Texas has one of the worst and most extremist senators in the nation -- Ted Cruz. Can he be unseated in bright red Texas next year? The chart above shows there is an opportunity to do that. His favorable rating among the voters in Texas is upside-down (38% favorable to 45% unfavorable). That means the voters would be open to replacing him -- if a good candidate could be put forward to oppose him.
The good news is that it looks like the Democrats have a good candidate. Beto O'Rourke is probably going to be the Democratic nominee. The bad news is that most Texas voters don't know who O'Rourke is (or what he stands for). He has a 16% favorable and 13% unfavorable rating, but 69% of the voters don't know him -- and they won't vote for someone they don't know.
There's a year to go before Texans have to make this decision, but O'Rourke has a long way to go to introduce himself to the voters (and convince them that he would be a better option than Cruz). I know it's very early, and the party usually stays out of a race until the primary is over, but that might be too late to introduce O'Rourke to the Texas voters. I believe the Texas Democratic Party needs to spend some money right now to make O'Rourke known to a wider cross-section of voters.
The chart above is from the latest University of Texas / Texas Tribune Poll -- done between October 6th and 15th of a random sample of 1,200 Texas registered voters, with a 2.83 point margin of error.
