Pretty good. Could be better, but more or less in line with 2020 and current expectations.
With the start of early voting just days away, a new poll shows Harris County Democrats leading their Republican opponents in countywide races.
In the race for district attorney, Democrat Sean Teare holds a 14 percentage point lead over Republican Dan Simons among Harris County’s likely voters, with Teare leading Simons 52% to 38%, according to the latest poll released Friday from the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston. Another 10% of likely voters were undecided.
The online survey was conducted between Sept. 26 and Oct. 10, in English and Spanish, with 491 respondents who are registered to vote in Harris County. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.42%.
Incumbent Democratic Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez is favored by 53% of likely voters to Republican challenger Mike Knox’s 37%, with 10% undecided.
This year, voters will choose a new tax assessor-collector after Ann Harris Bennett, the incumbent Democrat, announced last year that she would not seek re-election. Democratic newcomer Annette Ramirez, a tax attorney for Aldine ISD, is running against Republican Steve Radack, who served as Precinct 3 Commissioner for over 30 years until he retired in 2020.
Ramirez leads with 50% of likely voters, while Radack trails with 38%. Another 12% were undecided.
Incumbent Democratic Harris County Attorney Christian Menefee is polling at 48%, ahead of challenger Republican Jacqueline Lucci Smith with 37%. In the race, 15% of likely voters are still undecided.
See here for the first set of poll results from the UH-Hobby Center, with statewide numbers. Their landing page is here, the media release for this poll is here, and the full polling memo is here. I’m going to quote from that to give their full slate of numbers.
In the 2024 Harris County Sheriff election, Democrat Ed Gonzalez (53%) leads Republican Mike Knox (37%) by a 16 percentage point margin, with 10% undecided.
In the 2024 Harris County District Attorney election, Democrat Sean Teare (52%) leads Republican Dan Simons (38%) by a 14 percentage point margin, with 10% undecided.
In the 2024 Harris County Tax Assessor-Collector election, Democrat Annette Ramirez (50%) leads Republican Steve Radack (38%) by a 12 percentage point margin, with 12% undecided.
In the 2024 County Attorney election in Harris County, Democrat Christian Menefee (48%) leads Republican Jacqueline Lucci Smith (37%) by an 11 percentage point margin, with 15% undecided.
[…]
Among Harris County likely voters, in the 2024 presidential race Democrat Kamala Harris (54%) leads Republican Donald Trump (41%) by a 13 percentage point margin, with 2% supporting third party candidates and 3% undecided.
Among Harris County likely voters, in the 2024 Texas U.S. Senate race Democrat Colin Allred (52%) leads Republican Ted Cruz (39%) by a 13 percentage point margin, with 2% supporting Libertarian Ted Brown and 7% undecided.
51% of Harris County likely voters intend to vote for the Harris County Flood Control District’s Proposition A, while 30% intend to vote against the proposition, with 19% undecided.
I’m most interested in the Presidential and Senate numbers, since everything else flows from there. In 2020, Joe Biden beat Donald Trump by a margin of 55.96% to 42.70%, with 1.34% going to third party candidates. That’s a 13-point lead for Biden, basically dead on with what Kamala Harris has in this poll. Colin Allred leads Ted Cruz by the same 13 points, which is a big improvement over MJ Hegar’s 8.5 point win over John Cornyn in 2020.
With Harris’ lead over Trump being basically identical to Biden’s actual margin in 2020, the poll of Harris County is consistent with their statewide poll, in which Trump leads Harris by five after beating Biden by five and a half in 2020. I think the potential is there for Harris to do better and get a bigger margin in Harris County, something more like the 16-point lead that Ed Gonzalez has in the Sheriff’s race. That would affect the statewide race a bit, not enough to close the gap but enough to suggest that similar improvement elsewhere and thus overall is possible.
This poll also echoes the recent one we saw from Bexar County, in which Harris had a 19-point lead, a point better than the 18-point win Biden had there in 2020. Again, what this suggests, with the usual caveats about single poll results, is that Kamala Harris is in line to do about as well as Biden did in 2020, with some potential for improvement. We’ve definitely been in worse positions than that.
This obviously bodes well for the Democratic countywide judicial candidates, and at least puts the six Court of Appeals candidates in position to win. Running up the score in Harris County is the key there, but carrying Fort Bend County and keeping the losses to a minimum in the likes of Galveston and Brazoria as well as the smaller counties would also help.
I continue to hope they will do some polling on the HISD referenda, and I expect there to be more Texas polling soon. We’ll hope for more encouraging numbers.
UPDATE: Not worth a full post, but I wanted to give this a mention.
The latest poll by a group whose September survey put U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz behind U.S. Rep. Colin Allred is still showing razor-thin margins in the race for Senate, but this time it’s Cruz who is ahead.
The new poll by Morning Consult from October has Cruz leading his Democratic opponent by 1 percentage point. The survey of 2,048 likely Texas voters was conducted on Oct. 6-15. There is a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
The poll predicts Cruz winning 46% of votes and Allred winning 45%. Seven percent of those surveyed said they don’t know who they are voting for or don’t have an opinion. Two percent said they planned to vote for someone else.
The October poll follows Morning Consult’s September version that had Allred up by one point, also with a two percentage point margin of error. The poll was the first putting the Dallas congressman in the lead over the two-term Republican, according to Allred’s campaign and a compilation of polls from 538.
The Morning Consult polls show closer margins than most, with Cruz predicted to finish 3.7 points ahead of Allred on average, according to 538.
Another poll released Friday Oct. 18 from The Texas Politics Project at The University of Texas at Austin puts Cruz ahead by seven points, winning 51% of votes among likely voters to Allred’s 44% and Libertarian Ted Brown’s 4%. The poll of 1,091 likely Texas voters taken between Oct. 2-10 has a 2.97 percentage point margin of error.
[…]
The Morning Consult poll puts Trump up by four percentage points in Texas. The Texas Politics Project has the Trump-Vance campaign up by five percentage points.
A fairly wide range of results between those two, but neither are out of line with the overall set. It is what it is.