A slightly more Republican sample leads to slightly better numbers for Trump in Texas, though they’re still not great.
Texas voters are split over whether President Donald Trump should be impeached, though only 43% of voters in the Lone Star State approve of the president’s overall job performance.
That divided snapshot comes from a new survey released on Monday by the University of Texas at Tyler.
With House impeachment hearings now underway, nearly 47% of registered voters in Texas do not believe that Trump should be impeached over allegations that he abused his office to pressure Ukraine to investigate one of his political rivals, former Vice President Joe Biden.
But nearly 45% of Texas voters do think Trump should be impeached.
The results are split mostly along partisan lines, with nearly 84% of Democrats supporting impeachment and more than 81% of Republicans opposing it. They also come as more Texas voters than not disapprove of Trump’s performance in the White House, per the survey.
The jumbled picture could loom over the 2020 presidential race, particularly as Democrats insist that Texas — and its 38 electoral votes — could be in play for the first time in decades.
“There is still much work left to be done in Texas” for Trump, said Mark Owens, a UT-Tyler assistant professor who helped conduct the poll. “It’s going to look to be a more competitive race in Texas than it was in 2016.”
See here for the September UT-Tyler poll, and here for July. The November press release from UT-Tyler is here, and the data is here. I’m going to highlight three things from these polls.
Dem or GOP?
Dem GOP
=================
Jul 35.7% 38.2%
Sep 40.0% 40.2%
Nov 35.0% 38.9%
Approve/disapprove
Appr Disappr
===================
Jul 40.3% 54.5%
Sep 39.6% 52.3%
Nov 43.3% 49.0%
Vote for Trump?
Best Worst
=================
Jul 38.6% 37.1%
Sep 39.7% 38.0%
Nov 46.3% 44.2%
The numbers are taken from each month’s poll results. The sample, which is one of those phone/online opt-in hybrids, was more Republican this time than previously. That’s likely going to fluctuate over time, but I’m noting it here as a way of showing that such changes can have an effect on the rest of the numbers. The “Vote for Trump?” numbers are the highest and lowest values he received from the various matchups against different Dems. My point here is simply that these numbers tend to reflect the approval number for Trump, though this time they were all a bit above it, and previously they were generally a bit below it.
We can also break the approval numbers down by partisan ID:
Approve/disapprove by party
Appr Disappr
=======================
Dem Jul 9.3% 87.8%
Ind Jul 17.0% 73.2%
GOP Jul 85.1% 10.8%
Dem Sep 5.0% 89.4%
Ind Sep 23.5% 59.8%
GOP Sep 81.9% 11.9%
Dem Nov 7.0% 86.5%
Ind Nov 33.6% 54.3%
GOP Nov 81.5% 12.2%
Republicans actually approve of Trump less than before and disapprove of him more, though both by small enough amounts that I wouldn’t read much into it. Independents are more favorable to him, though they started out way in the dumps and still aren’t at all approving overall. I don’t know that I’d make all that much of this either, but we’ll keep an eye on it. As always, these are just data points by themselves. I’m glad UT-Tyler is doing this as often as they have been, we should end up with a pretty good data series when all is said and done. The Texas Signal has more.