Maybe a tad bit of a letdown after yesterday’s result, but still quite solid.
The coronavirus outbreak is reshaping the presidential race in three key Sun Belt states. Joe Biden is now leading President Trump by six points in Florida, and the two are tied in Arizona and competitive in Texas, where Biden is down by just a point to Mr. Trump. Biden has made gains in part because most say their state’s efforts to contain the virus are going badly — and the more concerned voters are about risks from the outbreak, the more likely they are to support Biden.
In all three states, most voters say their state reopened too soon, and those who say this feel their state went too fast under pressure from the Trump administration. Most also say the president is doing a bad job handling the outbreak. He may be paying a price for that, at least in the short term.
This is helping Biden not only to post bigger gains with groups that already trend Democratic — like women and younger voters — but also to cut into Mr. Trump’s margins with seniors. Seniors who are very concerned about coronavirus back Biden in large numbers.
Though embattled in three states he won in 2016, the president remains bolstered by enthusiastic support from his base; by the belief that his policies are a little more likely to help the economy recover than hinder it; and by the fact that the economy still outranks coronavirus as a top issue, in part because Republicans express much less concern about the virus, while both parties agree on the importance of the economy.
[…]
The former vice president has a six-point edge in Florida. Mr. Trump has a one-point edge in Texas and they are tied in Arizona.
Currently, all three states appear competitive because Biden has expanded his support among demographic groups that backed Hillary Clinton in 2016.
In each state, Biden is doing better with women than Clinton did four years ago. In Florida, in particular, Biden leads among women by double-digits; Clinton won women in Florida by four points. Biden has narrowed the gap with white women, in particular, though Mr. Trump still has the advantage. This is boosted by strong support for Biden among white women with a college degree, a group Clinton lost in Florida.
Biden is also making some inroads with seniors, who have voted Republican in stronger numbers in these states in recent years, and could be crucial in Florida. There, Mr. Trump currently has an 8-point lead among seniors, but that’s just half of his margin among them four years ago.
Biden leads among Hispanic voters in all three states. He is currently getting the support of about six in 10 Hispanics in Texas and Florida, similar to the vote share Clinton received in 2016. In Arizona, seven in 10 Hispanic voters back Biden, a bit higher than Clinton’s share.
You can see the poll data for Texas here, and as before here is the FiveThirtyEight page for Texas. This is the first CBS/YouGov poll for Texas that I see – the earlier YouGov polls you see on the 538 page are UT/Texas Tribune polls.
The main difference between this poll and yesterday’s poll is simply this: Trump does a lot better among independents in this sample than in the UT-Tyler/DMN sample. Here, Trump leads among indies 43-41, and they are roughly as large a subgroup as Dems and Republicans (they were a much smaller group in the other poll). Here, Biden is even stronger among Dem voters, leading 92-4, while Trump is nearly as strong among Republicans, leading 89-4. Why the difference? Who knows? It could be question wording, it could be the pollsters’ definitions, it could be how they’re modeling the electorate, and it could be dumb luck. This is why I try not to worry too much about subsample differences. They are what they are, and you’ll drive yourself crazy if you try to make too much sense of them.
There was a Senate poll included as well, and it has Royce West doing slightly better than MJ Hegar against John Cornyn. West trails 43-37, while Hegar trails 44-36. There are three other choices – “Someone else”, “Don’t know”, and “I wouldn’t vote”, and the only difference here is that the “Someone else” number is 3 in the Hegar/Cornyn race and it’s 4 in West/Cornyn, so I think the actual gap between the candidates would be closer to 7 in each case if we went to a third significant digit. Cornyn only gets 6% of Dems versus Hegar and 5% versus West in this poll, which is another big difference from yesterday’s poll and a counterpoint to the hypothesis that Cornyn might outperform Trump in November. Again, the main idea to hold onto is that it’s too early to form any strong conclusions.
Our twelve-poll average in the Presidential race is now Trump 46.0, Biden 44.7. I’m sure there will be plenty more poll results coming.
And Biden is going up on the TV.
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/14/joe-biden-texas-donald-trump-polls-close-tv-ads-2020-elections/
The fact that I started seeing Trump TV ads in June backs up what the polls say.