Kinda meh, but with some caveats.
As the race for governor tightens, a new CBS News poll shows Gov. Greg Abbott regaining support against Democratic candidate and former congressman Beto O’Rourke.
The matchup between Abbott and O’Rourke is the marquee race and the new poll shows Republicans could retain power in November.
“The economy, war and I think the court’s decisions clearly favor the Republicans. The only question mark — will Democrats mobilize?” KHOU political expert Bob Stein said.
Indications show incumbent Abbott is in a good position to win again in November.
The poll shows Abbott with an eight-point lead: 49% to 41%.
“Republicans always had a tremendous advantage in turnout — particularly in the midterms, in the midterm elections. The Democratic margin in turnout to Republicans was as much as 12 to 15 points,” Stein said.
[…]
Forty-six percent of Texans approve of the job Abbott is doing and 55% believe Abbott’s response to the Uvalde shooting was “bad.”
The CBS poll continued to show strong support for red flag laws, background checks, a ban on semi-automatic weapons and restricting the age to buy an AR-15.
You can find the poll data embedded at the end of this story. The poll was of 1,075 adults, not registered voters; they included a question about how likely one was to vote, which I guess helped them do a screen of some kind. Of interest is that they give the margin of error as 4.7%, which is a lot higher than it should be for a sample this size. A 4.7% MOE is consistent with a sample of between 450 and 500. I’m honestly not sure what this means in terms of their methodology.
Anyway. I’ve not been obsessively tracking the polls this cycle but I believe this is the first YouGov poll of the cycle – certainly, the first CBS-branded YouGov poll – so there’s no earlier result to compare it with. The poll was conducted between June 22 and 27, and as you may recall the SCOTUS opinion that overturned Roe v Wade dropped on June 24. The original story, the one with the data, does not mention that, nor what (if any) effect that may have had on responses. (Bob Stein mentions the overturning of Roe as a factor in the race in the KHOU story, though he doesn’t note the dates in question.)
As far as the numbers themselves go, the main thing I see that favors Abbott is his margin among independents – he leads them 55-30, which is huge. I mean, that terrible Quinnipiac poll from last December only had Abbott up 47-37 among indies. On the other hand, the somewhat oddball Hobby Center poll from February had him up 45-17, while only leading 48-43 overall. Go figure. The more recent Quinnipiac poll, which is the most recent other poll and which had Abbott up 48-43, had him leading with indies by a 46-40 margin. The lesson here is that poll models can vary quite a bit, which is why you never take one poll too seriously. We’ll see what the next one, which will hopefully be a fully post-Dobbs poll, has to say.
In the end, I think it will all come down to how much rage Texans carry forward for having their electric bills jacked up as a result of Abbott’s appointees either massive failure, or payola scheme. Did the PUC appointees each negotiate 10% for the big guys? If they didn’t they were foolhardy, as fortunes were made and lost in a 4 day span because of their forced error.
Yes, that misery is certainly compounded by the energy price/inflation monkey brought on by reversing Trump’s energy and other policies, as well as the massive flooding of the country with newly minted Covid bucks (R’s and D’s BOTH to blame for that), but Abbott’s people ALSO cost me real money each month, both directly, on my electric bill, and indirectly, as everything I buy cost more because of higher electricity rates.
So the question for moderates and for Trump supporters like me is, do I cut my nose off to spite my face and vote 3rd party, or for Beto? I don’t see an appreciable number of R voters actually pulling the lever for Beto, but I wonder about independents. Would they really want the same kind of agenda being promulgated by the federal government right here in Texas, too? I mean, we’re actually getting to experience the green new deal and other policies of the left, in real time. You would think moderates would choose generally milquetoast Abbott policies over radical change, but then again, I’ve been wrong before.
I guess it will all come down to how much cold anger people carry forward about their electric bills. I don’t see the abortion red herring playing an appreciable role in voting, however. Whatever side you’re on, your vote was already locked up.
If Beto was smart, he’d try to backtrack from his far left messaging and try to reinvent himself back to a hip, skateboarding moderate who just wants to visit all 256 Texas counties again. I don’t see the increasingly more conservative leaning Hispanics voting for Beto unless he starts distancing himself from Biden, gun grabbing, support for the current border policy, etc.
The best thing Beto has going for him is Abbott’s appointees failure during the freeze. The question is, will they double down on Texas having it’s own green new deal policies that will make electric rates skyrocket even more?
At some point, people are going to start voting with their pocketbooks. They won’t have a choice, given the hyperinflation we are experiencing now.
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