Rep. Gina Hinojosa
Today, a new poll from Overton Insights — commissioned by conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation — found that Republican Governor Greg Abbott leads Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa by one point.
The Wednesday morning margin is not an outlier based on this summer’s polling. According to the website 270 to Win, three of the last nine nonpartisan public polls have Hinojosa within a point.
While Hinojosa has never led a poll, she’s also never trailed a poll by more than eight points. Abbott has won all three of his previous elections by double digits.
Overton Insights Polling Director Mark Cunningham says the declining support for Abbott implied by the polls may be due to issues with the Republican brand. President Trump won Texas by 13.9 points in the 2024 presidential election but now holds a net-negative approval rating in the state of Texas. Cunningham sees this as evidence that Trump’s favorability has had consequences for Republican candidates statewide, including Abbott and Senate candidate Ken Paxton.
“It’s not so much about Abbott on his own, it’s about the Republican brand in Texas,” Cunningham said, “This is more of a story, I think, about the Republican brand and Donald Trump being an issue rather than Greg Abbott running a bad campaign.”
[…]
“Four years ago, summer polls had Beto O’Rourke neck and neck with Governor Abbott, and the Governor beat him by double digits,” Abbott campaign Press Secretary Eduardo Leal told KXAN.
“I actually went back and looked four years ago and there’s an Echelon poll about the same time in the election cycle that we’re at right now and it was a two point race at that point in time. One to two points now doesn’t necessarily mean one to two points on election night,” political strategist Derek Ryan said. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that Abbott needs to worry. It’s just a reminder that every campaign needs to be a hard fought campaign, regardless of what the polling numbers say.”
Here’s the poll data, which also has Talarico up 44-43 on Paxton. It’s a weird poll for a couple of reasons – nobody goes to tenths of a percent in polls because they’re just not that accurate, the poll also pushed leaners and managed to get answers from everyone, and strangest of all, there were more “don’t know/no answer” responses in the Senate race. It’s also the first result I’ve seen in which Hinojosa had a higher percentage of the vote than Talarico did, though he was in a dead tie after the leaners were forced to pick a candidate, while she trailed 51-49 after that. None of this is disqualifying, just strange.
As for the claims about the 2022 polls, at least Derek Ryan cited an actual poll. I largely didn’t follow the polls too closely in 2022, but I do have two results from September: the UT/Texas Politics Project poll had Abbott up 45-40 over Beto, while the UH-TSU Texas Trends poll had Abbott up 49-42. The June UT/TPP poll had Abbott up 45-39. Closer than the final 11-point margin, but any prognosticator would have pegged that race as “likely Republican”.
For what it’s worth, that 270 To Win poll aggregator has Abbott leading Hinojosa 47.2 to 43.6, while the corresponding Senate poll collector has Talarico up 45.4 to 42.8, which sounds about right to me. The fact that this poll was sponsored by a wingnut lobbying firm makes it amusing, but I wouldn’t put any more stock in it than that. Link to the poll data via The Downballot.