white house. kim wehle for us, helping us understand all that s happening here, thank you. let s get to the lone star state and whether a blue wave there could spread to the 49 others as well. democrats running hard thanks in large part to an unpopular president. telling nbc news they are enthusiastic but that also they ve heard this tune before. the blue wave is catching hold in texas. all my friends are generally leaning blue. i can tell you the line for democrat was longer for the line for republican. you think cans can keep up that kind of energy until november? i don t know. i hope so. it seems like they gain traction and then kind of lose it. to nbc news reports now from texas districts democrats hope to capture. in houston, garrett, let me start with you. i saw you talking to a few voters there. enthusiasm seems to be big, but there is this sense of caution as well. what else are voters telling you
not a great approval rating. that s not a great approval rating. ted crauz, look, only 40% approval rating this year. in a neutral year, you wouldn t say this state s ready to flip blue, but in a midterm, if the national environment is moving strongly against trump, all these other factors we talked about maybe start to come into it. i don t think this is the top target by any means for democrats this year. but if we look up, the last couple of weeks, last couple of days in this campaign, and we see a big wave coming, we may be talking about texas. when polls close tonight in texas what are you looking for specifically? couple things. number one, a number of house races in the state. democrats want to get 24 nationally to win back the house. there s three or four in texas in a good year. the question is, are they going to get the candidates they want? there s one house district in particular outside houston. democrats nationally are scaredfed one particular
there? yes, craig, i grew up in this district. folks down here have heard this song before. the idea of turning texas blue has been something that democrats have wanted to do since they last won a statewide office in the early 1990s. it has not happened, but the climate seems right, a lot of these voters are telling me, between the unpopular president trump and the opportunity of having some candidates involved. that s really the big change here. democrats have fielded candidates in every single one of texas s congressional districts and in some places like the texas second district where i m standing now, they have multiple candidates. i want to show you behind me the sort of line of folks behind the signs greeting voters as they come in. contains, as i can count right now, two democratic congressional candidates and one candidate for governor. we re in essentially downtown houston. democrats are fighting this
fund-raising networks. kevin, let me put up trump s current polling in texas. 39% approval. 54% disapproval. how far will those numbers get democrats there in texas? well, i m not sure that those numbers reflect any movement to the left in texas. so much as you have to remember in texas, the republican base is very, very conservative. you remember this is cruz country. ted cruz was the last guy standing, running against donald trump in the republican primaries. and a lot of these people had to be brought in reluctantly. they ve come around. but i haven t seen the cross tabs on those numbers. but i wouldn t be surprised if some of that dissatisfaction with trump is that some people on the far right are still need to be convinced. they aren t happy with some of the things they saw in his first year. obamacare repeal not getting through. tax reform, yes, that helped,
expected to be sworn in as her replacement. back to texas. voters heading to the polls as we speak. the first primaries of the 2018 midterm elections. is senator ted cruz in danger of being pushed out by a blue wave? msnbc steve kornacki doing what he does. closely tracking this particular race. he s in his uniform. that s how i know it s time to get serious. this texas wave, is it a wave or is it a ripple? there have been signs in the last year, all these special elections that maybe there s a democratic wave forming in 2018 and if there is a democratic wave and if it s a very strong wave, then we would talk about the idea of texas turning blue and ted cruz being in trouble. to get to that point, let s first put it into perspective here. we say the last time texas went blue, this is how republican the state is. think of it this way. you got to go back to 1976 to find a democrat who carried texas. jimmy carter, southerner in the