The good poll results keep on coming.
Rep. James Talarico
In the race for US Senate, State Rep. James Talarico, the Democrat, now leads Attorney General Ken Paxton, the Republican, by four points, 47-43%, from a tied race, 46-46%, in June, according to a new Texas Pulse Poll of likely Texas voters released today. Republican Governor Greg Abbott had a six-point lead over his Democratic challenger, State Rep. Gina Hinojosa in June, and the two are now running neck-and-neck with Abbott one point ahead, 46-45%.
In the race for Attorney General between two State Senators, Republican Mayes Middleton leads Democrat Nathan Johnson by two points, 46-44%, narrowed from 45-40% in June. The race for Lt. Governor has the Democrat, State Rep. Vikki Goodwin, leading the Republican incumbent, Dan Patrick, 48-46%; Patrick had been up 49-44% in June. Voters favor Republicans for Congress over Democrats by two points, 47-45%, down from six points, 49-43%, in June.
“In one of the most watched US Senate races in the nation, Talarico has opened a small four-point lead over Paxton, after the two were tied in June,” ReconMR Senior Research Analyst Lindsey Hendren said. “The movement over the last two months is largely seen by looking at independent voters who now favor Talarico by 23 points, 53-30%, up from 14 points, 50-36%, in June.”
“Talarico increased his lead with women to 13 points from nine points in June, and he also narrowed Paxton’s lead among men from 10 points in June to now six points,” Hendren said. “Talarico leads by wide margins in the Austin and Dallas/Ft. Worth regions, while Paxton has a large lead in the rural parts of the state, and the Houston and San Antonio regions are currently very closely divided.”
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Abbott has a negative favorability rating of 46-50% (down slightly from 46-48% in June), and he has a negative 47-51% job approval rating, down from 50-48% in June. Hinojosa’s favorability rating is now 43-25%, up from 31-18% in June. In June, more than half of voters didn’t have an opinion about Hinojosa; now it’s less than one-third of voters.
“The Governor’s race looks much more competitive than it did in June, suggesting that Democrats could have opportunities in several statewide contests,” Texas A&M Professor of Political Science Kirby Goidel said. “At the same time, these races are still taking shape. Governor Abbott is well-known to nearly all Texan likely voters who give him near breakeven favorability and job performance ratings. On the other hand, many voters are still forming opinions about Gina Hinojosa. Nearly one in three likely voters – 31 percent – said they did not know enough about Hinojosa to form an opinion.”
“This dynamic is even clearer in the Lieutenant Governor’s race. Despite the fact that a majority of likely voters – 56% – still do not know enough about Vikki Goodwin to form an opinion, she appears to hold a narrow lead over Dan Patrick. That suggests many voters are making decisions based primarily on the broader political context and party cues rather than the candidates themselves.”
“As the campaign unfolds and voters become more familiar with the Democratic candidates, and weigh the candidates’ stances on the issues, the dynamics of the race could shift considerably,” Goidel said.
See here for the previous Texas Pulse poll results. This is now the sixth poll in the last ten days to show Talarico leading (there’s a second poll noted on that post about the TSU poll), including the Fox News poll that had him over 50 percent. Either everyone is getting the fundamentals of this race wrong, or there’s an obvious conclusion to draw about the state of the race right now.
Seeing Talarico in the lead is not a surprise at this point. By far, the most shocking and amazing thing in this poll is seeing Vikki Goodwin leading Dan Patrick for Lt. Governor. Not because of anything about Goodwin as a candidate – she’s good! listen to the interview! – but because I have, to the best of my knowledge, never seen a poll that showed a Democrat running for something other than US Senate or US President in the lead for a statewide office. And this is now the second poll to show Gina Hinojosa within one point of Greg Abbott. Again, either there’s a lot of bad polling out there, or you can really see why Republicans are in a bit of panic these days.
The crosstabs are here. Talarico trails among white voters 51-40 – getting to 40 percent with white voters is likely enough to win – leads among Black voters 87-2 – Vikki Goodwin is up 91-7 among Black voters, for the next best performance there – and leads among Hispanic voters 54-40. All that good news and there’s still room for growth. I will note, the evidence for Dems doing this well beyond the Senate race is still a bit thin, but getting fuller. Abbott was up by seven points in the Siena/NYT poll, by six points in the TSU and Wedgewood polls, by three points in the TPOR poll, and by one point in the Fox News poll. If we see a poll with Gina Hinojosa leading, that will be an earth-shaker. Talarico continues to run somewhere between about five and eight points better than other Dems, and there is consistent evidence of a small but significant amount of crossover support for him. There are many paths for the rest of the Dems to close that gap. Oh, and Trump’s approval rating in Texas in this poll was 45-54. It’s hard not to be at least a little optimistic at this point.
Finally, the Texas Tribune is doing a poll tracker for the Senate race, where you can find results I may have missed and learn more about the pollsters. I will note that they say “Notably, Talarico has enjoyed larger leads in recent polling than Democrat Beto O’Rourke ever did in 2018 when he nearly beat U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz”, which is kind of misleading in that Beto almost never led in any poll, and going by the results I tracked in 2018, from May 31 to September 19, he trailed by an average of just over five points. The Trib tracker has Talarico up by almost three overall. That is an enormous difference. Again, the polls could be wrong – they were, on average, off by about three points in Ted Cruz’ favor in 2018. Polling is hard. We’ll see what they look like this year.