Abbott’s approval slide has a few causes. First, his handling of the pandemic has received a lot of criticism from all corners in the state, and a late September poll from Quinnipiac University found more Texas voters (50 percent) disapproved of his handling of the pandemic than approved (46 percent). Second, Texas voters seem to still be disappointed by his administration’s response to the winter storms this past February and the failure of the state’s power grid. Earlier this month, a survey conducted by YouGov on behalf of the University of Texas-Austin and The Texas Tribune found that 60 percent of Texas voters disapproved of how state leaders and the legislature had dealt with the reliability of the grid, which was the highest disapproval mark for any issue asked about in the poll. Finally, Abbott’s numbers may have also suffered in the aftermath of the Texas GOP’s push to essentially ban abortions and to allow the concealed carry of handguns without a permit — both being pieces of legislation that Abbott signed into law. A Dallas Morning News/University of Texas-Tyler poll from early September found that 50 percent of registered voters opposed permit-less concealed carry, while the Quinnipiac survey found 53 percent disapproved of Abbott’s handling of abortion.

It’s no surprise, then, that the launch video for O’Rourke’s campaign touched on the failure of the electrical grid, as well as Texas’s new abortion and concealed-carry laws. And these issues might be a pathway for O’Rourke to win over independent voters, who are especially displeased with Abbott’s handling of these issues.