Let’s talk about this for a minute.
Vice President Kamala Harris trails former President Donald Trump by 5 percentage points in Texas, shaving off nearly half the Republican nominee’s one-time advantage over President Joe Biden from earlier this year, according to a new poll released Thursday.
The survey, conducted earlier this month by the University of Houston’s Hobby School of Public Affairs, is among the first to measure where things stand in Texas since Biden dropped his reelection bid last month. In June, the same pollster found that Trump led Biden by nearly 9 percentage points.
The latest survey also recorded a 2-point lead for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz over his Democratic challenger, U.S. Rep. Colin Allred — virtually unchanged from the June poll. In the new survey, 46.6% of likely voters said they intend to vote for the Republican senator, compared to 44.5% for Allred.
[…]
At the presidential level, independent voters appeared to drive much of the shift toward Harris: Trump now leads among that voting bloc by just 2 percentage points, down from a 24-point edge in June. Harris also gained ground among women, who now favor her by a 6-point margin after narrowly backing Trump in the Hobby School’s earlier poll.
Trump’s 4.9-point lead in the Hobby School’s latest poll is similar to the 5.6-point margin by which he carried the state over Biden in 2020.
Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon suggested earlier this week that the campaign does not intend to make much of a play for Texas. She noted the high cost of advertising in the state and suggested it would divert resources from other more closely contested states.
“At the end of the day, our responsibility as a presidential campaign is to ensure we get to 270 [electoral votes],” O’Malley Dillon said, fielding audience questions for an event at the Democratic National Convention. “I would love to get to a bigger number than that, but that is all we care about.”
You can see the poll memo here. The Presidential numbers were 49.5 to 44.6 for Trump over Harris, with RFK Jr getting 2.7% (guffaw). It had been 48.9 to 40.3 for Trump over Biden in June.
I don’t care to get into the crosstabs or obsess over any of this. I’m trying to wean myself of that habit. For what it’s worth, this poll is more or less in line with what we’ve seen nationally, in that Harris has greatly improved on Biden’s numbers while Trump’s have stayed fairly steady. Allred and Cruz were about the same in June, which among other things means that Allred had been running considerably ahead of Biden. Biden was far and away the top Dem performer in 2020, so having Harris pull even with Allred moves things closer to that previous dynamic.
At a macro level, I believe Harris has room to grow. To me the big question is whether she can cut into the Trump-Biden gap from 2020, even a little. Assuming she is elected and comes within, say, four points here, it will be hard for me to imagine a re-election strategy in 2028 that doesn’t include seriously contesting Texas. On the flip side, if RFK Jr (giggle) does indeed drop out and endorse Trump, as the rumors have it, there will be no novel third party outlet for Republicans who don’t like Trump but don’t want to vote for a Democrat. That could help boost his total, as this will be the first real two-party race Trump has been in, and that may keep Harris from getting closer.
(This is assuming RFK Jr (snort) is actually removed from the ballot, which assumes his campaign has its shit together enough to properly withdraw before the statutory deadline. If he’s on the ballot, running or not, he’ll draw two points or so, more at Trump’s expense. We’ll know soon enough what this situation is.)
The main thing I’m looking for going forward is further evidence of real Democratic engagement and enthusiasm (so far, so very good), which I am hoping will put a couple of legislative seats and maybe CD15 in play, and help Dems hold those appellate court benches we won in 2018. I don’t expect to post much about the polls, but if something weird or unexpected comes up, I’ll be on it.
Let’s talk about this instead: https://mondoweiss.net/2024/08/message-from-the-dnc-the-democrats-do-not-care-about-palestinians/
What did we do after 9/11? I bet we killed more “innocents” while hunting for the persons behind it.
Not sure how someone would expect a country to react if someone comes in and murders thousands, including children, and rapes the women.
They have been killing each other for thousands of years; it will stop when either one or both no longer exist.
This dumbass argument continues…
Israel is a sovereign State that receives a boatload of cash (close to $4B) from the US every year, just like dozens of other countries. The US didn’t parachute into Israel and kill folks and take hostages, and the US didn’t roll into Gaza and indiscriminately murder folks they believed were associated with Hamas. Netanyahu doesn’t give a shit about US college kids protesting or a US Congressional or Presidential scowl, and the US war machine, chugging along nicely, doesn’t give a shit about what Israel does with the arms we supply. Neither a President Trump or a President Harris is going to hold a whole lot of sway with Middle East participants in this conflict. Colleges aren’t go to, for the most part, divest themselves from long term investments because four-year students aren’t happy with their college’s financial portfolio. Neither the Israelis or the Palestinians are going to lay down their arms ’cause the US tells them to.
Ultimately, regardless of who a Politician supports in this conflict, it’s a no-win position to be in….because we hold no authority of what these two parties do.
You make good points, C. L.- I would say, since the Palestinians have no aircraft and are not bombing Israelites, we do not need to send bombs to the Israelis. We send them money, they can get bombs to drop on children from somewhere else. That is an easy and obvious change that Biden should have made long ago.
@J… IMO, we should have stoppped arming the Israelis a decades ago. They’ve taken our money and armaments for a very long time, then somehow feel slighted when we express our ‘discomfort’ over settler expansion into Palestinian territory, military incursions into Gaza or Lebanon or Syria, etc. Israel may as well be a ‘rogue’ 51st US State, with a Leader destined for the International Court of Crimimal Justice hallways once he’s voted out of office.
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While I understand why the pro-Palestinian demonstrators aren’t happy with the response of the Biden administration to the current war, I have yet to hear an honest attempt to answer the following question: “How would a 2nd Trump administration make anything better for the people of Gaza?” Don’t forget that Trump has publicly encouraged Bibi to “finish it” and Jared Kushner is on video drooling over the prospect of discounted ocean front property in Gaza.
The Israelis have a shitty government and the Gazans have a shitty government and both shitty governments put a very low value on the lives of Palestinian civilians. Those will have to be replaced to have any meaningful progress.
Also there are allegations that Trump has been calling Bibi in an attempt to derail current cease fire negotiations.
Because there is no good reason. The art of the non-negotiable demand has never worked for the left.
I agree with on all points.
I would think the Libertarian Party would be an alternate for disaffected Republicans and the Green Party for disaffected Democrats unhappy with their party nominees.
Wrong, CL, on the claim that a bunch of other countries get the same amount of munitions money Israel does. Beyond that? IF you read the likes of Mondoweiss, you’d know this is also about international law (which both duopoly parties like to ignore) and ultimately ethics, especially if you read someone like Ilan Pappe.
Mainstream? I’m voting further left than Stein for a variety of reasons, and can do so since PSL’s Claudia de la Cruz is on the ballot.
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