Even the UT/Texas Trib poll shows a tight Presidential race in Texas.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump held a three-percentage-point lead over Democrat Hillary Clinton on the eve of early voting in Texas, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.
Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, had the support of 45 percent of likely Texas voters, compared with 42 percent for Clinton and Tim Kaine; 7 percent for Libertarian Gary Johnson and William Weld; and 2 percent for the Green Party’s Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka. The remaining 5 percent said they would vote for someone else for president and vice president.
“This is the trend that we’ve been seeing in polling for the last two weeks,” said Jim Henson, co-director of the UT/TT Poll and head of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
In spite of the closeness of the race and the margin of error, the number of polls showing similar distance between the candidates, with Trump in front, “is probably a telling us where this race really stands,” Henson said. Close, with a Trump lead, in other words.
The survey was in the field from Oct. 14 to Oct. 23; early voting in Texas began Oct. 24.
Trump was ahead with men, 46 percent to 39 percent, while the two candidates each had 45 percent of women’s support. While 93 percent of Democrats support Clinton, 83 percent of Republicans and 46 percent of independents support Trump. Only 19 percent of independents said they support Clinton. And there is a big divide on racial and ethnic lines: Trump led Clinton 57 percent to 28 percent among white voters, but Clinton led 95 percent to 4 percent among black voters and 56 percent to 33 percent among Hispanic voters.
Trump’s voters are split when asked for the reason behind their vote: While 47 percent said they want Trump to be president, 53 percent said their position would better be explained as not wanting Clinton to become president.
Clinton’s voters were more positive about their own choice, with 66 percent saying they want her to be president. Still, 34 percent of those voting for Clinton said they were with her because they don’t want Trump to be elected.
“The lack of enthusiasm amongst Republicans is remarkable,” said Joshua Blank, who supervised the poll. He said the Democrats are voting in favor of their candidate while more Republicans are voting against their opponent than are voting for Trump.
Again, a lot of this is what we have been seeing all along, with a little extra boost from the apparent enthusiasm gap. If we step into the Wayback Machine and set it for late October of 2012, we see that the final UT/Trib poll had Romney leading Obama 55-39. That was dead on as far as the gap between the two candidates was concerned, but underestimate their totals by about two points each. Make of that what you will. This poll, like the Statesman poll that also came out this week and which I will blog about tomorrow, was conducted before early voting started. If there are any further polls for the cycle, I hope they will ask people if they have already voted and if so for whom.
Wow, my mom tells me that she tried to do early voting today at 11am in Fort Bend county at two separate locations. The wait at both locations is over one hour! (I am happy to report that my early voting in Harris County took less than 2 minutes to take care of).
I am hearing good reports from Heights area neighbors about the short wait time at the new SJPST Lodge early voting location at 1435 Beall. The line moves quickly, and the check in tables are just inside the door. Average wait times of 10-15 minutes.
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