Brutal, but remember what we say about every poll result, whether good, bad, or indifferent: It’s one data point.
Gov. Greg Abbott has a commanding lead over Democrat Beto O’Rourke in a new public poll released on Wednesday.
Abbott, a Republican, leads O’Rourke 52 percent to 37 percent according to the Quinnipiac University poll of 1,224 registered voters.
A big problem for O’Rourke lies in the poll findings, in which 54 percent of respondents say the former El Paso congressman is too liberal.
The poll also shows that Abbott’s approval rating has rebounded since the summer, when Quinnipiac last surveyed the state. The new poll shows 53 percent of Texas approve of the job Abbott has done as governor, up from 49 percent in June. Conducted December 2 through December 6, the survey has a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.
The Quinnipiac release and poll data is here; most of the story is a recapitulation of what’s there, so go to the source. Of the three other polls we’ve seen so far, this one is similar for the level of support for Beto (37, 39, and 43) but much higher for Abbott (44, 45, and 46).
That Abbott’s approval ratings may have bounced back somewhat isn’t terribly surprising, as the Lege is no longer in session (Rick Perry always polled worse during sessions), but whether he’s back to being ten points in the black is something I’ll want to see in other polls before I buy it. He was at 49-41 approval in the DMN/UT-Tyler poll, 43-48 in UT/Trib, and 49-47 in the Hispanic Policy Forum poll – again, better than he had been in August and September, but not this good. Similarly, the approval for President Biden was easily the worst in this poll – 32-64 for Biden, versus 42-53 in DMN/UT-Tyler and 35-55 in UT/Trib (no data from the other poll).
Basically, this is about as good a result as Abbott could reasonably expect. Is it an outlier or in line with the next batch of polls to come? That remains to be seen. There’s no good spin for this poll, but there’s also no reason to panic.