This cycle has been different than any other in recent years. We have a strong slate and some personable, qualified people running. They are all over the state campaigning and organized fairly well. Beto doesn't show up without another candidate with him and there is a lot of push to present them as a team, not just Beto and some other people.
They each have their own campaigns but they often join up on the road for one or two day multi-candidate tours. That includes the judges too.
It's a diverse group. They aren't all older white guys. There are white, hispanic, male, female, older and younger. And each is out stumping to their strength and reminding everyone it's not just Beto, the whole ticket needs to be elected. Right now Beto is doing his college swing and my son went to the one at Sam and he said the ballroom was packed. Only a handful of weak Abbott supporters. I think Patrick isn't even on that bus half the time, it's just an expensive rolling billboard.
One of the big issues in rural is schools, and teachers are noticing. I have a couple of devout R lady teachers who are voting Collier, because of his message. Every county Beto drops into he has the exact figure that reflects how underpaid the teachers are in X County, versus the country. Add to that the lack of COLAs for retired teachers. Those people talk a lot.
We have phone banking and texting programs using relational databases which is fairly new, and it's effective. We also have better data from more points of contact driving some of those programs to approach and interact with better defined bases of those who lean blue but don't always vote, particularly in mid terms.
And lastly, we have all these groups like Mothers against Greg Abbott, BabiesforBeto, and It could have been Worse. Those groups are the ones doing the messier work of casting aspersions, which leaves the candidates hands fairly clean. Though they aren't ever afraid to speak the truth and point out weaknesses in the current administrations while they are campaigning.
So things are different this time, and polling might be missing some of this. I do hope like someone said earlier, the GQP feels confident and sits it out.
Anyway. All this gives me hope that we win at least a couple of offices.