Voter enthusiasm, Cruz-Allred and the race for the White House | FOX 7 Focus
Election Day is right around the corner and more than 8 million Texans have already voted.
There are several races at a local and national level that will affect Central Texans.
FOX 7 Focus reporter John Krinjak spoke with Scott Braddock, editor at Quorum Report, about the election and the final push in the races between Ted Cruz and Colin Allred and Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.
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JOHN KRINJACK: 12 days of early voting saw pretty high turnout. What do you think is driving people to the polls in those numbers and is there anything we can read into that?
SCOTT BRADDOCK: There is a lot more enthusiasm, of course, on the Democratic side after the reset at the top of the ticket. In Texas before the reset, President Biden was running about 10 points behind former president Trump, but now the numbers look about like they did in 2020 when Biden lost to Trump in Texas by 5 points of course won nationally.
JOHN KRINJACK: We've seen a lot of new voters registering, younger voters registering, and just anecdotally it seems like there are at least some people who haven't voted in a while that are deciding, okay I'm going to come out and vote. What could those groups signal about the outcome in some of these races?
SCOTT BRADDOCK: I think you have enthusiasm among young voters, but in Texas so far and historically up to now, has never really translated to success for Democrats. That's what they've been banking on for a long time, but we do see all these celebrities getting involved which I think is interesting. A lot of Texas celebrities. You saw last weekend Beyoncé headlining this rally with Vice President Harris and on the Republican side, you've got Joe Rogan and some of these other folks, are very popular with young men on the Republican side. For those celebrity endorsements and sort of influencers exerting themselves or asserting themselves, I do think that it means there are some folks who maybe would not have voted before and might vote now based on the fact that they're hearing from somebody that they know about. It doesn't really speak to persuasion but it can speak to some of the enthusiasm you see out there.
JOHN KRINJACK: Talking about Cruz-Allred, obviously the US Senate is a huge race this year. It's looked pretty tight at certain points. How is it looking now and what are you seeing from the campaigns in these final days?
Ted Cruz-Colin Allred: Where the candidates stand on the issues
SCOTT BRADDOCK: We're getting the closing arguments and both campaigns are really trying to project very different messages. On the Cruz side, he's talking a lot about boys in girls' sports, which is really just code for talking about transgender people. On the Democratic side, which you're hearing a lot more, two things that I'm hearing: one is attacking Republicans on the issue of abortion and saying that Republicans are stamping out women's rights, women's autonomy over their own bodies and then this that I saw from the Texas Democratic Party, which is the old Ted Cruz Cancun attack. That's something that you know can really break through when there's so much noise in these campaigns.
JOHN KRINJACK: Polls are showing Cruz five or seven points ahead of Allred and showing a similar margin in the presidential race here in Texas. Do you think those numbers will hold, at least looking statewide when we look at the presidential race.?
SCOTT BRADDOCK: When we get a look through all of this and all the dust is settled, you have to expect that Texas is still going to be a Republican state. You know, when we look at the early voting right now, we've seen Republicans coming out in larger numbers than we've seen in the past. Republican precincts are keeping pace with Democratic voters in early voting. The big difference there is that former president Trump is telling them to do it. Now the question is, is he bringing out any new Republican voters in this early voting period or are they cannibalizing the Republican vote on Election Day? Probably the latter, so I do expect that while they'll be exhausting the total Republican votes out there, there still will be more Republican votes in Texas than Democratic ones if the current numbers hold, but Allred and Harris of course are hoping that they can get a boost here at the end. We'll have to watch closely on election night.