Gov. Greg Abbott leads his Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke by 5 percentage points, according to a new poll from the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.
The survey found that Abbott received 45% of support among registered voters, while 40% supported O’Rourke and 4% supported third-party candidates. Three percent of respondents named “Someone else” as their choice, and 8% said they have not thought about the race enough to have an opinion.
The result is almost identical to the margin from when the pollsters last surveyed the race in June, finding Abbott ahead of O’Rourke 45% to 39%.
The latest survey also gave Republican incumbents single-digit leads in two other statewide races. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick led Democrat Mike Collier by 7 points, and Attorney General Ken Paxton registered a 5-point advantage over Democrat Rochelle Garza. More voters remain undecided in those contests than in the gubernatorial election — 20% in the lieutenant governor’s race and 21% in the attorney general one.
See here for the previous UT/TPP poll, and here for the pollsters’ report. The Lite Guv and AG numbers are 39-32 for Patrick and 38-33 for Paxton, and I just don’t give much weight to results that have such high numbers of non-responses. Joe Biden clocks in with a 40-52 approval rating, up from 35-55 in June. Abbott was at 46-44, up from 43-46 in June.
You may look at this and conclude that there’s been no noticeable boost in Democratic fortunes since the Dobbs ruling. Based just on post-Dobbs polls (minus that Echelon poll) that may be correct. I will note, however, that Abbott has slowly been losing ground to Beto in this particular poll over time:
February: Abbott 47-37
April: Abbott 48-37
June: Abbott 45-39
August: Abbott 45-40
I will also note that this poll, like previous ones, has generic US House/Texas House questions. If you look in the crosstabs for this poll (questions 21 and 22), those numbers are 47-43 and 46-43 in favor of Republicans, respectively. It was 46-41 GOP for both in June, and 48-39 (Congress) and 47-39 (The Lege) for the GOP in April. So while maybe not a sharp turn, there has been a gradual bend all along.
I’m grateful as always for your great blog Charles, and found this post and the poll it describes quite interesting. Nevertheless, I’m irritated with UT Tyler’s polling practices. There’s beaucoup evidence that burying horse race questions deep in a poll can prime people to acquire negative opinions as they’re answering prior questions (e.g. incumbent approval) BEFORE they actually get to the home race question.
I also found their phrasing of the “Undecided” option in the horse race question to be quite condescending. One can be “Undecided” on a choice between 2 candidates if one has done a LOT of thinking on the subject as opposed to being tuned out and “ not having thought enough about it” .Sometimes all the options are wretched! I personally strongly support Beto, it’s just a crappy way to phrase the response options & (probably inadvertently) guilt trips people for being undecided.
Horse race not home race. Wretched auto correct!
Pingback: DMN/UT-Tyler: Abbott 47, Beto 38 – Off the Kuff
Pingback: Texas blog roundup for the week of September 19 – Off the Kuff