SurveyUSA has poll numbers out for the runoff election in TX-23. GOP rep. Henry Bonilla leads former Democratic rep. Ciro Rodriguez by a 7 point margin, 53-46.
The district as it was sampled is 59% white, and 36% hispanic. Bonilla takes 70% of the white vote and Ciro gets 72% of the Hispanic vote. You can look at the rest of the crosstabs in the link above, but I think that one says it. The majority is composed of white rural Texans who vote mostly for the GOP, and a Hispanic GOP incumbent captures a significant portion of the Hispanic minority. As for what would change this result, the crosstab to look at is party ID. The GOP has a small advantage here (43-39), but the incumbent captures 10% of Democrats and the challenger only 5% of Republicans and wins indepents (18%) by only 3%. A competent incumbent untainted by a major scandal is likely to produce similar numbers among partisan voters, so Ciro most likely will need to close the gap by appealing to independents. In the current electoral climate, a good Democratic candidate should be able to win the independent vote by more than 3%.
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Those numbers don’t seem all too bad considering Ciro was/is largely unknown in parts of the district. Ciro can only improve between now and the 12th as he keeps upping his name rec. Is the DCCC still involved in the race?
One other thing: Ciro did a really crappy job getting out the vote last go around – what’s he doing to fix that?
that’s a major inaccuracy, this new district was redrawn to be a majority hispanic district.
with all learners pushed. Honestly 7 points in an election like this is maybe 2000 votes.