Say, you all remember the “Beto the Closer” argument, right? That claim came from Texas Democrats exactly three months ago, when the party insisted that Robert Francis O’Rourke had positioned himself for the kind of late-race charge that they insisted he was known for pulling off. It’s not clear when that happened, since O’Rourke had lost his Senate challenge against Ted Cruz four years ago in a moderate Democrat wave, and never even registered in the Democratic presidential primary two years later … despite getting tens of millions of dollars in celebrity cash in both cycles.

The home stretch has finally arrived, and … the only thing closing at this point are wallets. In a new poll that dropped late last night from the University of Houston, Greg Abbott has nearly doubled his lead over the “closer” in the last seven weeks, while Beto barely makes it to 40%:

🚨 TEXAS POLL By University of Houston

GOV
(R) Greg Abbott 53% (+13)
(D) Beto O'Rourke 40%

LT GOV
(R) Dan Patrick 51% (+15)
(D) Mike Collier 36%

AG
(R) Ken Paxton 49% (+12)
(D) Rochelle Garza 37%https://t.co/p5kfitqrxc

— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) November 1, 2022

For context, the previous iteration of this poll from the University of Houston took place at the end of August, about four weeks after the “closer” remark. That survey put the race at Abbott +7, 49/42, six points less in the gap than the newest poll. The new 53/40 result is outside the margin of error in terms of Abbott’s standing, so he definitely picked up support over the last two months. And while Beto’s two-point drop could be explained as statistical noise, what it isn’t is a positive movement in any way, shape, or form. Closer, indeed.

By the way, the UH poll isn’t the only one from Academia doing a clean-up on Aisle Beto. The University of Texas survey reported a five-point lead for Abbott at the beginning of September (45/40), only to score it as a +11 for Abbott ten days ago, 54/43. Is that Abbott closing the deal in Texas … or pollsters attempting to remove narrative bias from their operations in time to keep from getting embarrassed on Election Day? It could be a bit of both, but I’m betting more on the latter than the former. I doubt Beto was ever seriously within five or seven points of Abbott — and most other pollsters saw that earlier.

Even for Beto, this performance is pathetic, given his massive fundraising in this cycle. Democrats might just as well have set a pallet of cash on fire for all the good Beto did them in Texas. And they may as well have become mimes for all the good Beto’s issue set did them here, too. Kenny Webster has the UH polling memo on this result, and their analysis of the issues in play would have been obvious to anyone not benighted enough to believe that the Emerging Progressive Majority was turning Texas blue:

Beto spent the election cycle talking about gun control (in Texas!), racial equity, marijuana, LGBTQ issues, and climate change. That might have been helpful in a gubernatorial race in California or Massachusetts. Or maybe not; in this cycle, even deep-blue-state voters are getting hammered by inflation, crime, and radical indoctrination in public schools. Just as Terry McAuliffe belatedly discovered a year ago in Virginia.

Clearly, no one’s turning Texas blue, not even in the Texas AG race. Democrats hoped to steal a march on the GOP to snag that office this cycle by painting incumbent Republican Ken Paxton as an extremist and publicity hound. It didn’t work; Ken Paxton is ahead by double digits and still retains a net-positive favorability rating (46/39). One week before the election, 55% of voters in Texas don’t know enough about his Democrat challenger Rochelle Garza to decide whether they like her or not. Maybe Democrats should have spent some of that Beto money on Garza, eh?

Anyway. Just in case anyone thinks this is an outlier, here’s the RCP chart for the Texas gubernatorial race, without the new UH result added into the calculation yet. Imagine what this will look like when Univision comes up with a final poll to supersede their laughable RV report two weeks ago of a 46/42 race.