A Texas Senate seat has been the white whale of the Democratic Party since at least 2018 when Beto O’Rourke came within a whisper of winning the seat even as Ted Cruz sat at +5% net approval. The margin of victory was 2.6% but the important number is the raw number of votes he lost by: 214,821. We will come back to why that number is important later. In 2024 Ted Cruz was in a much healthier position with a net approval of +12%, despite that Allred raised and spent $99.9 milli