DOES BIDEN HAVE A SHOT IN TEXAS?

It doesn't look as if Joe Biden can quite overcome Donald Trump's lead in Texas -- Trump is up by 1.9 according to FiveThirtyEight, and up by 3.6 according to Real Clear Politics. On the other hand, there's this:

A little less than three weeks before early voting is due to begin, Texans are already making election year history, setting new records for voter registration....

Jeremy Wallace covers politics for the Houston Chronicle. He told Texas Standard the state has a bit over 16.6 million registered voters, with 1.5 million added since the 2016 presidential election.

“Even since the pandemic hit, we’ve added 400,000,” Wallace said.

Just for the record, Beto O'Rourke lost to Ted Cruz in 2018 by 214,921 votes (out of 8,371,655 cast).

Of the new voters registered, one-third come from Harris County, Bexar County and Travis County, all home to large cities that tend to vote for Democratic candidates. There have also been higher-than-usual increases in the number of voters registered in suburban counties like Hays and Williamson near Austin, and Montgomery County in southeast Texas. Republicans hope those voters will be more likely to support their candidates.

Harris County (which includes Houston), Bexar County (San Antonio), and Travis County (Austin) all voted for O'Rourke by comfortable margins -- but O'Rourke won Hays and Williamson counties, too, after Trump won both in 2016.

Will Texas surprise us? Maybe it'll just be close, but who knows? Meanwhile, here are a couple of possible surprises: Biden leads Trump in Iowa by 3 in the New York Times/Siena poll that was released this week, and he's ahead of Trump by 5 in Ohio in a just-released Fox poll. Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 9 in Iowa and by 8 in Ohio.

Midwestern appeal? Maybe Biden really was the right candidate for this election.