UT-Tyler/DMN: Biden 48, Trump 43

Holy mackeral.

Former Vice President Joe Biden has built a 5-point lead over President Donald Trump in Texas, as unease over Trump’s handling of coronavirus mounts, a new Dallas Morning News-University of Texas Tyler poll has found.

If the general election were held today, Biden would carry Texas, with 46% of the vote to Trump’s 41%. 14% were undecided or named someone else.

Biden’s lead, which comes after he and Trump were tied 43%-43% in The News and UT-Tyler’s April survey, is significant, if barely: The poll, conducted June 29-July 7, has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.24 percentage points.

The story behind Biden’s slight bulge is the softening of the Republican incumbent’s support among independents and “weak partisans,” said Kenneth Bryant Jr., a UT-Tyler political scientist who helped design the poll. “While President Trump has and still enjoys near universal approval from Republicans, and overwhelming disfavor from Democrats, he has lost considerable ground among the folks in the middle, who may ultimately decide who wins Texas in November,” Bryant said.

Up to now, though, the Biden campaign has done little to demonstrate it’ll make a major effort before the Nov. 3 general election in Texas. The state hasn’t voted for a Democrat in a presidential election since Jimmy Carter carried the state in 1976.

The poll, the fourth of six tracking the 2020 election and current events by The News and the UT-Tyler Center for Public Opinion, also showed some movement, though not enough to be significant, by long-time Dallas state Sen. Royce West in Tuesday’s runoff for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.

Purple Heart winner and political neophyte MJ Hegar of Round Rock, who has a big financial edge as well as late-hour help in the form of a TV ad blitz by the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and EMILY’s List, leads West, 32% to 20%, among Democrats and independents who lean Democratic, the poll found.

Since April, when Hegar led West, 32% to 16%, he’s closed the deficit with Hegar among women and college-educated voters to single digits. For Democratic voters, the poll’s margin of error was plus or minus 3.27 percentage points.

Neither Democrat gained much traction from the April survey as their party’s November standard bearer against three-term GOP incumbent Sen. John Cornyn: If the general election were held today, Cornyn would win a plurality of 37% against Hegar’s 26%, with 31% undecided, the latest poll found. Against West, Cornyn’s plurality would be slightly larger: 37% to West’s 25%, with 32% undecided.

The numbers in the headline of this post are different than the numbers cited in the story because the poll presented two results, one for registered voters and one for likely voters. Among registered voters (sample size 1,909), Biden leads 46-41. Among likely voters (sample size 1,677), it’s Biden 48-43 over Trump, as the headline notes. You can see both listed on the FiveThirtyEight page for Texas, though only the RV sample is given on the UT-Tyler PoliSci homepage.

As noted, in the April poll, Biden and Trump were tied at 43. (They finally have the RV sample for that poll published.) The funny thing is, if you look at the breakdown in each sample, the reason for the shift isn’t quite as pollster Kenneth Bryant puts it. In April, Biden led among Dems 84-6 and among indies 43-28, while Trump led among Republicans 87-5. In June, Biden led among Dems in the RV sample 87-4 and among indies 44-28, while Trump led among Republicans 87-9. In other words, Biden did a smidge better among Dems and Trump slipped a tiny bit among Republicans while indies were static. In the LV sample, however, Biden’s lead among indies jumped to 53-29, while the other numbers were the same. Indies were a bigger portion of the RV sample than the LV sample, so the larger shift was muted a bit by the larger partisan subgroups. My point here is that Biden’s advantage came from a bit of movement in all three subsamples.

As for the Senate race, I wouldn’t put too much stock in the numbers for now, as there are a lot of undecided voters in these samples – 33-34% of Dems in the RV sample, 24% of Republicans, and 41 or 43% of indies, with Hegar being the former numbers. (I went with the RV numbers here instead of the LV numbers because the LV numbers in the Hegar-Cornyn race are messed up.) That said, Cornyn draws more Dem support (13%) than Trump does without giving up more Republican support, so it’s not unreasonable to think Cornyn could run ahead of Trump. It’s too early to say on that score, but we’ll keep an eye on this once we have a single opponent for Cornyn. Hegar’s lead over West among Dem voters is a bit less now, but primary runoff polling is super tricky, so let’s not spend too much time on that, either.

One more number of interest, for the question “If the general election were today, would you vote for the Democratic or Republican candidate for the Texas State House?” – Democratic 52, Republican 48 in the RV sample, 52-47 in the LV sample. This is one point up for Dems and down for Republicans since April. Other polls generally don’t ask this kind of question so it’s hard to evaluate it as is, but there you have it anyway.

Finally, the approval numbers, which I’ll take from the RV sample. General approval:

Trump – 42 approve, 50 disapprove (42% disapprove strongly)
Greg Abbott – 54 approve, 31 disapprove
Dan Patrick – 37 approve, 37 disapprove

“Handling coronavirus” approval:

Trump – 38 approve, 52 disapprove (44% disapprove strongly)
Abbott – 48 approve, 40 disapprove
“Local leaders” (Mayors and County Judges) – 62 approve, 23 disapprove

Still good numbers for Greg Abbott, though softer on coronavirus. Clearly, everyone knows who’s doing the real work, though.

Believe it or not, there’s another poll out there, not quite as good for Biden but still strong. I’ll have that for tomorrow. And the eleven-poll average, using RV numbers from this poll to be consistent, is Trump 46.0, Biden 44.6, for a 1.4 point difference between the two. Pretty amazing, no?

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