Pollsters at the University of Texas at Tyler predicted that U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett would win the Democratic nomination for Senate with 55% of the vote, but lost. A survey by Emerson College predicted that Attorney Gen. Ken Paxton would take over Sen. John Cornyn in the GOP Senate showdown, but voters left him in second place. Another poll by YouGov predicted that Cornyn would receive barely a third of the Republican vote, which he beat by 10 points. These failures highlighted the perils of polling in which thin samples, shaky turnout guesses and voters who often refuse to answer surveys can create numbers that appear precise but misread the electorate. While polling in general elections can be more reliable due to several reasons, they often run into the same shortcomings.