“I think he’s charismatic,” the senator said. “But the interesting thing to me is that when you look at Arizona and Texas, Trump won the two states by the same amount. Both states have gone about 30 years without electing a Democrat to the Senate. In Arizona, [Democratic candidate Kyrsten] Sinema ran as a moderate. In Texas, Beto ran as a progressive. She won, he lost.

“Barack Obama did better in rural Texas than Beto did,” the lawmaker added. “He’s a shiny new object.”

O’Rourke won a scant 26.6 percent of the vote in the state’s 172 rural counties while his opponent won 73 percent of the vote in those counties — three points better than GOP nominee Mitt Romney did against Obama in 2012.

But O’Rourke outperformed Obama statewide by seven points by turning out more votes in urban areas.