New polling shows that while Texas is still a red state and Hispanics strongly oppose Democrat President Joe Biden, Democrat statewide candidates are running stronger than expected and are within striking distance of winning in a state where polling has been largely accurate.
The latest University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs poll finds Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott leading his Democrat challenger, former U.S. Congressman Robert Francis “Beto” O'Rourke by a 49 percent to 44 percent margin.
In the race for lieutenant governor, a powerful position in Texas, Republican incumbent Dan Patrick led Democrat challenger Mike Collier 48 percent to 43 percent.
For attorney general, Republican incumbent Ken Paxton led Democrat challenger Rochelle Garza 46 percent to 41 percent.
While Republicans often dismiss polling as “rigged” and Democrats have predicted for years they will “turn Texas blue,” only to fail, midterm polling in Texas has largely been accurate.
In fact, past Texas midterm polls leaned against Democrats and a five percent could quickly evaporate into a too-close-to-call race.
In 2018, polling showed Abbott running an average of 16.7 percent ahead of Democrat challenger Lupe Valdez. Abbott won by a slightly smaller margin of 13.3 percent.
That same year polling showed U.S. Senator Ted Cruz comfortably ahead of Democrat challenger Beto O'Rouke by an average of 6.8 percent.
Cruz won by just 2.6 percent, far smaller than predicted.
In 2020, President Donald Trump did better against Joe Biden in Texas than polls predicted, winning by 5.8 percent after leading polls by an average of just 1.3 percent.
However, in 2016 Trump's 9.0 margin of victory over Hillary Clinton was narrower than his average 11.7 percent lead – also a sign of how Texas has grown “bluer” in six years.
Democrats are running better than expected in Texas, despite widespread opposition to how the economy is performing under Democrat control.
“When asked to what extent 15 issues would be important to their gubernatorial vote choice, more than three-fourths of Texas likely voters listed these five policies as being extremely or very important: inflation (84%), crime and public safety (83%), economic growth (78%), government spending and taxes (78%), and health care costs (76%),” the poll reports. Republican staying power appears to be driven by Democrats' radical social and environmental agenda, with Hispanics in areas of South Texas enriched by fracking turning to Republican candidates over issues like taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand and plans to outlaw oil and gas drilling.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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That will never happen! We have common sense in Texas
You also have many California refugees bringing their democrat loving ways intent on flipping off Texas.
Don’t confuse election fraud with “tightening of the race”. Stop the fraud and the “tightening will disappear.
With all the destruction of their state and they are thinking about going blue. They must be out of their minds. This President has caused nothing but problems for them on the border and hasn’t even come to the border to see the crisis they have created. How could anyone in their right mind vote for this party.
You answered your own question. Nobody in their right mind would vote for a Democrat. Probably why the 88 million people voted for Biden. By the way, I know it was no where near 88 million – or 88 for that matter.
You forgot one small thing regarding the polls – Joe Biden wasn’t president when Democrats had a small chance of turning Texas blue. Now that he is president no Texan with two active brain cells would vote for a Democrat. We see how he’s screwing up and want no part of it. As for the issues of importance, I didn’t see illegal immigration having a percentage and that’s just wrong. Most Texans I know (and I live here) would put illegal immigration way at the top because if illegals weren’t invading us we would be much better off. We need to get the wall finished.
If the problem is all those who abandoned California, NY, etc, my guess is they weren’t smart enough to leave their liberal baggage behind and brought the baggage with them. Guess they don’t mind relocating, Watch out Florida, you may be next.
Gotta make jes ONE statement – who the hell ran the poll – yepper, thas raht – the UofH!. A totally libtard bunch of flunkys in a totally libtard area of Texas. I doubt very much the final voting will reflect anything close to what those idiots predict. Sorry to say, I am an extreme conservative from californication and the ONLY people I know that are moving to Texas are people like me that cannot stand the crap that is going on in this once-great state, and are letting their wheels do the talking for them.
Better NOT
This is the inevitable result of Texans letting Californians relocate to their state – if the Texans had told the Californians to piss off back to their state and learn to vote properly then this wouldn’t be an issue.