I’m not getting the connection here. I’m not saying Beto’s gonna win because more people voted in the Dem primary. If I were, what you say would be on point.
Premature for what? Premature for being a data point?
You raised his odds because of it though is what it looked like. If you were just coincidentally mentioning the early voting and his odds changing in your post, ok then.
Just to be clear, what I am saying is that this is an indication that the heightened intensity and increased willingness to actually vote that Dem voters have shown in other states in 2017 is present in Texas in early 2018 as well. I’m saying that’s a positive sign for a Democratic candidate in Texas. I’m saying that, despite that, Cruz is still the overwhelming favorite, but more like an 80-85% favorite rather than a 95% favorite.
So I’m saying that the party that did better in first-day primary turnout is still a huge underdog in the general election, which is why I’m puzzled by CarnalK’s implication that I’m using it as a predictor of the general election outcome.
Saying that it changes your estimation of the odds is using it a predictor of the general election outcome. The fact that your estimation of the odds still favors Cruz means that it’s not the only predictor you’re using, but you’re still using it. CarnalK is saying that you shouldn’t be using it as a predictor at all.
I’m not sure how much of a predictor primary voting is, but there is something interesting and unusual going on with the early voting patterns. The Texas Tribune has some graphs about percentage of voters who voted early in this cycle, 2016 and 2014. Democratic participation is up (occasionally way up) in every major county except Hidalgo County, which is a Democratic stronghold anyway. And, very surprisingly, there are more Democrats casting primary ballots than Republicans (which never happens).
Considering that the only way Democrats can win an election in Texas is that they get excited and show up in large numbers while many Republicans stay home, indications that this may be happening are significant.
But that is precisely using primary turnout as a predictor.
But I guess that is enough raining on the parade for me.
Senate Key Race alert: Texas is no longer Solid Republican
CNN has moved this race from the ‘solid Republican’ column to the ‘likely Republican’ column for a variety of reasons (fundraising, Trump job approval, more at the link).
It appears the campaign of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott(R) agrees with what RTFirefly was pointing out. My takeaway is - they are alerting those on the right that this trend must be met with force or they have a big problem.
I almost posted about the Abbott fundraising email yesterday, but then I thought about it and came to the conclusion that it doesn’t tell us one way or the other about how Texas Republicans really feel. They’ll fund raise on anything. Plus sending fundraising material like, “Everything is going great, send us money,” must get boring. A little scare email to mix things up is just what the doctor ordered.
FWIW, here’s the blog of the U of H prof that article quotes as saying there’s a primary-general turnout relationship:
I don’t know. I am no statistics guy but istm that 2008 is skewing the line on his graph.
Correlation is a measure of variance. Any skewing would only reduce it.
Wut? I am saying there’s only 8 points on the graph and that 2008 seems such an outlier it is pulling the averaging line kinda high.
Well, what’s his argument precisely? What I hear him saying is that which party turns out the most voters in the primary doesn’t correlate with which party turns out the most voters in the general election. And I’m willing to concede that without even looking at the numbers.
But that’s a simple 2x2 box correlation, comparing the outcome of two Y/N questions within each election. I’m not going there. I’m comparing across years.
Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report thinks something’s up in Texas:
Harry Enten was discussing Presidential elections at the national level, and I totally agree with him. It’s just that you can’t take that result and claim it’s dispositive with respect to off-year races at the state level.
Comparing Presidential elections to off-year elections has always been comparing apples to zucchini.
And even harder to overlook is the clustering of years divisible by 4 at one end of the graph, and the years not so divisible at the other end. By the time you take that out by dealing with each group separately, you don’t have enough data points to bother with.
I hadn’t even noticed that. Yeah, this guy is no number cruncher.
It’s crazy this election gets talked about in the “anti-Trump” context when Cruz himself is such a shit.
The really sad part is that Cruz is no higher than fourth place on the list of biggest assholes on the statewide ballot - I’d rank Sid Miller, Ken Paxton and Dan Patrick as all worse than him and there are also other debatable candidates.
With early primary voting complete, the Democrats’ participation more than doubled in the largest 10 counties while the Republican vote increased less than 15 percent. This is the first time that the Democratic voters actually outnumbered Republican ones since the mid '90s. It’s still a really tough challenge for any Democrat to actually win a statewide race in Texas, but if those numbers hold up through the general we may actually make a real race out of it - and that’s significant in and of itself.
Bumping this because today is primary day in Texas.