Bad news, folks — Robert “Beto” O’Rourke has gotten more efficient at campaigning. The early cratering of his position against Greg Abbott in the Dallas Morning News/UT-Tyler poll suggests that Beto might not hold up long enough to suck the donor oxygen out of other Democratic races in this year’s elections. The gap in this polling series has nearly doubled over the last three months, even while Abbott isn’t getting enthusiastic support otherwise.

Is it too late to hire Annie Leibovitz? Asking for a friend …

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is running 11 percentage points ahead of Democrat Beto O’Rourke in this year’s race for Texas governor, according to a Dallas Morning News-University of Texas at Tyler poll released Sunday.

Buoyed by 2-to-1 support among whites and a growing number of voters who identify as Republican, Abbott leads O’Rourke in a hypothetical matchup, 47%-36%. He even holds a narrow lead over O’Rourke among Hispanics, 40%-39%. …

Abbott increased his lead over O’Rourke, which in November stood at just 45%-39%, with modest, “single-digit shifts” among various constituencies, said UT-Tyler political scientist Mark Owens, the poll’s director.

What changed over the past three months? One rather notable candidate withdrew, after deciding it would be much cooler if he did something else entirely. Owens says that the celebrity withdrawal actually didn’t have much to do with the polling change, however:

“It’s not the absence of McConaughey,” he said, referring to Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey, who flirted for more than a year with the idea of running for governor but ultimately decided against doing so. In a head-to-head showdown between Abbott and O’Rourke, voters of each major party still favor their party’s frontrunner by roughly 8-to-1 margins, Owens said.

Maybe, but I’d guess that McConaughey would have drawn more from Abbott than O’Rourke. Republicans who have one eye on the culture wars always want an opportunity to leverage celebrity power for their agendas, while Democrats already have a plethora of celebrity power on their side. Not to mention, of course, that celebrity is really the only thing fueling Beto’s ongoing efforts to find an election he can actually win.

The rest of the numbers aren’t great for Abbott. His job approval is 51/45, not bad but not necessarily fabulous in a state (or at least a polling sample) that gives the GOP a 41/32 advantage. Abbott does better on the border issue, though, scoring 52/38 and even getting approval from 27% of Democrats. In contrast, Joe Biden gets a 32/57 on the border from Texans, with 65% approval from Democrats. Independents give Biden a 20/59 and Abbott a 38/45. The right/wrong track is a virtual tie at 49/50 and independents score it 38/60.

So Abbott isn’t unbeatable. It’s just that no one’s beating him, not Beto nor any of the Republican primary challengers. Abbott has 59% of Republican voters supporting him in the primary, with “Not Sure” the closest challenger at 20%. The nearest actual challenger is Allen West, who gets a wan six percent in the DMN/UTT polling. Abbott looks certain to cruise to another term regardless of the social-media griping one hears about him, justified or not. (Largely not, and it seems most voters have figured that out.)

If you want to see a more exciting race, check out these numbers for the Republican primary for AG:

Paxton’s controversial and MAGA-oriented, while George P. Bush has tried to bridge the establishment-MAGA gap. With the primary in less than five weeks, Paxton still has the pole position, but George P could produce a surprise. That’s more than we can say in the gubernatorial race, at least for now.