So far 9.1 million Texans have early voted. In Texas early voting has been incredibly easy for about 10 years. You can go to ALMOST ANY voting precinct in your county and you have 3 weeks. Newer machines use a pen-based scantron.
Right now 19.6 million Texans are registered to vote because you pretty much register when you get an ID. That means 53% of voters did so early. But in 2016 almost 60% of voters turned out. See our population increased by around 2.5 million.
Furthermore, of early votes tabulated so far, 53% are from Registered Republicans. Only 36% are from regisrered Democrats. And we've all seen surveys showing that 6 in 10 election day voters support Trump. Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-elections/texas-results?fbclid=IwAR0KEBlNdW0VVOcGZq2WZbLAk3JmJ_cdSlEUWEblbZWhmY1oXl6TzrMItjo
Our Republican governor won by 12% in 2018. You have to realize Beto got within about 3% because 1) he spent the most money of any senatorial candidate in history and 2) Cruz still had a very low approval rating by Republicans for his criticisms of Trump. In September Cruz only had a 62% favorability from Republicans.
I don't get why Nate Silver is held up as a standard by the left anyway. He predicted 2004, 2008 and 2012. He received accolades for his 2008 projections. Anyone with an ounce of integrity knew Obama was going to beat McCain by comfortable margins.
The polls never corrected for Trump's 3% marginal boost and now it's worse because Trump supporters are 2.5x more likely to not answer polls. There's also far more dissatisfied Tim Pool types out there. That means the Independents and Republicans they are getting probably qualify as more moderate than his core base.
It was good in 2004-2008.
Then the liberal mind virus consumed him under the Obama administration. Democrats in media thought Obama was a politician deserving of accolades like Caesar, Napoleon, etc. Any robust criticisms of Obama were deemed racist.
That's why Trump winning in 2016 shattered their minds. They had just elected black Lincoln and were about to elect the first female president. It was supposed to be 16 years of neoliberal policy cloaked inside progressivism. They had it all planned out..