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Trump erases Biden’s lead in Texas, as Hegar chips away at Cornyn’s edge in Senate race

New Dallas Morning News/UT-Tyler poll shows Texas remains a battleground, but the president has regained momentum despite ongoing pandemic and economic woes.

WASHINGTON – Texas remains a toss-up in the presidential race. But Democrat Joe Biden’s modest – and somewhat startling – lead over President Donald Trump has evaporated in the last two months.

From a 5-point edge in early July, Biden now lags Trump by 2 points among likely Texas voters in a poll released Sunday by The Dallas Morning News and University of Texas at Tyler.

Trump’s lead is 48-46.

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That turnaround is sure to gladden the hearts of Republicans, who have no hope of controlling the White House without Texas.

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But as Trump has clawed his way back into contention just in time for the post-Labor Day sprint, Sen. John Cornyn has lost ground against Democrat MJ Hegar. His lead now stands at 11 points, down from 13 in early July.

But nearly 3 in 10 voters remain undecided, making for a potentially volatile fall.

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“Trump is ahead,” said political scientist Mark Owens, who directed the poll, adding that the fates of the two Republicans at the top of the ticket are closely entwined. “Trump is helped by Cornyn.”

The poll, conducted Aug. 28 to Sept. 2, surveyed 1,176 registered voters. Of those, 901 said they are “extremely likely” to vote in November. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.87 percentage points for the bigger group, and 3.22 points for the subset of likely voters.

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The news is better for Biden among registered voters, and since elections hinge on enthusiasm and turnout, it’s worth paying attention to all potential voters and not just those who are already sure to cast ballots.

Biden leads 44-43 with that broader group, though he led by 5 points two months ago.

Texas is a firewall for Republicans in presidential contests, as long as they can hang onto it. Trump won the state by just 9 points four years ago, the worst showing for a GOP nominee since President Gerald Ford lost the state and his job in 1976.

The new poll shows Trump in his best shape in months, though still a long way from even that anemic victory margin against Hillary Clinton.

“I will be shocked if Biden carries Texas,” said poll respondent Terri Sharman of Tyler, 62, a retired elementary school teacher who badly wants Trump out of power, if for no other reason than his use of the White House for his convention speech.

“That should be sacred land. It belongs to the people. It belongs to both parties,” she said. “He could have picked anyplace… but nobody up there will tell him no, about anything.”

In April, Biden and Trump were tied in The News/UT-Tyler survey. By early July, the former vice president had pulled ahead, 48-43 among likely voters – remarkable given that Democrats haven’t won a statewide contest since 1994.

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The surge coincided with nationwide unrest over police killings, mass joblessness and growing unease over Trump’s handling of COVID-19.

The pandemic still hangs heavy over the election.

Nearly half of Texans polled know someone who has contracted the coronavirus that has swept the globe, killing more than 13,000 Texans in six months and roughly 187,000 people nationally. Nearly 1 in 4 Texans personally knows someone who has died – a friend, relative or co-worker.

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With his popularity flagging in Texas, Trump flew to the Midland-Odessa area on July 29 to stump at an oil rig and warn that Biden’s policies would kill energy jobs. The impact is hard to gauge. But a month later, with urban protests ebbing, momentum now appears to be on Trump’s side.

Biden’s choice of running mate doesn’t seem to be a factor so far, though they’re equally polarizing.

Overall, both Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris enjoy favorable impressions from 42% of Texans, and unfavorable impressions from 42% as well. But only 12% of Democrats view Pence favorably, and only 12% of Republicans view Biden’s pick for vice president favorably.

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The Biden camp has made noise about making a serious play for Texas. It has ramped up efforts with near-daily video events featuring Texas Democratic officials – congressmen, state legislators and others who blast Trump over the pandemic, the economy, the need for more relief measures, and other topics.

Trump strategists continue to scoff.

“I don’t think Biden’s ultimately going to spend 6 million bucks in Texas,” senior campaign adviser Jason Miller said last week on a state of the race briefing call with reporters. “I think it would be great if he did. I’d welcome him to it. Texas TV stations would love to have it.”

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Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Trump’s Texas chairman, stumped on his behalf by bus last week, telling reporters in San Antonio that he’s “100% confident” the president will win. With him was Brad Parscale, ousted as campaign manager in mid-July in a staff shake-up. He asserted that Biden’s efforts in Texas amount to “smoke and mirrors.”

Biden’s state director, Rebecca Acuña, disputed that, noting that for the first time in a generation, national Democrats are poised to send money into Texas on behalf of a presidential nominee.

So far that’s more promise than delivery.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett, an Austin Democrat, also took issue with the Trump team’s boasts.

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“We can be sure that Dan Patrick’s not riding a bus across Texas because he thinks the race is already won,” he said on a video call with reporters for the Biden campaign. “The kind of activity they have out there shows that it is a really a neck-and-neck race.”

At 40%, Trump’s job approval is remarkably low for a president seeking a second term, and it’s down from 45% in April. That makes him – and GOP allies like Cornyn – vulnerable.

So does the tepid level of approval from his own party. Only 53% of Republicans approve of Trump’s job performance, while two-thirds of Democrats disapprove.

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The polarized electorate has doubts about whether either contender will keep his promises.

Just half of voters think Trump will. But that’s a bit better than the 47% who trust Biden to deliver on his promises.

One danger spot for Biden is soft support among Hispanic voters. Although he leads 3-1, his Hispanic backers aren’t as firm in their pick as white and Black supporters are.

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“Especially now that the economy’s taken a massive hit, more than ever we need somebody who’s able to bring the economy back,” said poll respondent Christopher Giambelluca of Sugar Land, 38, who owns B.B. Wolf’s, a music venue and bar.

A Republican, four years ago he couldn’t bring himself to vote for Trump so he wrote in his own name. Now, he said, “He’s 100% got my vote.”

Hegar closing in on Cornyn, slightly

In the Senate race, Hegar is closing in – but not enough so far to make it a nail-biter.

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Cornyn leads 39-28 among likely voters in The News/UT-Tyler poll, with 28% undecided and lots of voters admitting they know very little about either contender.

The senator coasted to reelection six years ago 62-34. He won his first two Senate contests 55-43. But Texas has been changing, and it’s a potential red flag that an incumbent is so far below 50%.

In 2018, Sen. Ted Cruz barely survived. Former El Paso congressman Beto O’Rourke came within 2.6 percentage points, a sign of slipping GOP dominance in Texas.

Hegar, who earned a Distinguished Flying Cross and Purple Heart flying helicopters for the Air Force in Afghanistan, lost a congressional race in the Austin area that year. Beyond that home turf, she remains a relative blank slate.

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Half of Texas voters polled had no opinion or didn’t know enough about her to say if they view her favorably.

That’s the definition of a candidate who hasn’t been defined yet.

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Cornyn will no doubt try to change that in the next two months, and he has the war chest to do it. Expect a barrage of negative ads as he tries to fill in the blanks.

He derides her as “Hollywood Hegar” and, despite her relatively moderate agenda, has warned supporters that the left “want to fundamentally transform this country into a socialist `utopia.’ "

“She’s up against some pretty long odds,” O’Rourke said during an online fundraising event with Hegar Thursday night. “The last time that Texas elected a Democrat U.S. Senate was 1988.”

Hegar paints Cornyn as a “boot licker” who’ll go along with anything Trump wants. She boasted Saturday to donors that “all the signs point to this race being one of the closest of 2020” and asserted that Cornyn’s “DC bosses” have “been pouring money into his campaign” to avert defeat.

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More than 1 in 4 Texas voters either have no opinion about Cornyn or don’t know enough to say if they think he’s doing a good job – a high ratio for a senator with nearly 18 years in office. Although more voters view him favorably than unfavorably (40-32), a remarkable 10% of Republicans hold an unfavorable view – presumably because he’s not strident or conservative enough for their liking.

Hegar’s ratio is much better (32-18), among the plurality who know her.

“Sen. Cornyn has a proven record of delivering for all Texans,” including $20 billion in federal COVID relief, said spokesman Travis Considine, responding to the poll results. “The only money pouring into Texas because of MJ Hegar is from national Democrats who are using millions of dollars in special interest money to compensate for the fact MJ refuses to offer voters specific solutions to our greatest challenges.”

The results roughly track with other recent surveys.

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A Quinnipiac University poll in mid-July showed Hegar holding Cornyn to a 47-38 lead. On its face a 9-point margin is comfortable, though that was just days after Hegar nabbed the nomination in a July 14 primary runoff.


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Convention bounce?

Nearly two-thirds of voters watched some of the conventions, though most stuck to the party they already prefer, meaning the opportunity for the events to lure anyone from the other team was minimal.

But the conventions did accomplish another goal: shoring up support among the base.

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A solid 78% of Republicans said the GOP convention left them with a more favorable impression of Trump, though two-thirds of Democrats said they had an even less favorable impression of the president than before.

The numbers were nearly identical on the other side: 77% of Democrats came away from that party’s convention feeling even better about Biden, and two-thirds of Republicans felt worse about him.

Two voters did watch both conventions: Sharman, the Tyler Democrat, and Giambelluca, the Republican from suburban Houston.

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Both wanted to compare the messages and presentation to cast an informed vote.

Giambelluca was turned off by the Democrats’ gloomy portrait of America.

“I just left with a sense of anxiety and an overall feeling of dismay at the country and the spot that we’re in,” he said. “The entire thing just seemed like Trump and America bashing. From what I heard they never said anything on policies, never said anything on the game plan going forward. It was just an attack fest.”

Trump’s convention, by contrast, left him “proud of my country” and optimistic of the direction that we’re going, despite the troubling times that we’re in.”

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Sharmin’s view was the mirror image.

Despite the “conspiracies going around,” she said, Biden showed support for law enforcement. And he talked about how he’ll boost the economy.

“All Trump did was talk about how wonderful he is and … most of what he said was not true,” she said. “Every morning you wake up and it’s a fresh hell.”


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Methodology

The Dallas Morning News/UT Tyler Poll reflects a sample of 1,176 registered voters during the six days between Aug. 28 and Sept. 2. The mixed-mode sample includes 332 registered voters who were surveyed over the phone by the Center for Opinion Research with support from ReconMR, and 844 registered voters randomly selected from Dynata’s panel of registered voters that was stratified to match the demographics of Texas’s registered voter population. The online and phone surveys were conducted in English and Spanish.

In this poll, the sampling error for 1,176 registered voters in Texas is +/- 2.87 percentage points at a 95% confidence interval. Within the sample there are also 901 likely voters, who are “extremely likely” to vote in November’s election. Also, in our phone sample we verified how frequently the voter participated in past general elections. The margin of error for our sample of likely voters is 3.22.

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Correction, 5:15 p.m. Sept. 10: In a graphic in an earlier version of this story, the last name of Libertarian U.S. Senate candidate Kerry McKennon was incorrect.

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