Ted Cruz is warning that Republicans are staring down a midterm wipeout in Congress and across the state of Texas.
Cruz said on his podcast he is “deeply, deeply worried” about the vote totals so far. As of Friday, four days out from Election Day, over 48 million mail-in and early in-person votes had been cast, with 47 percent being by registered Democrats and just 35 percent by Republicans.
The Texas senator has acknowledged that disdain for Trump is driving the GOP’s doomsday scenario.
“What we’re seeing across the country is massive Democrat turnout. Democrats are showing up. They’re energized,” Cruz said. “They hate, hate, hate Donald Trump. If the election were over today, if just the early votes that have been cast so far were counted, Republicans would lose massively. It would not be close.”
He added, “We would lose both the House and the Senate. It would be a bloodbath.”
Republican votes are “still out there” because they’re less likely to vote early, Cruz noted, and in Texas, there are still more registered Republicans than Democrats. Still, the current imbalance in voting data so far is “really, really big.”
Cruz then urged his listeners to vote for Republicans, either early or on Election Day.
“I want to ask you—I want to just about beg and plead—if you have not voted, if it’s still early voting in your state, come out and early vote,” he said. “If not, Election Day is Tuesday... Please, please, please, show up and vote.”
Among all states, Texas has seen the largest share of early voting at 36 percent, or 6.76 million ballots. Of them, 44 percent were cast by registered Democrats, 45 percent by Republicans, and 11 percent by another party.
“Texas is excruciatingly close,” Cruz said. “Understand, we could lose Texas. Let me repeat that: We could lose Texas—and by the way, not just the Senate race. We could lose every single statewide race in Texas. That’s how close these numbers are.”
A CNN/SSRS poll released Thursday for the Senate race between Democrat James Talarico and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton showed Talarico up 6 percent. In the same poll, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa was down 2 percent.
“Now, some conservatives, they say, ‘I don’t trust the polls. The polls are all wrong.’ Well, let me tell you that there is a bias in the polls. They do skew left,” Cruz continued. “But I can tell you, having run a lot of campaigns, having examined a lot of numbers, these data are not fake. The Democrats are massively turning out the Republicans. We’ve got to fix that.”
Cruz went on to call the upcoming election “the most important midterm, I believe, of our lifetimes.”
