UT/Trib: Abbott 46, Beto 37

Data point #2, arriving on schedule.

Gov. Greg Abbott has a comfortable lead over potential Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke, according to a new poll from the University of Texas at Austin and The Texas Tribune.

The survey of registered voters found Abbott with a 9-percentage-point advantage over O’Rourke, 46% to 37%. Seven percent of respondents picked someone else in the hypothetical matchup, and 10% said they have not thought about it enough to have an opinion.

O’Rourke is increasingly expected to challenge the Republican governor for a third term next year, though he has not made an announcement yet.

Both men have vulnerabilities, according to the survey. Abbott’s approval rating has slightly improved since the last poll in August, but it remains underwater, with 43% of voters approving of the job he is doing and 48% disapproving.

O’Rourke, meanwhile, has a well-defined — and negative — image with voters. Only 35% of respondents said they have a favorable opinion of him, while 50% registered an unfavorable opinion. Only 7% of voters said they did not know him or had no opinion of him.

While O’Rourke is widely liked by Democrats and widely disliked by Republicans, his low favorability with independents is hurting his overall showing: Only 22% of them have a positive view of him, while 48% have a negative view.

Abbott’s numbers with independents are nothing to brag about, either. Twenty-seven percent of them approve of his job performance, while 57% disapprove.

O’Rourke’s initial 9-point deficit “is as good a starting point as Democrats are gonna get,” said James Henson, co-director of the poll and head of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

[…]

One other potential gubernatorial candidate who has captured the attention of the political world is actor Matthew McConaughey. He has teased a possible run for months, without saying which primary he would run in — or whether he would run as an independent.

The poll discovered that the movie star is not universally beloved by Texans. Close to a third of voters — 29% — have neither a favorable nor unfavorable opinion of McConaughey. Thirty-five percent registered a favorable opinion of him, and 24% said they had an unfavorable impression.

Any Democratic candidate will have to contend with a president from their party, Joe Biden, who is deeply unpopular in Texas. In the poll, voters gave him a net approval rating of negative 20 points, with 35% approving of his job performance and 55% disapproving. That is wider than the 11-point deficit that the survey found between the two ratings for Biden in August.

See here for the previous poll result we got, from the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation. There’s another story about various issue questions, which largely boils down to “Democrats and Republicans disagree on things, and independents sometimes go one way and sometimes go the other”. Neither seems to have a link to their data, so who knows how it all breaks down. I will note that given the existence of that other poll in which Abbott led Beto by one, down nine is not really “as good a starting point as Democrats are gonna get”, but whatever.

This poll also included questions about the primaries, which again suggest that Abbott will win without a runoff, Paxton may win without a runoff, and no one can say what might happen in the contested Dem primaries. Biden’s approval numbers are lousy – it would be very nice if they bounced back a bit – Abbott’s remain bad but are better than they were in September – he may improve just because the Lege isn’t in session, that used to be the pattern for Rick Perry as well – and no one else is above water, consistent with other results. And that’s about all there is to say about this poll.

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