On Friday Texas Lyceum released its annual statewide poll, a major survey on the top issues facing Texans and their opinion on Texas leaders.
The biggest attention-grabbing news from the poll is just how close things are at the top of the ticket in the 2022 gubernatorial race.
Gov. Greg Abbott leads Democratic gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke by only two percentage points, 42 to 40, according to the poll.
(The poll of registered voters also shows 14 percent haven’t thought about it or are voting for someone else.)
It’s the tightest polling released on the race yet. On average, polling on the race since January shows Abbott leading O’Rourke by 8 percentage points according to RealClearPolitics.
Toplines are here, the Lyceum polling page is here, and crosstabs are here. They have President Biden’s approval at 43-54, which is actually pretty good in comparison to other recent results – this could be any number of things including random chance and a Dem-leaning sample, or it could be reflective of things like the response to Russia/Ukraine and the receding (for now at least) of COVID – which is better than Trump’s outgoing approval in 2021 of 41-56. They also have Greg Abbott’s approval at 47-47, way down from the 59-38 they had him at in 2021. Like I said, this could be any number of things – all the other poll data we have is from February or so, which is a long way back at this point – but for sure the closeness of the race, and the low 42% number Abbott gets in the head to head matchup with Beto is likely correlated with these other figures. As always, the best thing to do is wait and see if other polls are similar or if this one stands out.
Pingback: Hispanic Policy Foundation: Abbott 50, Beto 42 – Off the Kuff