Cruz drew a crowd of 175 to the First Baptist Church in Pearland, a Houston suburb, leaving the sanctuary mostly empty. "We're one day away from Election Day," he told his supporters, continuing a daily countdown he employs in stump speeches to rev up voters. 

Hours later at a barbecue restaurant in Cypress, a crowd twice that size roared in agreement when he warned that if O'Rourke gets his way, the Supreme Court would be filled by justices "who'll take away your religious liberty, who'll take away your Second Amendment."

At the House of Blues in downtown Houston, about 400 cheering Democrats gathered at 8 a.m. to see O'Rourke's final event in Cruz's hometown, two blocks from the Toyota Center, where Trump had rallied 16,000 Republicans for the embattled incumbent last month.