Wendy Davis
Between August 31 and September 4, Garin-Hart-Yang interviewed a representative sample of 401 likely general election voters in Texas-21st CD. The survey, which was conducted on both landlines and cell phones, was fully representative of an expected November 2020 general election by key factors such as gender, age, geography, and race. The survey’s margin of error is +5%. The following are the key findings:
1. Joe Biden slight advantage in the presidential race is basically unchanged since our mid-July poll. The Vice President leads Donald Trump by 49% to 47%, compared to the 50% to 47% margin in the last survey.
2. The mid-July survey had the congressional candidates virtually tied, with Congressman Chip Roy ahead by one point. In the latest poll we find Wendy Davis with a one-point lead. Realistically, the Davis-Roy match-up continues to be extremely competitive and likely to remain a dead-heat.
One important finding is that despite several weeks of Club for Growth negative TV ads, Wendy’s initial TV ads emphasizing her inspiring personal story and bipartisan work in the Texas Senate are resonating with voters. Since our last survey, we find an increase in voters attributing positive sentiment to Wendy, including sizable gains for her among Independent voters.
See here for some background, and here for the Patrick Svitek tweet that you knew would be the source. CD21 has been a pretty good bellwether for the state as a whole these last couple of elections:
2016 District State
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Smith 57.1%
Wakely 36.5%
Trump 51.9% 52.2%
Clinton 42.1% 43.2%
Christian 53.9% 53.1%
Yarbrough 34.6% 38.4%
Keasler 56.7% 55.0%
Burns 38.1% 40.9%
2018 District State
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Roy 50.2%
Kopser 47.6%
Cruz 49.6% 50.9%
O'Rourke 49.5% 48.3%
Abbott 55.0% 55.8%
Valdez 42.8% 42.5%
Patrick 50.6% 51.3%
Collier 46.8% 46.5%
Craddick 53.3% 53.2%
McAllen 43.4% 43.9%
Hervey 54.3% 54.2%
Franklin 45.7% 45.8%
Closer correlations in 2018 than 2016, but they’re both in the ballpark. Ted Cruz underperformed relative to his peers. Lamar Smith ran ahead of the typical Republican, both in the district and statewide, while Chip Roy ran a little behind them. Don’t know if any of this means anything for 2020, but I’ll venture that CD21 will resemble the state as a whole fairly well. I don’t think Wendy Davis needs Joe Biden to carry the state to win, but as with any of the other hot races, the better he does, the better her odds are likely to be.
There have been several internal polls in Texas that have sounded way too optimistic for Democrats. However, these internal Davis polls sound pretty believable. For instance, if Davis is really tied with Roy, I have a hard time believing that Celina Montoya is really up by 7 as claimed is this poll :
https://static.texastribune.org/media/files/242e94693718114a341b3fe40e475ba9/Celina%20Montoya%20HD%20121%20Poll%20Memo.pdf
I think HD 121 and CD 21 will end up with a pretty similar partisan split like they did in 2018.