Hillary Clinton
After perhaps the most damaging week of his campaign, Donald Trump’s lead in Texas has slipped to four percentage points – within the margin of error – according to a new poll released Thursday night.
The survey, commissioned by WFAA-TV and Texas TEGNA television stations, shows Trump leading Hillary Clinton by 47 percent to 43 percent. The margin of error is four percent.
“I think to put these numbers in context – it shows that Trump’s position has eroded a little bit. His lead is down to four percentage points according to this poll, but even in the wake of some really terrible news for him, he still leads in Texas, which shows what a tough nut Texas is to crack for Democratic candidates right now,” said Matthew Wilson, Associate Professor of Political Science at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
SurveyUSA conducted the poll between Monday and Wednesday of this week – after both the 2005 video in which Trump used lewd comments describing women and the second presidential debate in St. Louis on Sunday night.
In recent weeks, two other statewide polls showed Trump up by six and seven points, respectively.
“It pretty consistently shows that Trump is struggling in Texas more than a Republican typically would,” Wilson added. “He’s still highly likely to win the state in the end but we typically see double digit margins for Republican candidates and Trump seems unlikely to produce that.
For perspective, Mitt Romney won Texas by 16 points in 2012, John McCain won this state by 13 points in 2008, George W. Bush carried his home state by 23 points in 2004, and 22 points in 2000 when he was elected to his first term.
The eroding support in the largest Republican state in the country could suggest deeper problems for Trump nationwide, Wilson explained.
Survey data can be found here. It’s fairly consistent with other polls we have seen – voters under 50 go for Clinton, Trump has less support among Anglos than Republicans usually get but has weirdly high levels of black and Latino support, which may be a function of small samples and over-weighting (see the story of the most influential 19-year-old black voter in Illinois ever for an example of that). The main thing I want to highlight is that this is not only Hillary Clinton’s highest poll total (not counting that one weird SurveyMonkey result), it’s the best Democratic result in any poll since President Obama recorded 43% in a PPP survey in April of 2012. All other close poll results had one or both candidates in the 30s, with upwards of 20% undecided, while this poll has only five percent undecided.
What that means is this: Given the high levels of voter registration, if we have as Texas Monthly posits the same level of turnout as we had in 2012, we’re looking at nearly 3.8 million Democratic Presidential votes, given 43% support for Clinton. That’s an increase of over 400,000 from 2012 and over 200,000 from 2008, and that’s before we take into account any other possible factors. (Trump, in this calculation, would be a bit above 4.1 million voters.) It’s still just one result, and it counts a a bit of an outlier (though not by much), but if you’re a Democrat you have to like the direction this appears to be going. The Trib, the Current, and the Star-Telegram have more.
If the Democratic Party concentrates on getting out the Latino vote there is good chance that Texas will be blue this year. The Muslims, Asians, and educated women will be out there. The African American vote especially here in Harris County should also be worked.
I can hope for a Blue Texas, it is within reach.
@Neither:
The thing I can’t figure out about women is, aren’t at least some of them married? Don’t those married women talk about this kind of stuff at the dinner table with their husbands? Most couples I know have similar political beliefs and generally vote (or don’t) in lock step. I can see women holding their noses to vote Trump, because of his boorish behavior, but as long as I have been voting, I have seen people hold their noses, so that’s not a new concept.
Other than the generic smear, “hey, Trump hates women,” I can’t figure out why otherwise conservative leaning women wouldn’t be voting Trump. Is he planning executive orders to put into law that women must be barefoot and in the kitchen or face arrest? What, exactly, if elected, could Trump do to hurt American citizen women?
I also don’t understand how you see Asians block voting for Trump. They are generally productive, hard working, many small business owners…..that sounds a lot like Trump’s base.
I do agree Hillary will get the Latino vote, mainly due to machismo. Any dispassionate person understands the difference between legal and illegal, but the machismo Mexican culture overlooks that, because Trump singled out Mexicans, and of course she will get the majority of the black vote. She has great overseers like Sheila Jackson Lee to thank for that, but again, they will be voting against their own self interests to stay with Hillary. Bringing back jobs by repatriating US business money from overseas, coupled with deporting illegals will provide more job opportunities for black people in particular, as well as increase wages, especially entry level wages.
I think you are correct about the Muslim vote, too, but again, that puts their votes at odds with reality. Keeping out Muslim terrorists (Trump’s goal) helps their community more than letting them in. Fewer acts of Muslim terror mean they won’t get profiled as much here, plus, they are potential victims of Muslim terror, too.
Bill,
Your post is pretty funny.
@Brad:
Disagree? Pick it apart, piece by piece. Which assertions do you disagree with, and why?
I think when normal GOP voters have stepped in Trump doo and they can’t get it off their shoe and the stink is just simply awful and won’t go away and continues to get smellier by the day you’ve simply got to throw away the shoes altogether.
Lots of Texans throwing away the shoes right now.
I will be interested to see the election returns in my +80% Republican voting precinct.
Bill,
“The thing I can’t figure out about…” summed it up.
There is reality and then there is “reality” as in reality show perception.
@Bill Daniels. Just a few points about your distorted worldview:
(1) Women – You ask why women don’t vote in lockstep with their husbands, but you don’t ask why men don’t vote in lockstep with their wives. Your selective sense of wonder is telling.
As to why “otherwise conservative leaning women” won’t “hold their noses” and vote for Trump, I think it’s pretty clear: Hillary is the center-right candidate in this race. (That’s why I won’t vote for her.) Trump has no conservative credentials and no genuine conservative policy ideas. He has alt-right talking points, and, given his history as a businessman of cheating his workers and leaving his associates out to dry, there’s little chance he’ll follow through on even those proposals. Trump’s lack of substance has made this election about him personally. And as a person, he is no conservative. Look at his life.
(2) Asians – You say you “don’t understand how” Asians aren’t voting for Trump. There’s kind of that whole smearing-of-immigrants and inherent-racism thing going on in his campaign, though. I agree that they are productive and hardworking, but that is true about all but the top 1% of the people in this country. The statistics debunk your implied theory about Trump voters being the only hardworking people in this country. Being working-class does not a Trump voter make. Having less education that average, living in isolated communities, and have authoritarian impulses is the key to his coalition.
(3) Hispanics – “Machismo” is why Trump has majority support among uneducated white (that is, Anglo) men nationwide. I’ll quote Wikipedia here: machismo is “a strong sense of masculine pride … [with] the supreme valuation of characteristics culturally associated with the masculine and by implication some say, a denigration of characteristics associated with the feminine” or the “condescension of the swaggering male; the trappings of manliness used to dominate women and keep them ‘in their place.'” Machismo, along with other -isms, is a driving force for Trump supporters. That you think it is confined to Mexican men says a great deal about your racial/ethnic ideology. (Also, your theory that Trump’s slandering of Mexicans causes a machismo response ignores the large number of Hispanics from other countries that are rejecting him.)
Having said that, machismo among some Hispanics (both men and women) explains why Trump has ANY Latino support. There are people in every demographic group who get a kick out of Trump’s sexism.
(4) Blacks – I don’t need to say much here. Sheila Jackson Lee has her (many) problems, but likening her to a “great overseer” is incomprehensible. She is very active in her community and works for her support. Contrary to the right-wing meme, black voters are capable of voting for their real interests and overwhelmingly do. That’s why, despite the cultural conservatism of most black churches, they vote for candidates on the left. They have not been deluded by the culture wars like many Anglos have been. They also know that deporting hardworking undocumented workers will not improve their lot. It won’t solve the mass incarceration of their people. Nor will it solve the racial wage gap that predated recent immigration. Whites doing the same work as blacks still get paid more. The idea that immigration lowers black wages but not white wages for the exact same work makes no economic sense.
(5) Muslims – Trump wants to stop all Muslims from coming into the country AND surveil the ones here. He wants informers and spies throughout their communities, regardless of whether more Muslims come in. The “poisoned Skittles” view can easily be turned against Muslim-Americans, and they know that Trump has no qualms about doing so if it will help him politically.
ES: Couldn’t have said this any better.
Bill, I wonder if you know the meaning of conservative?
ok Bill #4 is right on the nose! ✊
If Bernie supporters like me go ahead ahead and vote for HRC, we can deliver a Texas win for the Democrats. Please notice, she has not pivoted to the right as many expected, and she will not waste years trying to curry favor with the Republicans who are burning the White House down around her, like Barack did. A Texas win will do many things, including giving the likes of Karl Rove, Dan Patrick and Jared Woodfill terminal butt burn. Is this not a worthy outcome? Please don’t waste your vote for the idiot Gary Johnson or Jill. Let’s sock it to em instead.