u/DingoLaLingo

this isn't technically the first episode of the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast Still Counting, but it's sorta a prologue episode where Nate, Galen, and Clare discuss how the political/political media landscape has changed over the last few years. real episodes will start getting posted next wednesday tho!

Only days from the Texas GOP Runoff, a new poll from Texas Southern University's Barbara Jordan Public Policy Research and Survey Center found that neither incumbent Senator John Cornyn or Attorney General Ken Paxton holds a clear edge over Democratic challenger State Representative James Talarico, with only 8% undecided in either scenario. These margins deviate somewhat from some of Talarico's more bullish polling in recent weeks, but also seem to contradict the conventional wisdom that Cornyn would be the clear favorite were he to be the Republican nominee, with Cornyn's supposed electability netting him barely more than a 1% lead over Talarico, well within the margin of error.

Digging into the poll's sample, the poll shows a fairly tight race among most demographics, with Talarico having a narrow lead with Latinos (47%/43% against Cornyn, 48%/40% against Paxton) but narrowly losing millenials 48%/43% regardless of GOP candidate, indicating that there may be weaknesses in Talarico's coalition which must be shored up prior to November if he is to reassemble the coalition that brought Beto O'Rourke within 2.6% of Ted Cruz in 2018. However, consistent with other polling, Talarico also holds a healthy lead with independents, winning 40%/18% against Cornyn and 45%/20% against Paxton, though 28-29% remain undecided, indicating that Talarico may be able to expand his coalition by appealing to independents, moderates, and other voters disillusioned with an era of rigid partisanship.

Taking stock of the election as a whole, most expert ratings (Sabato's Crystal Ball, InsideElections, Cook Political Report, etc.) continue to assess the Texas Senate Race as Likely Republican. However, betting markets have the race as a virtual coinflip, in line with every major statewide poll this year which has shown the race as a single digit-affair. Overall, while this poll provides little certainty for either Talarico, Cornyn, or Paxton supporters, it continues to affirm that Texas is genuinely competitive this cycle and may prove key to future Republican or Democratic senate control, representing a genuine Democratic challenge on once-solidly Republican turf that would have been unthinkable just a year prior.

YouGov is rated B by the Silver Bulletin, with a predictive plus-minus of +0.11 and a mean-reverted bias of D+1.08; Texas Southern University is unrated by the Silver Bulletin

It's a pretty easily observable fact that Harris Insights and Analytics/HarrisX is a poor-quality pollster. Their ability to predict the national popular vote/generic ballot in either midterm or presidential environments over the last several cycles has been mediocre at best, and their issue polling often explicitly frames questions around Republican talking points, producing biased results. It consistently weights its samples to favor a non-college educated, white, conservative electorate and almost always produces outlier results only matched by explicitly partisan pollsters like Rasmussen or Trafalgar.

Obviously, right-leaning pollsters still play a role in the political ecosystem, and their influence can help to balance out election models, or at the very least provide interesting counterfactuals that challenge conventional, sometimes overly Democratic-friendly polling wisdom. However, what I don't understand is why Harvard University would choose to tie its political analysis to a pollster that is so specifically unreliable. I understand the need for internal consistency in a data set, especially when it comes to longitudinal measurements like presidential approval, and I understand the methodological and statistical challenges that would come with switching to a new pollster with a different polling philosophy/methodology. However, when a pollster is constantly giving you figures like "Nearly half (44%) of Americans want to cut Medicaid" or "A majority of Americans support the Iran War (52%) and 75% say America is winning" that are anecdotally and statistically unbelievable, is it possible that your data set is just too far gone to be useful to anyone? Rather than constantly having to subtract 10-15% from your topline in order to get an actually comprehensible figure, would it just be better to start fresh?

For Tonight's Double Feature: Less than three weeks out from the May 26th Texas Republican Senate Runoff, the Paxton-aligned Lone Star Liberty PAC and the Cornyn-aligned super PAC Texans for a Conservative Majority have released simultaneous polls showing their respective candidates leading the race by both wide and narrow margins.

The former poll, conducted by Remington Research, showed Attorney General Ken Paxton leading incumbent Senator John Cornyn 47% to 36% with a formidable 11 point margin (5/3-5/5, 1810 LV, MoE +/-2.6%), though notably with 17% of voters still undecided. Among other findings, this poll claims that Paxton leads in the Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio media markets and that learning more about the candidates makes voters more likely to vote for Paxton and less likely to vote for Cornyn. Remington Research is rated B- by the Silver Bulletin, with a predictive plus-minus of +0.56 and a mean-reverted bias of D+1.28.

The latter poll, conducted by Peak Insights, showed Cornyn narrowly leading Paxton 47% to 46% (5/2-5/5, 800 LV, MoE +/-3%), with a much smaller 7% of voters undecided. In contrast to the previous poll, this poll claims that Cornyn leads in the Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio media markets and that learning more about the candidates makes voters less likely to vote for Paxton. Peak Insights is unrated by the Silver Bulletin.

Placed side by side, these polls seem to indicate strength on the part of Paxton, with both finding robust showings in the mid-to-high forties. And despite his stronger-than-expected performance in the March 3 primary, neither of these polls give any indication that Cornyn has gained any significant momentum in the runoff, with Peak Insights' last poll in April also showing Cornyn with only a slim 1% margin over Paxton (44/43).

However, questions also remain regarding the competitiveness of the runoff, such as the turnout dynamics of the race and whether pollsters have been able to fully account for Cornyn's aforementioned overperformance/Paxton's underperformance in the first round of voting. The Remington Research poll seeks to account for this by "weight[ing] to match expected turnout demographics for the 2026 Republican Primary Runoff Election electorate" and indicates expectations of a highly-ideological electorate, finding that 62% of likely runoff voters identify as "very conservative." That being said, it remains to be seen whether this turnout model will more accurately capture the composition of the runoff vote, or if it may instead be underestimating the role of moderates and independents in the balance of the race, with such miscalculations seeming to have played a significant role in polling misses during the Democratic primary.

Despite these unknowns though, as the dynamics of the runoff crystalize in its final weeks, Paxton seems to be in a strong position, with basically all recent polling showing him either up or within the margin of error against Cornyn. And while they may prompt new questions, these two polls do not fundamentally challenge the conventional wisdom that, in an era of anti-establishment populism and high partisanship, if Cornyn is to win a fifth term, the path back to the senate will be an uphill climb.