I have three things to say about this.
A new, statewide poll of registered voters in Texas shows a slight uptick in support for Democrats following last month’s Democratic National Convention.
The poll by the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin also shows a double-digit surge in enthusiasm among Democrats following President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw his candidacy.
Among voters surveyed, former President Donald Trump still leads over Vice President Kamala Harris 49% to 44% in a head-to-head match-up for the presidency. Green Party candidate Jill Stein garnered 2% support and 6% of those asked said they were still undecided.
The poll was conducted from August 23 through August 31 following the party convention in Chicago and has a margin of error of +/- 2.83%.
Harris’ five-point deficit is a slight improvement from where Democrats stood in June when Biden was still the party’s presumptive nominee. A Texas Politics Project poll conducted that month showed Biden trailing Trump 46% to 39%.
The poll also showed that nearly 80% of Democrats were enthusiastic about casting a ballot in the November election: 52% were “extremely” enthusiastic and 27% were “very” enthusiastic.
“These results represent an increase in both the degree and the intensity compared to the June UT/Texas Politics Project Poll, when 61% were enthusiastic (39% extremely enthusiastic, 22% very enthusiastic),” wrote pollsters James Henson and Joshua Blank. They also note that enthusiasm on the GOP side has waned slightly.
“Republican enthusiasm decreased slightly in both degree and intensity, from 77% either extremely (55%) or very enthusiastic (22%) in June to 49% extremely enthusiastic and 24% very enthusiastic in the latest survey,” they noted.
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But in the race for one of Texas’ seats in the U.S. Senate, current U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Republican, still enjoys a wide margin of support over challenger Colin Allred, a U.S. Representative from Dallas.
In that race, Cruz is up on Allred eight points, 44% to 36% with 14% undecided. But that result also shows a slight improvement for Allred, who trailed Cruz in June by 11 percentage points.
1. I’m more interested in the enthusiasm numbers than the head to head at this point. After the slog of existential doom that was July, this is so much better. My primary hope for this Presidential contest in Texas is that Kamala Harris improves on Joe Biden’s performance from 2020, in which he lost by five and a half points. I know better than to point to any individual poll for evidence of some quantitative end, but on a vibes basis I’m reasonably good with where things are.
2. Two percent for Jill Stein, in a poll where the Libertarian candidate apparently got zero percent, is laughable. Stein, in 2016 where third party and write-in candidates got four and a half percent of the total vote, got 0.8% of the total. Some other dude running as the Green Party candidate in 2020 got 0.3%; third party and write-ins got about a point and a half. Jill Stein will not get two percent of the vote. The brain worm guy is off the ballot (though apparently he’s having problems with that in some other states), and everyone else is a write-in. Write-in candidates combined for less than six thousand votes in 2020. As a point of comparison, the Libertarian candidate for State Rep in HD08 in 2020 got over eight thousand votes.
3. As for the Senate result, in pretty much all of the pre-Harris polls Colin Allred had outpaced Joe Biden. That was a different dynamic, but even in the other post-Biden poll, Allred was about even with Harris. The UT/TPP polls in general tend to have a lot of don’t know/no answer responses, which is always a little puzzling to me. Make of it what you will.
A. “Some other dude” is Howie Hawkins.
B. I’m voting for one of the write-ins next year and will explain in detail in a post in a couple of weeks.
C. People like me take voting more seriously than most duopolists.
If you think so, gladfly, should we put you on a pedestal?
You must not be taking it too seriously if you intend to vote for someone who has absolutely no chance of winning.