Man, if we keep getting polls that show Joe Biden leading in Texas, we just might have to rethink where this state is politically.
Texas is a tossup, as Democrat Joe Biden tops President Donald Trump by a percentage point, 45-44 percent, in a new Fox News survey of Texas registered voters.
Ten percent are up for grabs, and this small subgroup of voters is more likely to disapprove than approve of Trump’s job performance by 52-34 percent.
The good news for Trump: he bests Biden by 51-45 percent among those “extremely” motivated to vote in the election.
Trump corralled the Lone Star State by 9 points in 2016 (52 percent vs. Hillary Clinton’s 43 percent), and it has been in the Republican column in every presidential election since 1980.
Texas voters trust Trump over Biden on the economy (by 14 points) and immigration (+4), while they think Biden would do a better job on race relations (+10 points) and coronavirus (+3).
There’s a 24-point gender gap on the head-to-head matchup, as men pick Trump by 12 points and women go for Biden by 12.
Trump is preferred by Baby Boomers (+12 points) and Gen Xers (+7), while Millennials go big for Biden (+29).
[…]
Republican Sen. John Cornyn leads both of his potential Democratic candidates in hypothetical matchups, although he garners less than the 62 percent he received in his 2014 reelection.
MJ Hegar and Royce West were the top two finishers in the March 3 Democratic primary. Neither received a majority of the vote so there is a July 14 runoff.
The three-term incumbent leads both Hegar and West by a 10-point margin. About one in six voters is undecided/uncommitted in each matchup.
You can see the full poll data here. Yes, I know, Fox News, but their Presidential polls are well-regarded, with an A- rating on FiveThirtyEight. This is now the fourth poll out of eight since the March primary in which Biden has been tied (two results) or in the lead (two results), which is not too shabby. In the four polls where Biden has trailed, he’s trailed by one, two, five, and six. The polling average now stands at 46.5 for Trump to 44.5 for Biden. I know every time I see G. Elliott Morris or Nate Cohn or Nate Silver post something on Twitter about how well Biden is polling right now, someone always comes along with a (not accurate) claim about how Hillary Clinton was polling just as well at this point in 2016. Well, you can see the poll results I have from 2016 on my sidebar. Hillary Clinton was not polling this well in Texas in 2016, not in June, not at any point.
As for the Senate race, the main difference between how John Cornyn is doing against MJ Hegar and Royce West and how Trump is doing against Biden is that Hegar and West do not have quite the same level of Democratic support as Biden does. Cornyn gets 86% of Republican support versus each candidate (the crosstabs break it down by gender as well as party), which is right there with Trump’s 87-88%, but Hegar (80% Dem men, 74% Dem women) and West (85% Dem men, 75% Dem women) lag well behind Biden, who is at 91-92%. Most of the undecided vote in the Senate race is Democratic, which strongly suggests both Hegar and West are doing a bit better than this poll suggests. I’d expect whoever wins the runoff to get a boost, and we’ll start to see poll numbers in the Senate race more closely match the Presidential race. It won’t surprise me if Cornyn outperforms Trump by a bit. Which is to say, it won’t surprise me if there are still a few Republicans who don’t vote for Trump but do generally vote R otherwise. My takeaway from the 2018 election is that most of those Republicans went much more Democratic in the midterm, and I expect the same this year. There’s still a bit of softness on the GOP side for Trump, and who knows, if things continue to deteriorate we could see more of that. I’m sure there will be plenty more polls between now and November to support or refute that hypothesis.
Trump will quit before he loses by the widest margin in US history. The ways things are going Biden would not only clobber Trump in the popular vote, but would clobber Trump in the electoral votes getting at least 400 electoral votes.
MJ’s performance tonight only solidified the conviction of this independent and her Republican mama that she is the preferable opponent to Cornyn. I do think you’re right that a lot of Texas Republicans who vote Biden will still vote R on the rest of the ticket. My East Texas-raised mother is not one of them. She’s been tired of John for a long time, and his vote on the impeachment sealed his fate.
As a moderate who admired Kay Bailey Hutchison and volunteered on her first congressional campaign, Mom’s watched in horror and disgust as people she thought of as principled moderates or reasonable conservatives have propped up Trump and defended what he does and says, no matter how indefensible. From Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham to Greg Abbott and George P. Bush, leaders she’s looked to as voices of reason within her party and Texans for whom she has voted have let her down at every turn.
For now, I’m only allowed to tell total strangers anonymously on the internet. She isn’t ashamed of her votes, but rather a modest woman who prefers to speak reasonably one-on-one with trusted friends who may be open to listening. She knows what it’s like to be attacked as “hopelessly liberal” (liberal! MY mother!) by a cousin on my dad’s side of the family, which has known the persecution of being Jewish in Texas in the ’30s,’ 40s and ’50s, and whose parents came here fleeing Russian pogroms. She has seen her own college-educated, preacher-teacher brother forward emails about Obama being a secret Muslim and her younger sister insist to me on Facebook that he was sworn in on a Koran.
Mom blew me away just last month when she raised with that same beloved sister the issue of Trump’s exorbitant golf expenditures and how they make the Obama golf trips he ranted about pale in comparison. Me, the supposed liberal in the family, I had stayed off politics entirely that day, but Mom pressed on and I backed her up as to his profits from constantly visiting his resorts.
How much it could do, if ever this pillar of her church, this generous and kind woman, this wife and mother and businesswoman admired by all who know her could only share the wisdom of her 83 years with more of her circle. They don’t know what they’re missing by staying at the political extremes — nor does her party know what a gem it has been driving further and further away with each election cycle for nearly a decade now.
Yes, my mother will be #GOPVotingBlue for yet another election, and I’ve yet to identify any Republicans on my ballot for whom I can vote this time around, let alone any third or fourth party from which I might make a selection as I occasionally did in my younger days. But as moderates who differ reasonably from each other on many subjects, we both long to once again see the day when there are principled people on the ballot for more than one party and we can simply pick the one whose approach we think is best.
The last time I saw polls this bad for Trump was when he won last time.
We will see if a Russian collusion hoax, an impeachment for the crimes committed by Biden and family, a Chinese Communist Party virus, and now a race war will be enough to change the outcome.
Personally, I think the race war is going to backfire. I really doubt most average, apolitical people enjoy seeing their cities turned to rubble, enjoy seeing mob rule, and enjoy being forced to pledge fealty to the racist Marxists of BLM. I just can’t see the majority of the country enjoying all this and voting for more of it. I just can’t.
Now, Hillary herself told us that civility could only be restored when Democrats regained power. Will people be demoralized enough not to vote for Trump because they are just that tired of Democrat instigated violence and terror, and will vote for Biden just to make the DNC violence stop? Remains to be determined. I do recall something similar, in 1968, and Nixon won because the American people just wanted an end to the violence and unrest. In fact, the backlash allowed Nixon to start up the war on drugs, so assuming Trump wins, I wonder what similar policy Trump will promulgate?
File this under fiction
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Brad,
There is not even one Trump voter participating in the protests, riots, vandalism, looting, or arson. Not ONE Trump supporter involved with Antifa or BLM. Not ONE. So normal people looking at all that have a very clear choice. Vote Biden, whose party and voters are doing all that, or vote Trump who is against it.
Do you think most apolitical Texans support destroying the Stevie Ray Vaughn statue, or destroying The Alamo? Do you think most Texans like having to pledge allegiance to BLK lest they lose their jobs or have their houses burned down?
I guess we will find out.
I think the folks in this country are tired of the chaos coming out of almost every Department in DC (State, VA, Interior, Education, HHS, HUD, etc.), or out of each branch of local, state, or Federal Government, and would vote for a calliope-cranking capuchin at this point.
C.L.
Most of what the federal government does is abstract to folks in terms of daily living of life. Trump firing Berman, for example, has zero impact on their day to day life.
Having the CVS burned down, having to fear becoming a victim of mob violence or vandalism, or worse, every time there is a ‘protest’ in your area DOES impact day to day living, and not in a good way.
Finally, I think you are going to see another ‘whitelash.’ Y’all have spent the last 4 years absolutely demonizing whites, especially straight white males. Expect people who don’t live and breathe politics to take that to heart. The term ‘cold anger seems to fit here. Tell people often enough that they are pieces of shit who are responsible for everything bad in life, don’t be surprised when they do not want to vote for you.
Bill,
I think you mean “racistlash”, or “whitesupremacistlash”, or “bigotlash”, or “misogynistlash”, or “chauvinistlash”, or “anti-Semitelash”, or …well, you get the point.
If those racists, white supremacists, bigots, etc have been triggered for being called a POS…well, then they were not going to be voting Biden anyway under any circumstances.
Brad,
Thanks for proving my point.
Questions: How many brand spanking new racist white supremacists do you think have been minted in the last 3 1/2 years? How many realtors who now are verboten from talking about ‘master bedrooms’ do you think are going to turn into racist white supremacists? How many people are watching Washington and Jefferson statues being attacked in their own cities are gradually turning into racist white supremacists? How many racist white supremacists do you think were minted after Jussie had to pay two Nigerian MAGA supporters to beat him up? How many did Bubba create complaining about a door pull down rope?
I mean, I could be wrong about this….but I doubt it.
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