Well, what do you know?
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Republican Ted Cruz leads Democrat Beto O’Rourke 41 percent to 36 percent in the general election race for a Texas seat in the U.S. Senate, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.
Neal Dikeman, the Libertarian Party nominee for U.S. Senate, garnered 2 percent, according to the survey. And 20 percent of registered voters said either that they would vote for someone else in an election held today (3 percent) or that they haven’t thought enough about the contest to have a preference (17 percent).
In the governor’s race, Republican incumbent Greg Abbott holds a comfortable 12-percentage-point lead over Democratic challenger Lupe Valdez — the exact same advantage he held over Democrat Wendy Davis in an early-summer poll in 2014. Abbott went on to win that race by 20 percentage points. In this survey, Abbott had the support of 44 percent to Valdez’s 32 percent. Libertarian Mark Tippetts had the support of 4 percent of registered voters, while 20 percent chose “someone else” or said they haven’t made a choice yet.
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The June UT/TT Poll, conducted from June 8 to June 17, is an early look at the 2018 general election, a survey of registered voters — not of the “likely voters” whose intentions will become clearer in the weeks immediately preceding the election. If recent history is the guide, most registered voters won’t vote in November; according to the Texas Secretary of State, only 34 percent of registered voters turned out in 2014, the last gubernatorial election year.
The numbers also reflect, perhaps, the faint rumble of excitement from Democrats and wariness from Republicans who together are wondering what kind of midterm election President Donald Trump might inspire. The last gubernatorial election year in Texas, 2014, came at Barack Obama’s second midterm, and like his first midterm — the Tea Party explosion of 2010 — it was a rough year for Democrats in Texas and elsewhere. As the late social philosopher Yogi Berra once said, this year could be “Déjà vu all over again.”
Accordingly, voter uncertainty rises in down-ballot races where even previously elected officials are less well known. Republican incumbent Dan Patrick leads Democrat Mike Collier in the contest for lieutenant governor, 37 percent to 31 percent. Kerry McKennon, the Libertarian in that race, had the support of 4 percent of the registered voters surveyed, while the rest said they were undecided (23 percent) or would vote for someone other than the three named candidates (5 percent).
“As you move down to races that are just less well known, you see the numbers drop,” said Daron Shaw, a government professor at the University of Texas at Austin and co-director of the poll. “They drop more for the Republicans. Part of that reflects the visibility of those races, and of those candidates.”
Henson said Patrick and other down-ballot incumbents work in the shadow of the governor, especially when the Legislature is not in in session. “That said, he’s still solid with the Republican base, though he lags behind Abbott and Cruz in both prominence and popularity,” he said. “There’s nothing unusual about that.”
And indecision marks the race for Texas attorney general, where Republican incumbent Ken Paxton has 32 percent to Democrat Justin Nelson’s 31 percent and 6 percent for Libertarian Michael Ray Harris. Four percent of registered voters said they plan to vote for someone else in that race and a fourth — 26 percent — said they haven’t chosen a favorite.
Nelson and Harris are unknown to statewide general election voters. Paxton, first elected in 2014, is fighting felony indictments for securities fraud — allegations that arose from his work as a private attorney before he was AG. He has steadily maintained his innocence, but political adversaries are hoping his legal problems prompt the state’s persistently conservative electorate to consider turning out an incumbent Republican officeholder.
“If you’ve heard anything about Ken Paxton in the last four years, more than likely you’ve heard about his legal troubles,” said Josh Blank, manager of polling and research at UT’s Texas Politics Project. Henson added a note of caution to that: There’s also no erosion in Ken Paxton support by the Republican base. This reflects some stirrings amongst the Democrats and Paxton’s troubles. But it would premature to draw drastic conclusions for November based upon these numbers from June.”
Shaw noted that the support for the Democrats in the three state races is uniform: Each has 31 percent or 32 percent of the vote. “All the variability is on the Republican side, it seems to me,” he said. When those voters move away from the Republican side, Shaw said, “they move not to the Democrats but to the Libertarian or to undecided.”
Trump is still getting very strong job ratings from Republican voters — strong enough to make his overall numbers look balanced, according to the poll. Among all registered voters, 47 percent approve of the job the president is doing, while 44 percent disapprove. Only 8 percent had no opinion.
Our seven-poll average now stands at Cruz 46.3, O’Rourke 39.7. Remember when that second Q poll, the one that had Cruz up by 11, became the One True Result? we now have four polls since then, and all of them are in the five-to-eight points range, which is to say all right arounf the polling average. Imagine that. This result, one of the better ones for O’Rourke, occurs in the context of good approval numbers for Donald Trump. In fact, Trump’s numbers have been mostly above water lately, yet Beto remains competitive. Here’s a summary:
UT/Trib, February 2017, 46 approve/44 disapprove
UT/Trib, June 2017, 43 approve/51 disapprove
UT/Trib, October 2017, 45 approve/49 disapprove
UT/Trib, February 2018, 46 approve/46 disapprove
Quinnipiac Senate poll, April 2018, 43 approve/51 disapprove
Quinnipiac Senate poll, May 2018, 47 approve/47 disapprove
PPP Senate poll, June 2018, 49 approve/46 disapprove
CBS/YouGov Senate poll, June 2018, 50 approve/50 disapprove
UT/Trib Senate poll, June 2018, 47 approve/44 disapprove
Not too surprisingly, Beto’s best showing was in that first Q poll. The fact that he’s consistently within single digits despite Trump being even or better in approval is encouraging, and suggests things could really get interesting if his numbers ever soften.
What about the Governor’s race? There have been eight polls of the Senate race so far, but this is only the third poll to include the Governor’s race. Here’s how those compare:
Quinnipiac, April
Cruz 47, Beto 44
Abbott 49, Valdez 40
Quinnipiac, May
Cruz 50, Beto 39
Abbott 53, Valdez 44
UT/Trib, June
Cruz 41, Beto 36
Abbott 44, Valdez 32
So Cruz runs two or three points behind Abbott, while Beto runs four or five points ahead of Valdez. Some of the latter may be a function of name recognition, but overall I’d be comfortable saying Beto would do a few points better overall than Valdez. I hesitate to draw broad conclusions, but it seems clear Beto is on a path to outperform Valdez, and quite possibly the rest of the Dem ticket. By how much is an open question, and I would remind everyone that other than Bill White in 2010, the statewide results in both 2010 and 2014 landed in a pretty narrow range. Keep an eye on this, but don’t spend too much time thinking about it yet.
I have more to discuss with this poll, but this post is already long. I will pick things up tomorrow.
