Candidates final push before election day | Dallas News Live

Today, last day of early voting, and both parties are pushing their supporters to get out and back their candidates. Some Republicans are talking in a way that we aren't used to hearing here in Texas. Take a listen. By the way, Texas is excruciatingly close, understand we could lose Texas. Let me repeat that we could lose Texas. And by the way, not just the Senate race, we could lose every single statewide race in Texas. That's how close these numbers are. Right now, it is not going well. You need to know that and you need to be scared and you need to be concerned. The early vote is not in our favor It is ugly right now. We need every single Republican to get out there and vote. Wow, okay. So the first person, Senator Ted Cruz. Second person, Don Huffines there at that rally that J.D. Vance had in Weatherford. I want to bring in TCU political science professor, Keith Gaddy. Keith, okay, let's have a reality check right now. Are those Republican candidates just trying to scare their voters to go to the polls? Or is there really blood in the water? Well, absolutely. They're trying to scare their voters to get to the polls. It's a negative campaigning is a good motivator. But this appeal to be scared, it's never been this explicit. And Don Huffine's laid it out there in stark terms, right? Be concerned, be scared. The vote is not going in our favor. When you have nothing else left, you appeal to people's fears. I've seen multiple Republican candidates on social media tweeting about Turnout numbers in different counties, talking about more Democrats, registered Democrats or people who have voted in the Democratic primary are turning out. Now I know statewide, Democrats had a big surge. That gap is starting to shrink, but this is the last day of early voting. What do you make of the early voting from the numbers that you've seen? Steve, the early voting is exceptionally high by anybody's standards. There's been more effort to motivate and turn people out in this cycle than at any time in the past. That being said, it fits a pattern of early voting, which is Democrats tend to vote early and bank their vote. That's what they call it, banking the vote. And so this last weekend, you had the Souls to the Polls movement, which moved a large number. Of mainly African-American Democratic voters to go in early vote after church, for example. So you've had a lot of effort in this direction, but it's typical. But it's never been this effective. It's never been this effective in turning people out. But the thing that's lost in this is there's also the counter-mobilization, which is Republicans are early voting more now than they used to. It's just getting lost in this larger estimated swamp of Democratic voting. You mentioned Republicans now are voting early more than they traditionally do. And so, yeah, there's some Republican votes in that bunch. But so do you think in some of these races we could know the results when the early vote total drops in Texas? No, no, we have to vote every vote. We got to vote them all and we wait for the count to come in because everything in Texas. Has either generally been polling close to the Republican advantage or polling close. And we just don't know what the turnout model is right now to know how representative the surveys are. Stephen, I think we've got to vote this one. And I think we've got to see what the totals look like on Tuesday night. And Tuesday, there's rain in the forecast. We'll see how that may impact turnout. Republicans traditionally vote on Election Day. Harris County, just for example, nearly a million early votes. Does that shock you? No, not at all. I mean, of course, Harris County is the third biggest county in the United States. But I mean, even then, a million votes, that's a substantial number of the registered people in Harris County. One in every 73 Americans lives in Harris County. Let's start with that. It is an impressive number, but I'm not surprised it's the biggest one in Texas. But it is impressive. These are presidential numbers. What will Democrats, what will James Tallarico have to do here in North Texas? What counties are a must win or just have to run up the number for him to at least be competitive statewide on Tuesday? Well, you run up the number everywhere, but the five biggest counties in the state are where the bulk of the Democratic votes are, right? And they're all inside the Texas triangle, which runs from San Antonio to Houston up to DFW and back down. That's where the core of the vote is. But Tallarico in primary season was really good at getting votes in rural areas far outside the level of Democratic mobilization in West Texas and East Texas. So I think he's going to have I have to be turning it out everywhere. But the thing about James Tallarico is he's run like he's been behind since day one. And I think he's just going to have to keep his accelerator to the floor if he's going to prevail. The real question, though, Steve, is if James Tallarico beats Ken Paxton and beats him by a big enough margin, does that carry coattails in? Does Ginny Hinojosa's mobilization effort complement that? And then suddenly we're talking about people like Dan Patrick being in trouble. A lot of talk, a lot of polls, and we will find out Tuesday night. Keith Gaddy from TCU, thank you for your time. Take care.