WASHINGTON — A new poll that has Democrat Beto O'Rourke within striking distance of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz set off a flurry of fundraising pleas Wednesday while raising the eyebrows of some skeptical Lone Star State political analysts.

In its first-ever Texas poll, Quinnipiac University deemed the Senate race “too close to call” in reporting that 47 percent of Texas voters surveyed back Cruz and 44 percent support O’Rourke, an El Paso congressman. The pollster surveyed 1,029 self-identified registered voters this month and reported a margin of error of 3.6 percent.

"Together, this grassroots campaign has continued to show what's possible when you reject [political action committees], special interests and politics as usual," O'Rourke said in a statement, while the Cruz campaign issued warnings over the risk of a blue wave.

But some Texas pollsters and political scientists say they have questions about the survey. While Quinnipiac is considered a quality outlet and has an A-minus rating from FiveThirtyEight, they say the firm's data appears out of step with Texas' political realities.

“Nobody who looks at the record of polling and election results can plausibly look at this and say this tells us what the race will look like on Election Day,” said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “Democrats almost always tend to poll better in modern Texas in the spring than they actually earn votes” in November.

He dismissed describing the race as “too close to call” at this point and said that, given the margin of error, one could also interpret the data to mean Cruz is leading by as much as six points.

Rice University political scientist Mark Jones questioned whether the survey sample — which is weighted against recent census data — over-represents Hispanics and millennials, who tend to lean left. He, like many people interviewed by The Dallas Morning News on Wednesday, wanted to see a demographic breakdown of the survey population. The News has requested that information.

“We’re getting a skewed result because groups that are over-represented are the groups that tend to favor O’Rourke over Cruz,” Jones said. The people who will actually turn out in November will be “whiter, older and wealthier” and more likely to support the incumbent, he added.

The poll comes days after federal campaign finance reports confirmed that O’Rourke, a three-term congressman who has sworn off political action committees, pollsters and consultants, once again outraised Cruz in a federal filing period.

O’Rourke raised $6.8 million in the first three months of this year, more than twice Cruz’s $3.2 million haul for the same period.

GOP advantage

Many independent analysts say the former presidential candidate is the heavy favorite in Texas, which hasn’t elected a Democrat statewide since 1994. Republicans once again outvoted Democrats in the March primary, and Cruz has near-universal name ID.

And though O’Rourke is drawing sizable crowds and generating national headlines, he’s still working to gain name recognition statewide. He earned just 62 percent of the vote in a three-way Democratic primary last month, while a little-known challenger earned nearly a quarter share of the vote.

When it comes to favorability, the survey found that 53 percent of Texas voters said they don’t know enough about O’Rourke to form an opinion.

But Texas voters did have an opinion of President Donald Trump, with 52 percent of those surveyed disapproving of his job performance and 43 percent approving.

Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll, said the survey confirms that Democratic enthusiasm is “generally much higher, not just in Texas, but around the country” and that O’Rourke’s positive showing “reflects an environment in which the president is unpopular."

Brown said O’Rourke’s success may depend on independent voters, who gave O’Rourke a 51 to 37 percent lead over Cruz.

Experts interviewed for this story questioned the political leanings of the 36 percent of respondents who identified as independents.

In Texas, independent voters typically side with conservatives at the polls, several analysts said, but more than 60 percent of independents in this poll disapproved of Trump's job performance, an indication they could be left-leaning. That’s why many pollsters say they press respondents who identify as independents on whether they typically vote with a political party.

"There are probably a disproportionate amount of Democrats lurking among the independents," Henson said.

Sea change?

In another surprising result, Quinnipiac found Gov. Greg Abbott leading Democrats Lupe Valdez and Andrew White by just single digits: 49-40 over Valdez, and 48-41 over White.

That would be a “sea change” in Texas politics, said Brandon Rottinghaus, a University of Houston political scientist. Noting that Abbott has a war chest of more than $40 million that he’s prepared to spend on getting Republicans to the polls, “it’s a little hard to believe at this moment, considering what we’ve seen in the field," Rottinghaus said.

The Cruz campaign declined comment, but Chris Wilson, who conducts polling for both Cruz and Abbott, went on the attack.

The poll “massively” overstates political independents by as many as 10 points, the CEO of WPA Intelligence said, and under-samples Republican voters by as many as eight points.

His firm's polling has both Cruz and Abbott winning slightly more than half of independent voters, he told The News, while the Quinnipiac poll has both O'Rourke and Valdez earning the majority of independents' support. (Valdez is within the margin of error.)

Further, this poll has Valdez & O’Rourke winning Independents (@WPAIntel polling has Cruz & Abbott winning big with them). Looks like a fanciful full-turnout poll in CA (rather than TX) to me. 2/2 — Chris Wilson (@WilsonWPA) April 18, 2018

“Looks like a fanciful full-turnout poll in [California] rather than Texas,” he said on Twitter.

Despite Wilson's dismissal of the poll, the Cruz campaign sought to raise money off the news. In a fundraising blast, Cruz held up the report as a warning that Texas could turn blue, calling O'Rourke a "far-left liberal" who doesn't represent Texas values.

"The media is working overtime to help him get elected, and it's starting to work," the email stated.