If the Senate race in Texas is "about the base", who is courting the independents? Is there any left? | 2018 Elections

A meager 8 percent

While about a third of Texans tell pollsters that they are independent, about 12 percentage points or 13 points of the electorate are actually meager, while a democrat of the same size enjoys a democratic advantage, said Jillson.

"That leaves you about 10 percent in the middle who are independents," he said. "It takes a lot of resources to attract the attention of true independents."

Some polls have shown that Mr. O. Rourke was leading Cruz among the independents, without overthrowing him.

If this is in the last week of the race, it could be an advantage of only one or two percentage points over the El Paso congressman – in a tight, potentially important race.

But O'Rourke's current lead among non-aligned voters is not big enough to make it a race – not without a massive participation of fervent Democrats that revolutionizes the paradigm.

Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, who participates in conducting Internet surveys for UT and Texas Tribune, said that true independents account for only about 8% of potential voters.

O'Rourke began the race "with a deficit", the strong Republican inclination of the state for two decades in elections throughout the country, he said.

While the democratic groups and O'Rourke have run voter registration campaigns and are now feverishly trying to get friendly voters to vote, "it's harder to get the new Democrats into the system, because they're generally younger. They tend to be latino. And both groups have a low turnout, "Henson said.

O'Rourke said he believes the polls did not capture the new voters he met during the election campaign, especially newly naturalized citizens and young voters for the first time. He acknowledged that his information was "anecdotal".

For nearly a generation in Texas, Republicans have mastered a strategy credited to Karl Rove, former political advisor to former President George W. Bush, both governor and president, SMU's Jillson said.

"Independents vote less regularly than supporters, know less about politics and are hard to identify, communicate and communicate," he said. "What Karl Rove did was tell the hell to those guys. … We will simply focus on people who are already listening to us and who are already motivated to support us. "