning pollster. And they call them an A-rated pollster, and it’s like, this guy’s not A-rated, he’s a Democrat pollster who puts out polls that are often wrong and highly inaccurate and very pro-Democrat to help y’all raise money and convince people you’re still within striking distance. But this Democrat pollster released this poll that said Beto is within 3 points.
The problem was Spectrum Siena released their own poll just this morning, and they had Abbott up 9, Patrick up 8, Paxton up 6. Emerson released a poll the same day, which was this morning (Monday), that had Abbott up 10, Patrick and Paxton up five. And there’s various different things within each and every one of these models. But you’re consistently seeing that as the shift happens, there is a good chance that Abbott is definitely within a possibility of winning by double digits over Beto. And Patrick and Paxton will likely be a little under that.
The UT/Texas Politics … are the only ones that have Paxton, Patrick over … I think this is gonna be really interesting to see if they actually perform better in the rural areas. And so, yeah, we’ll have to see how that all shakes up.
But these shifts are real that are happening. And if the next two weeks continues, we should be highly encouraged. I will tell you, kind of going back to one of our earlier episodes … as I as I enter the last two weeks of the election, I start to move on to 2023 already. And this is politics in general, right? You’re kind of trying to always focus on the thing right in front of you and also focus on things that are coming up.
And so I look ahead and see, still the upcoming battle and the looming battle of the session. We have a lot of Republicans in the Texas House who are still trying to kind of signal a move to the middle.
We’ve had a number of other candidates and officials talk about the need to push rape and incest exceptions, a belief that we should have a policy that punishes children who are the product of rape for the sins of their father. And that’s really a disturbing trend. It is something that we should avoid moving society in the direction of at all costs. We shouldn’t try to … we should always avoid segmenting people because of actions that somebody else committed. Right? Saying, “You are less than this person.” Why? “Well, because your dad is a rapist.” I mean, if you had that conversation in any other context, you’d think that’s crazy. But yeah, a lot of Republicans are starting to say, “Well, I guess … maybe we should let these kids get killed.”
The 2023 session is shaping up to be a battle against Dan Patrick and Dade Phelan. And I’ve said that many times. And I will just remind you, that is what it is set up to be. And it’s going to be very interesting to see what Abbott’s takeaway from this election season is.
Here’s what is really important. I will just tell you, there are a couple people out there that I … especially in the Texas House. I was thinking about this the other day: I don’t know how many moderates we want to win in November. And here’s why: The Texas House does something different that I do not see in other legislative bodies. They basically take the most moderate districts that they have. (In this case, it’s like Morgan Meyer out of Highland Park.) But they’ll pick these districts where Joe Biden wins. And the Republicans will barely win by a couple of percentage points. And then throughout the entire legislative session, they will not want to move any policy that these middle-of-the-road moderate districts would not support. And they’ll say, “Well, Morgan Meyer’s district will not like this.”
or Jamie jolly is this lady running in Plano now? And I promise you, you’re going to hear this through the session: “Well, look, I would love to ban drag shows. But that drag show was in Jamie Jolly’s district. And you know, her people are going to be really ticked, and that is a tough seat for us to hold. We’re probably going to lose that to a Democrat if we pass this drag show bill.” … “Hey, I would love to deal with this education issue. But you have to understand Morgan Meyer’s district is this.”
Now I’m not saying Morgan Meyer should lose. But I will say that if Republicans don’t get over the fact that pushing your agenda is still worth doing, regardless of how vulnerable that makes people in the middle of the road, then they’re going to have a tough time this session.
I will say this too: Morgan Meyer is actually set up to get re-elected handily, even though we passed constitutional carry and a basic ban on abortion in a district … he is going to get re-elected in a district that Biden won handily, and is all these upper-middle-class, white voters.
So, one of the takeaways—and I’ll probably do an episode on this between November and the end of the year—is the fact that the Morgan Meyer phenomenon is going to be put to bed after this cycle. … We have to we have to basically tear down all these excuses Republicans in the Republican Caucus in the Texas House give us for not passing Republican priorities. That’s what we have to do. We have to take those away from them and show them. … No, this is all just excuses. They’re all excuses. We have real policy to pass. Let’s not forget, let’s make it happen.
We’re going to close out today with a little clip from Ted Cruz, who was just on “The View.” I’m sure some of you are not daily consumers of “The View”—neither am I. But when somebody goes on, I usually get around to watching it … I want to see how this person interacts with those hosts. Ted Cruz went on. I think he did a great job calling out some of the hypocrisy of these hosts who act like Republicans are these crazy people that deny elections—while, you know, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Stacey Abrams, they basically have their Democrat Party is led by people who, every time they lose, basically say, “This is an illegitimate stolen election.”
And so, I’m gonna play this clip for you because, look, I’ve criticized different officials when they do different things. I do that all the time. But when they go out and do the right thing, they push the right issue, they talk about the right narrative … I do think it’s worth pointing out and thanking them for doing that. So, this is my thank you to Ted Cruz for standing up on this issue on “The View” and being willing to speak truth to a liberal media.
With that, I’m gonna play this clip. Thank you for listening. God bless you, and God bless Texas.
Audio Clip From “The View”
Cruz: Try to say the election was fair and square and legitimate. You know who y’all don’t do that to? You don’t do it to Hillary Clinton, who stood up and said Trumps don’t —
Abrams, who said who said that the election was stolen, they sat here and said it was legitimate and we’re fine with it. Okay, so so until the gentleman Republicans—
But no, you know, here’s the thing. We may not like when Republicans win, but we don’t go and we don’t storm. We don’t try to change—
Cruz: But did I miss an entire year of antifa riots were cities, burning police cars. … Your position is the left doesn’t engage in violence. Really?
No, they wanted to not. Mike Pence
You just accused us of doing something we didn’t do. You said, “Hillary Clinton didn’t say whatever she didn’t say.” I’m saying to you, “Listen, it she said we didn’t say here and you were fine with her say it was illegitimate.
She calls Donald Trump the next morning, and she conceded the election, Ted.
Okay. All right. It was Sunday.
Cruz: He sat there while while Donald Taylor against Trump as an illegitimate President Hillary Clinton says the election is stolen from you Hillary Clinton in 2002. George W. Bush was selected, not elected. Joe Biden. Al Gore was was elected president so Joe Biden claims George W. Bush …
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