Myth of BetoMania

Beto O'Rourke's Presidential bid hasn't seen the same enthusiasm as his Senate run; this shouldn't have come as a surprise.

Beto O'Rourke took Texas and the media by storm in the 2018 Senate election. Being narrowly edged out by Republican incumbent Ted Cruz, Beto became a Democratic darling. Fast forward to the 2020 presidential elections, where Beto has officially declared as a candidate, and the luster has faded. After announcing his much candidacy, Beto shocked the political world by raising $6.1m in 24 hours—a cut above Liberal heartthrob Sen. Bernie Sanders, who raised $5.9m in his first 24 hours.

But the momentum did not continue. Beto reported just $9.3m in total first quarter donations. That puts him well behind Sanders, and significantly behind Sens Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Rep John Delaney. In fact, new up and coming Mayor Pete Buttigieg is closer to Beto than Beto is to any of the candidates ahead of him.

This fading out suggests one of three things; none are good for Beto. First, Beto has an enthusiastic and loyal base, but he cannot seem to bring in believers from other areas of the Democratic Party. Another option is that he has slowed his fundraising efforts—a rookie mistake for any presidential candidate.

The third explanation seems the most likely. BetoMania was a mirage.

The graph here shows Beto’s performance in the 2018 elections relative to the Democratic Congressional candidate. Red represents a county-district pair Cruz won, blue a county-district pair Beto won (multiple congressional districts exist in some counties).

The numbers on the axis are the difference between Beto and that county’s Democratic congressional candidate. Counties where the congressional candidate got a higher percentage vote than Beto will be negative numbers. Three congressional districts in which no Republican ran in 2018 were not included in the graph.

Beto clearly outperformed down ballot Democrats, but nothing here indicates it was a wave. A deep analysis of the election results shows in counties where Cruz won, Beto outperformed the Congressional candidates by an average of only 1.3 percentage points. For example, if Beto got 48 percent of the vote in a county, the average down ballot also got 46.7 percent of the vote. Beto did no more than 3 percentage points better than the down ballot Democrat in almost 80 percent of all counties.

Even in counties where Beto did get more votes than the down ballot Democrats, 3 in five of them were still by less than 3 percentage points.

Perhaps the most telling of any finding, and most concerning for Beto as he seeks to ride the momentum of his Senate bid to a presidential nomination, in 21 of the 57 county-district pairs won by Beto, the down ballot democrat got a higher percentage of the vote then did Beto.

If there were a BetoMania sweeping through Texas, we would have expected one of two things: first, Beto would be considered better than other Democrats running; or, second, Beto would have inspired a wave of straight party voting for democrats.

Support for either of these claims isn't really there in the data. Beto did significantly better in vote shares than Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Lupe Valdez, but not as well as Democratic Attorney General Candidate Justin Nelson.

While Beto won a higher overall percentage than Nelson—only 1.32 percentage points—Nelson did better than Beto far more often than a BetoMania craze could have allowed. The data shows voters didn’t really consider Beto to be any different then the average Democrat.

Of course, none of this takes into account the quality of the other candidates. Democrats performing worse then Beto may have been duds, and those who performed better may have been dearly beloved community figures. But this goes for Republicans as well. In a state with 36 Congressional Districts to compare with, Beto’s performance is underwhelming given the media narrative written around him.

The best possible explanation for Beto’s success then, is not his own. Like Democrats, some Republicans are duds, and some are dearly beloved. To anyone not on the far right reaches of the Republican Party, Ted Cruz is a dud.

The Texas Politics Project at The University of Texas at Austin published polling results around Ted Cruz. They found only 43 percent of Republicans strongly approved of Cruz, but 31 percent of Independents strongly disapproved of him. Overall, one third of Texans strongly disapprove of Cruz, and 21 percent strongly approve. In a conservative state like Texas, this is still enough to narrowly win a Senate seat, as he did against Beto, but it is clear Cruz is not a fan favorite.

All of this suggests that much of the BetoMania may have had nothing to do with him at all. People might have been flocking to Beto because he was not Ted Cruz.

While Donald Trump may play a similar villain role for many in the 2020 election, the Texas Senate election shows us we should not be surprised by Beto’s fundraising totals. He didn’t do a great job setting himself apart in Texas either. In fact, slightly above average is exactly where we would expect him to be.