The confident chatter about Texas turning bright blue sounds rather different once someone leaves the media bubble and speaks with voters in the state. MS NOW anchor Katy Tur acknowledged as much after spending time in Texas and came away more skeptical of polling ahead of the midterm elections.

Democrats, media outlets, and polling firms have helped create the impression that Texas could be on the verge of a dramatic political change. The view described by Tur after her visit, however, raised questions about whether those surveys are capturing the convictions of actual Texas voters.

Tur said on air that her experience in Texas made her question what current midterm polling is showing. She also wondered whether respondents are giving pollsters honest answers or simply offering the answers they believe those pollsters want to receive.

The discussion occurred Thursday when Tur spoke with Puck News cofounder Peter Hamby. Their conversation focused on the latest polling before the midterms and whether Democrats could be overestimating the strength of their apparent lead.

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Tur opened the exchange by asking whether polling firms were trying to protect themselves from another embarrassing miss. Her question centered on whether pollsters were developing explanations for how their results might ultimately prove incorrect.

“All right, Peter’s back with us. Let’s talk about polling.” Tur said.

She then pressed Hamby about the especially bleak picture those surveys currently paint for Republicans. “Is this just a product of pollsters really not wanting to be wrong and trying to invent ways to say, ‘We could be wrong, maybe it’s this,’ because the polling does look so outrageously bad for Republicans right now?”

Tur’s own time in Texas had clearly complicated the tidy polling narrative. She said the attitude she encountered among voters made her less certain that the published numbers were accurately measuring how Texans would behave when it was time to cast ballots.

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“Yeah, and there’s also just a feeling. This is what I was getting when I was in Texas, and I’m a little more skeptical of the polling in Texas, having been there, because I did just get a lot of ‘I’m going to vote for the team,’ which was the message from Angie Nixon, which means you have a terrible candidate.”

That response pointed to partisan loyalty as a major factor in the state. According to Tur, the Republican instinct remains deeply established in Texas, making it difficult to square what she heard from people there with polling that looks exceptionally bad for Republicans.

“But the polling, or the Republican impulse, is so deeply ingrained in Texas, and it feels like it’s hard to break, which makes me wonder about what you found, or what you’re reporting about, which is: are pollsters getting honest answers, or are they just getting the answers that people think they want to hear?” Tur said.

MS NOW’s Katy Tur Says She’s “More Skeptical” of Texas Midterm Polling After Her Trip to Texas https://t.co/wLaIhfUteK

— OSZ (@OpenSourceZone) October 22, 2026

Her comments did not amount to a firm prediction about the midterms. They did, however, reveal clear doubts about whether the polling in Texas reflects the strength of Republican voting habits she observed while visiting the state.

Tur’s skepticism is particularly notable because she first framed the available polling as looking “outrageously bad” for Republicans. Rather than simply accepting those results, she used her experience in Texas to question whether the surveys might be missing voters who intend to stick with their political team.

Two polling companies during this election cycle have been revealed to be completely fake.

JUST IN: A polling firm called Wedgewood Polls just admitted it FAKED its polling data in a deliberate experiment to see if the media would swallow it whole and report the numbers as fact.

"Major news outlets are now ADMITTING that all those poll numbers WERE FAKE! It’s not going to play well." Major outlets, including the New York Times, cited the bogus figures in their polling averages right as the midterms close in, while Wedgewood now claims it only wanted to spark a conversation about data integrity and media literacy. Michigan Democrat Mallory McMorrow, who dropped out of the Senate race, says the fake polls may have cost her supporters and posted that trust is already at an all-time low, and the media needs to stop riding the pollercoaster. President Trump has been warning for years that these polls do not give an accurate snapshot of the American people’s feelings, and tonight he is in South Carolina while the experts scramble. Turns out the experts were wrong again, and people should stop treating these numbers as gospel. Let Trump cook and vote on reality, not manufactured narratives. — The Patriot Oasis™ (@ThePatriotOasis) October 21, 2026

NEWS: The website and social media accounts for pollster SoCal Strategies have been taken offline after FiftyPlusOne reached out to the firm Tuesday to verify data quality and potential ties to Wedgewood Polls, which admitted to fabricating data this week. https://t.co/Chns12Zm1P

— FiftyPlusOne.news (@50plus1news) October 22, 2026

For all the breathless talk about a blue Texas, Tur’s report from the ground offered a less convenient picture. Republican loyalty, she said, remains deeply ingrained, while uncertainty persists over whether pollsters are receiving candid responses from the people they contact.

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