Six Million Texans Already Agree. The TNM Has Reached One in Ten.

A question about in-migration turned into the sharpest piece of arithmetic Daniel Miller has laid out in a while. Take the worst poll ever run on Texas independence, the one whose methodology he says is broken, and call support 35 percent. Against roughly 18 million registered voters in Texas, that is more than 6 million people who would already vote yes. The TNM has reached about a tenth of them. That is not a persuasion problem. It is a capacity problem, and the fix is not billboards or television buys. Every supporter knows 50 to 100 people, which means 17 to 35 of them already agree. The work is connecting those people to the organized effort, not just talking at them.

He also took apart the horse race polling dropping almost daily in the Senate and governor contests. His position is that political polling has been broken since roughly 2015, that the rigor behind the stated methodology is not there, and that watching the Independent California Institute catch YouGov putting a thumb on the scale of an independence poll is why he gives none of it much weight. He expects close races, an electorate angrier than anything he has seen since the mid 1990s, and an election night that makes the current numbers look ridiculous.

On the political parties, he pointed out that the Libertarian Party of Texas put a vote on independence in its platform before the Republicans did, that the Texas Democrats have no such plank and have both a grassroots problem and an ideology problem standing in the way of one, and that the TNM would not discourage anyone inside that party who wanted to push it through. He also reminded viewers that platforms are not the only route. County commissioners courts, city councils, and civic organizations all pass resolutions.

Questions answered in this episode

• Can Texas make it alone when it is already carrying the rest of the union?
• What happens after Donald Trump is no longer president, and what plans are in place?
• We are losing the population battle. Will migration from the north and west kill us?
• Why not buy the TNM a video like the ones done for Spencer Pratt and Steve Hilton?
• Why not add a fund it section where members pledge toward the price tag of a specific project?
• After nearly 30 years, what keeps you from walking away on the hard days?
• The Texas GOP has planks on state sovereignty and a vote on independence. Do the Texas Democrats have the same kind of planks, or will they?
• What about hard hat stickers in the Texian store?
• Are we actually gaining ground, or is that just what we are telling ourselves?
• Is it true that Texas sends more to Washington than it gets back, and how much?
• What does it actually mean to declare? Is it just signing something?
• Do you actually believe the current polling in the Senate and governor races?
• Is that real coffee in the cup this late, or are we all pretending?