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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott widens lead on Beto O’Rourke in new poll

Abbott’s recent flood of TV ads, which for weeks went unanswered, and voters’ slight rightward tilt on abortion, the border and crime may have helped the two-term incumbent.

AUSTIN — Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has gained on Democrat Beto O’Rourke in the high-stakes race for Texas governor and now has a 9-point cushion, up from 7 points last month.

According to a new poll from The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler, Abbott leads O’Rourke 47% to 38%.

The poll, conducted Sept. 6-13, surveyed 1,268 registered voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.9 percentage points.

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Abbott’s recent flood of TV ads, which for weeks went unanswered, and voters’ slight rightward tilt on abortion, the border and crime may have helped the two-term incumbent build on a 46%-39% lead in August, two political scientists agreed.

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“A clear change in the election is that the Abbott campaign started advertising and they went negative, while being the only campaign on the air,” said poll director Mark Owens, who teaches political science at UT-Tyler. “Registered voters who say they saw the advertisements supported Gov. Abbott 23% more often.”

University of Houston professor Brandon Rottinghaus said Abbott’s “solid and even growing lead” is a natural result of “the incumbency advantage” — his edge in money, broadcasting airtime and name recognition.

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After a spring and summer in which the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe vs. Wade and the mass shooting at a Uvalde elementary school boosted O’Rourke, the traditional heating up of campaigns after Labor Day has brought Abbott to more friendly terrain on matters of most concern to voters, Rottinghaus said.

“There are issues that will cut in favor of Democrats,” he said. “But the race will be won and lost based upon what Texans think is the most important thing the state should do, and on that Abbott’s got a better position.

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“People mostly are worried about the border and the economy. And when the race is about those things, Abbott’s in better shape because he’s perceived to handle those things much better.”

Will busing migrants hurt Abbott?

Abbott’s marks on the top issue he’s stressing — a surge of migrants across the Rio Grande — have improved, the poll found.

As has been the case for months, a majority of Texans approved of how Abbott is handling immigration at the Texas-Mexico border, 52% to 39%, and of many of his actions, such as truck inspections and deployment of National Guard and state police. Only a plurality of 48%, though, backed using state money to extend the border wall.

The governor’s net favorable rating for his border security push is 13 percentage points, up from 9 points last month.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden’s net unfavorable rating among Texans on his handling of the border grew worse: Just 30% approved while 59% disapproved, a slide of 8 points from August, when the split was 34%-55%.

The bus travel to Washington and other northern cities he’s provided for migrants was endorsed by 54% of respondents, while 29% disapproved.

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It has sparked outcries, especially after he sent buses to Vice President Kamala Harris’ official residence.

“That’s just a scar on humanity and a real true crime,” respondent Christopher Alston, 53, of Plano said of Abbott’s migrant busing.

“Those people are destitute and then they get jacked around like they’re a card, like it’s a game,” said Alston, the owner of a landscaping business who said he supports O’Rourke. “We need to relocate Abbott to the middle of Russia.”

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Eva McElhearn, a 47-year-old insurance company employee from Denison, said she supports Abbott because she likes how he’s handling the border.

Of Abbott’s highly publicized busing of migrants to Harris’ residence, she said, “Actually, that’s a good step because someone needs to address the situation and Texas shouldn’t just be the only one having to deal with the illegal immigrants coming over the border. … I have no objection to people wanting to come to America but they need to do it legally.”

Other statewide races

Elsewhere on the ballot, the poll found other Democratic hopefuls fading — and slightly more than O’Rourke did.

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In what remains the most competitive statewide contest, the November race for Texas attorney general, Democratic challenger Rochelle Garza trailed Republican Ken Paxton by 37% to 30%. That’s a 5-point deterioration in her position in August, when she trailed by just 2.

Garza, a former ACLU lawyer, hopes to capitalize on Paxton’s legal woes, including a 2015 indictment on securities fraud and an FBI investigation into allegations of bribery and public corruption.

Paxton has denied wrongdoing. Just 34% of registered voters agreed the two-term incumbent AG has the integrity to serve as Texas’ top lawyer, while 35% disagreed and 31% were unsure. Last week, Paxton got good news when a judge delayed his deposition in a separate civil suit accusing him of securities fraud until after the Nov. 8 election.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has a 39% to 28% lead over Democrat Mike Collier, a rematch of their 2018 contest.

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Patrick, who in his role as president of the Texas Senate has pushed conservative legislation, has a mixed approval rating, with 40% approving of his performance and 40% disapproving. Nineteen percent of respondents neither approve nor disapprove of Patrick.

Abbott, O’Rourke trade jabs on police, abortion

In the past 10 days, Abbott campaign commercials have blistered O’Rourke as a progressive eager to defund police, an assertion O’Rourke has denied.

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The News and UT-Tyler’s poll tested whether respondents had seen the two rivals’ ads. The ones most frequently seen were Abbott’s positive spots in which he spoke to camera about his father’s death while he was a student at Duncanville High, and his wife, Cecilia, spoke of the tree collapse that crushed his spine and put him in a wheelchair.

Owens, the pollster, said the commercial Abbott launched Sept. 6, attacking O’Rourke as a threat to Texans’ personal safety, appeared at least initially to be effective.

Only 25% of registered voters believed O’Rourke’s comment at a rally earlier this month that he disagrees with the public calls for defunding the police, Owens noted.

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“When voters think O’Rourke supports defunding the police, they support Gov. Abbott 68%-20%,” he said. And 3 in 5 voters oppose slashing police departments’ funding, the poll found.

O’Rourke, appearing to conserve his cash for later in the campaign, skipped running any biographical spots and made a light buy on Aug. 25 for an ad attacking Abbott-backed laws that virtually ban abortion in Texas. Otherwise, for three weeks and three days, Abbott had the airwaves to himself — until O’Rourke on Sept. 9 ran a statewide commercial in which a Fort Worth couple cited the state’s “trigger law” on abortion as too extreme.

“Beto’s early ads held details that were effective in attracting voter support on the issue of abortion,” UT-Tyler’s Owens said. “Most voters believe it is true that the trigger law brings penalties of up to life in prison or $100,000 in fines; those who do are split on who they will vote for. Voters who believe the claim to be false support Abbott by 7% and Abbott has a 21% lead among those who do not know about the penalty at all.”

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UH’s Rottinghaus, though, said that after initial alarm at the Supreme Court’s June decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, support in polls for abortion access is “pretty split.”

In The News and UT-Tyler’s latest poll, support for toppling the 1973 ruling that gave women a right to choose to end pregnancies in the first trimester ticked up.

In August, 42% backed overturning Roe, with 49% opposed. But this month, 46% supported and 46% opposed. Opinions on whether abortion should be illegal or legal went from 44% illegal and 55% legal last month to 49% illegal and 50% legal this month.

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“The abortion access issue certainly cuts in O’Rourke’s favor, but it’s not clear it’s going to be the number one issue for voters in the midterms,” Rottinghaus said. “If that’s the case, then O’Rourke is going to struggle to rally the groups that he needs to peel off from Abbott’s coalition to win.”

Owens stressed that it’s early in the fall contest and while early deciders may have moved to Abbott’s side, O’Rourke still has good prospects with late-deciding voters.

According to AdImpact, an ad tracking firm, Abbott spent $10.3 million on broadcast, cable and digital ads between Aug. 16 and Sept. 15, compared with only $1.9 million by O’Rourke and $1.8 million by Coulda Been Worse, an anonymous group of donors opposing Abbott. In the campaign’s final weeks, O’Rourke, who outraised the incumbent by pulling in $27.6 million between Feb. 20 and June 30, should be more nearly competing with Abbott on ad buys.

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Methodology

The Dallas Morning News/UT-Tyler Poll is a statewide random sample of 1,268 registered voters conducted Sept. 6 and 13. The mixed-mode sample includes 318 registered voters surveyed over the phone by the University of Texas at Tyler with support from ReconMR and 950 registered voters randomly selected from Dynata’s panel of online respondents. The margin of error for a sample of 1,268 registered voters in Texas is plus or minus 2.9 percentage points, and the more conservative margin of sampling error that includes design effects from this poll is plus or minus 3.2 percentage points for a 95% confidence interval.

The online and phone surveys were conducted in English and Spanish. Using information from the 2020 Current Population Survey and Office of the Texas Secretary of State. The sample’s gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, metropolitan density and vote choice were matched to the population of registered voters in Texas.

Visit http://www.uttyler.edu/politicalscience/pollingcenter for more information about our current and previous studies.