This is post-debate but pre-“grab her by the pussy”.
In a state where it is generally accepted that a GOP nominee is almost guaranteed a win in a presidential election, real estate mogul and presidential nominee Donald Trump has “under-performed” in Texas according to Pollster Brian Graham of Dixie Strategies.
In the latest KTVT-CBS 11 / Dixie Strategies Poll released Wednesday, if the election were held today, 45 percent of respondents said they would vote for Trump. About 38 percent indicated they would vote for former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. About 10 percent of those asked said they are still undecided.
Pollster Brian Graham of Dixie Strategies joined CBS 11’s Jack Fink on Facebook Live Wednesday afternoon to discuss the results.
While Trump is clearly still ahead in the race, Graham said, “He really should be doing a lot better. There’s no reason why, at this late stage in the game that he should be under 50 percent in the state of Texas.”
Not much has changed for Trump since early August in a previous KTVT – CBS 11 / Dixie Strategies poll while Clinton has actually gained 3 percentage points. In August, about 46 percent of respondents said they would vote for Trump if the election were held at that time and 35 percent said they would vote for Clinton.
When asked why he thinks Trump is under-performing, Graham said he thinks that Donald Trump probably did not help himself in the last debate. “The headlines are often times worse than what happens in the debate…but the headlines afterwards really do hurt a candidate and I think you saw that with Donald Trump.”
“The more time that Donald Trump spends defending himself and what he says — and his actions — and not attacking Hillary Clinton…he is really distracting himself,” Graham continued.
See here for more on the previous poll. Let’s just draw a curtain over pollster Graham’s analysis, which was perfectly reasonable on Wednesday but doesn’t mean anything today, and note that the crosstabs (embedded as images in the story) are kind of wack. This poll has Trump leading among white voters by only a 59-32 margin – remember, Mitt Romney was comfortably above 70% with whites in 2012 – while collecting nearly 20% of black voters and 39% of Latinos. I’m going to bet the under on those last two. Be all that as it may, Trump led by 11 in this poll in August, and now leads by only 7. That may just be drift, but Dixie was a bit of an outlier before, as the only pollster putting Trump’s lead in double digits. Either they’ve fallen in with the pack, or the pack is closer to even with them still above it. I am not unhappy with those choices.