Once again, here’s the press release:
An independent poll conducted by the Texas Lyceum, a non-partisan, nonprofit statewide leadership group, shows billionaire real estate mogul and reality TV star Donald Trump leading U.S. Senator Ted Cruz by five points (21 percent-16 percent) in Texas in the 2016 Republican Presidential nominating contest. The survey also shows former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with a substantial lead in the Democratic primary, but trailing in a November 2016 general election among Texas voters.
“We are proud to publicly share the results of our ninth Texas Lyceum Poll with Texas’ policymakers, scholars and citizens,” said 2015 Lyceum President Jane Cummins. “We included a diverse set of questions ranging from U.S. presidential contenders to a variety of issues facing our state. We will continue to use the poll as a foundation for discussion at our annual public conferences and quarterly meetings, and readily share these valuable data to inform public policy discussions in Texas.”
Trump’s support in the Lyceum Poll remains consistent with national polls across most age groups: including those 65 and older, 45 to 64, and 30 to 44, only trailing retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson by one point (22 percent to 21 percent) among potential Republican Primary voters under the age of 29.
Due to the large field of candidates, the Lyceum poll asked, “who would be your second choice” for president? This question revealed that 37 percent of Trump’s voters would support Ted Cruz, followed by 24 percent for Carson.
On the Democratic side, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leads the Democratic field with 36 percent of the vote followed by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders (24 percent), Vice President Joe Biden (15 percent), and former Virginia Senator Jim Webb (2 percent).
Looking ahead to the November 2016 general election in Texas, Clinton trails Jeb Bush, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump by eight, seven, and two points, respectively. However, she is ahead of Florida Senator Marco Rubio by seven points
“Mrs. Clinton actually polls better in Texas right now than one might have expected,” said Prof. Daron Shaw, who oversees the Lyceum Poll along with Lyceum Research Director, Joshua Blank. “But this is primarily due to her greater name recognition and the divisiveness of the GOP contest at this early stage.”
Texas and National Economy
Despite a declining state unemployment rate of 4.1 percent, down from 4.8 percent this time last year, Texans see the economy as stagnant compared to a year ago. Looking to the national economy, Texans’ attitudes are mixed. A plurality believes we are worse off than last year (34 percent), but an almost equal proportion (31 percent) says that the national economy has improved.
Job Approval
In the poll, which was conducted September 8 – 21, 56 percent of likely voters approve of the job Governor Abbott is doing. Meanwhile, the poll shows a slight bump (eight percent) in approval ratings for President Obama compared to last year’s Lyceum poll. A majority of respondents, 52 percent, indicated that President Obama is either doing a “very good” or “somewhat good” job as president, compared with 44 percent who indicated that the president is doing either a “somewhat poor” or “very poor” job.
Here is the Executive Summary, and here are the poll results, which you can compare to the Texas Pulse poll from last week. If you look at the data, you may note that President Obama has a shockingly good approval rating – 52% positive, which stands in stark contrast to the Texas Pule number of 41% approval. In response to my question, pollster Daron Shaw noted that this is a sample of adults, so it is fairly heavily non-Anglo, and thus more favorable for Obama than a likely-voter or even a registered-voter sample would be. Those of you out there that like to say that Texas isn’t a Republican state so much as it is a non-voting state may feel a little smug now. Not that it changes anything in the here and now, of course.
Let’s take a closer look at those November matchup numbers:
Candidates RVs LVs
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Jeb! 32 35
Clinton 27 27
HTMUAI 41 39
Cruz 31 39
Clinton 31 32
HTMUAI 37 29
Rubio 22 27
Clinton 32 34
HTMUAI 44 40
Trump 33 39
Clinton 38 37
HTMUAI 29 25
“HTMUAI” = “Haven’t thought much about it”, which is the “don’t know/no opinion” answer for this poll. The large values for that answer is what you’d expect for this early in the cycle, and as such I wouldn’t make too much of any individual contest. Rubio is the least known – if he does turn out to be the nominee, you can expect his higher profile and normal partisan affiliation will make up the gap. Hard to say if Clinton draws actual crossovers from Trump or if that pairing just gets more people off the fence. File it away for later and see what movement we get once the dust starts to settle in the GOP race.
As for the primary results, there’s nothing here to suggest Hillary Clinton has anything to fear in Texas; the Pulse poll says the same thing. We are of course six months out from said primary, and anything can happen – if Sanders takes the lead nationally and/or starts racking up states, you can be sure the numbers here would reflect that. On the GOP side, one presumes Ted Cruz would prosper if Trump drops out. I can’t help but feel that Cruz has a hard ceiling, sort of like Trump does. It’s hard to be that universally loathed and not have some limits on one’s potential. Again, we’ll know more once that field has been winnowed a bit. What do you make of these numbers?