Dallas U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett has a double-digit lead over Austin state Rep. James Talarico in the final days of Texas’ Senate Democratic primary, according to a new poll released Wednesday.
In the survey, fielded from Feb. 2 to Feb. 16, Crockett garnered the support of 56% of voters, while Talarico got 44%. For the Democratic primary, pollsters from the University of Texas’ Texas Politics Project surveyed a sample of 369 voters, producing a margin of error of +/-5.1 points.
As in other polls, Crockett had a massive advantage with Black voters, drawing 87% support. The Dallas congresswoman also led among seniors and voters without a college degree.
Talarico had a narrow advantage with white voters — winning them by only 6 percentage points — while Hispanic voters were a virtual tossup, with Crockett leading by 4 points.
The UT poll comes on the heels of a survey by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, fielded in late January, that found Crockett leading Talarico by 8 percentage points.
On the Republican side, the UT poll found Attorney General Ken Paxton and Sen. John Cornyn running neck-and-neck, with neither candidate close to the 50%-plus-one-vote threshold needed to avoid a runoff. Paxton led with 36% to Cornyn’s 34%. Houston U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt was in third, garnering 26% of the vote.
The Senate Republican primary poll surveyed 350 registered voters and has a margin of error of +/-5.2 points.
The full poll data is here and I’ll get to that in a minute. You rarely see the responses to a poll add up to 100 like that – surely there are some people out there who are undecided – so that was a little weird, but whatever. This is now the third poll out of four showing Jasmine Crockett with at least a small lead, after the UH/Hobby poll and the TPOR poll. The Emerson poll that had Talarico up by nine is the oldest of the bunch. Make of all that what you will.
In other races, Gina Hinojosa (76%), Vikki Goodwin (63%), and Joe Jaworski (52%) all had majority support, though with fewer respondents and higher margins of error. The one general election tidbit, mentioned in the Trib story (I didn’t see it in the poll report) said that the “generic ballot found Republicans and Democrats tied in the race for U.S. Congress at 42% apiece”, with Hispanic voters preferring Dems by a 50-31 margin.
There were also approval questions in the poll, with Donald Trump ticking up a notch to 45 approve and 49 disapprove; he was at 44-50 in December and at an all-time low of 42-51 in October. Greg Abbott clawed his way back into positive territory at 46-44, up from 43-46 in December and his all-time low of 39-50 in October. Forty-four percent is still a high disapproval level for him, but I for one would like to see him remain in the red. Which is where Dan Patrick (34-40), Ken Paxton (34-43), John Cornyn (30-43), and Ted Cruz (39-48) are. We’ll keep hope alive that Abbott will move back in their direction.
I heard on NPR this morning that the poll was done before Talarico’s bump from his Colbert appearance?