The Lieutenant Governor's Race Nobody Can Call: Patrick and Goodwin Read the Same Early Vote Two Ways, and Their Polls Disagree Too

HOUSTON - Underneath the governor's and Senate races sits the office that runs the Texas Senate, and it is genuinely unsettled. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told CBS News Texas that Republicans still have a deep bench of reliable voters who have not cast ballots: "The Democrats have the early lead, but we have about 600,000 of the high-propensity voters who haven't shown up yet," Patrick said, describing them as people who have voted in two, three or four recent primaries. "One of my messages to the Republicans is you need to get off the bench and get out and vote. We'll probably catch up and pass the Democrats sometime early next week, midweek. We should have a pretty healthy lead when we go into the end of early voting." He added that the big Democratic first day was, in his reading, useful: "I think actually Monday, the Democrats having a big turnout was actually good for us. It woke up some Republicans."

His Democratic opponent, state Rep. Vikki Goodwin of Austin, reads the same lines at the same vote centers and sees a different electorate: many of the people standing in them, she told CBS News Texas, are new voters without a primary history at all. "We have seen a huge increase in the turnout numbers, and it's really inspiring," Goodwin said. "What we're seeing is a lot of new voters are showing up." The polling cannot settle it: a University of Houston poll taken October 10 to 14 showed Patrick ahead of Goodwin 47 percent to 42 percent, while a University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll taken September 25 to October 5 had Goodwin ahead 49 percent to 46 percent, CBS News Texas reported.

The argument between the campaigns is being fought partly through a Vermont senator. Patrick has hammered Goodwin over her endorsement from Sen. Bernie Sanders, calling her too radical for Texas: "He's already on the record saying he wants to take away private insurance from people, health insurance. He's already on the record he wants to destroy the oil and gas industry," Patrick said of Sanders. Goodwin said Sanders backed her because of her health care plan, and said of her opponent, "Dan Patrick won't stand up to Trump."

Gov. Greg Abbott made Patrick's version of the turnout argument in person on Sunday in Hutto, where he rallied supporters and joined a neighborhood block walk: "What we're seeing in the early vote is very predictable. There's going to be a big surge, early on, the first couple of days on the Democrat side, and then the Republicans pick up the pace," Abbott told KVUE. "Second week is going to be a very Republican week." Whether the second week belonged to the Republicans is now measurable - early voting ends Friday, and the lieutenant governor's race, like the two above it, goes to Tuesday with no pollster in the state willing to call it settled.