M.J. Hegar will look to raise her profile tonight as she and incumbent U.S. Senator John Cornyn face off in a televised debate at 7 PM Central Standard Time. In many ways, Hegar is doing relatively well according to the most recent University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll in that she’s only trailing Cornyn among likely voters by 8 points.

While this might sound like an unjustified glass half-empty assessment of Cornyn’s candidacy, despite the fact that she’s regularly trailed by a roughly similar margin in other recent polling, her 8-point deficit in October polling is roughly similar to Beto O’Rourke’s polling position in the October 2018 UT/TT poll, in which he trailed Cruz by 6, eventually tightening the race to 2.5 points on election day. This similarity in results occurs despite the fact that O’Rourke, by October of 2018, was benefiting by the near universal good feeling of Democratic voters. In that poll, 93% of likely Democratic voters held a favorable view of O’Rourke, with 76% holding a “very favorable” view. Only 2% expressed an unfavorable opinion, and only 5% were unable to express one at all. By contrast, nearly a quarter of likely Democratic voters currently hold no opinion of Hegar (23%). 

While those that do have a view of Hegar overwhelmingly hold favorable opinions (74%), this gap in identification is clearly hurting Hegar. Whereas O’Rourke had the support fo 94% of Democrats at this stage of the campaign two years ago, Hegar has 88%; where O’Rourke had the affirmative support of 83% of African Americans, Hegar is sitting at 71% with 12% of black, likely voters still undecided; and where O’Rourke had the support of 64% of urban voters and 71% of voters under 30, respectively, Hegar’s support currently tops out at 54% among urban voters, and at 52% among voters under 30. In short, it’s somewhat surprising that she’s polling as closely as she is given the challenges she continues to face in making herself more of an entity to Democratic leaning groups in a large state in an extremely noisy political environment.

To be sure, she also benefits from some deficits on Cornyn’s part relative to his junior colleague in the Senate, Ted Cruz.  But his deficiencies compared to Cruz’s standing in October of 2018 are smaller than Hegar’s — which we should expect given his long tenure in public office. Cornyn trail’s Cruz’s support at the same time in the 2018 cycle among Republicans by 5-points, college educated voters by 5-points, and rural voters by 4-points. Ultimately, both candidates have room to grow, but Hegar probably more — though she needs it more.

Unless Hegar gains some vertical lift soon, it looks like she may run out of runway in her challenge to Cornyn. The debate is going to be one of her few remaining chances to create a moment that introduces her to the voters just tuning into the election as voting begins. For Cornyn, the default best outcome is simple: No news is good news.