By Robert T. Garrett
AUSTIN — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott still leads Democrat Beto O’Rourke by 7 percentage points, 46-39, in this year’s race, according to a Dallas Morning News-University of Texas at Tyler poll released Sunday.
That’s essentially unchanged from the incumbent’s 45-38 lead over O’Rourke in February.
On the eve of the start of early voting in the May 24 primary runoffs, Attorney General Ken Paxton leads fellow Republican and state Land Commissioner George P. Bush, 41-35.
On the Democratic side, former ACLU lawyer Rochelle Garza of Brownsville leads former Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski for the party’s attorney general nomination, 35-20.
In the Democratic runoff to choose the party’s nominee against the state’s No. 2 official, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Carrollton state Rep. Michelle Beckley leads Houston accountant Mike Collier, 31-19.
The poll, conducted May 2-10, surveyed 1,232 registered voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Among the survey’s signals that state voters’ mood has soured was a bump in the percentage of voters who say Texas is heading in the wrong direction – to 56% this month, up from 49% in February.
Governor’s race
Abbott enjoys a huge fundraising lead, and 60% of voters say the incumbent Republican has been most visible on TV. Just 25% say O’Rourke is the candidate most noticeable on television.
As for social media, 41% say O’Rourke has been most visible on such platforms. 38% say Abbott’s more visible.
Abbott has a 10-percentage-point lead among independent voters, 16-6, and he’s clobbering O’Rourke among whites, 58-30. The former El Paso congressman, though, has the edge among women (44-40), Blacks (59-16) and Latinos (46-36). Delilah Barrios and Mark Tippetts, the gubernatorial nominees, respectively, of the Green Party and Libertarian Party, are each drawing 3%.
Abbott faces some potential vulnerabilities, the poll found.
By 42-41, all voters say they trust O’Rourke more than Abbott to implement policies at the Texas-Mexico border. The party splits were predictable: Democrats trust O’Rourke, 82-7, while Republicans trust Abbott, 73-10.
Abbott, who has been making noises about possibly being the first modern-day Texas Republican to carry the Hispanic vote, is trusted more on border policy by only 29% of Latinos. 52% of Hispanics trust O’Rourke more, the poll found.
AG, lieutenant governor
Paxton had a double-digit lead over Bush in the four most recent polls by The News and UT-Tyler.
The incumbent’s lead is now 6 percentage points (41-35, which is within the poll’s margin of error). March’s primary field of four major GOP candidates for attorney general has narrowed to two.
Also, Bush’s “campaign of righteousness” – he predicts Paxton will be indicted by Biden’s Justice Department before November – and the continuing negative publicity about Paxton’s legal troubles may be taking a toll on the two-term GOP incumbent’s November prospects.
While Republican voters haven’t budged and continue to say has the integrity needed to serve as the state’s top lawyer (by 49-16), for the first time a plurality of all voters disagree: 37% say Paxton doesn’t have the requisite integrity, while 30% say he does. That compares with close divisions of opinion among all voters on Paxton’s honesty in November, January and February. Last June, by 33-25, they agreed Paxton has the needed integrity.
In closing TV spots, Bush is highlighting Paxton’s nearly seven-year-old indictment on securities fraud charges and allegations by whistleblowers that Paxton acted corruptly on behalf of campaign donor and real estate developer Nate Paul.
In a statewide survey last month by former Dallas state Rep. Jason Villalba’s Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation, two out of five likely Republican primary voters said that they would never vote for Bush. Of them, 66% cited the fact he’s a member of the Bush family, a storied one in American politics that has included presidents, governors and a U.S. senator.
This month, 32-year-old William Nalley of Fort Bend County told UT-Tyler’s poll takers, “I would not vote for the Bush candidate.”
On the Democratic side, the finalists Garza and Jaworski haven’t had enough money for statewide TV ads, and aren’t well-known. A political newcomer, Garza appears to have “ballot name advantages” as a Latina. She’s held Jaworski, the grandson of Watergate prosecutor Leon Jaworski, to a 26-26 split among whites and is lapping him among Hispanics, 44-13.
In the Democratic runoff for lieutenant governor, a whopping 44% of Democrats aren’t sure whether to back Beckley, a small business owner and two-term member of the Texas House, or Collier, who’s run as the party’s nominee for comptroller in 2014 and lieutenant governor in 2018. Beckley leads among all racial-ethnic groups, including by 33-18 among Latinos, the poll found.
Methodology
The Dallas Morning News/UT-Tyler Poll is a statewide random sample of 1,232 registered voters conducted between May 2-10. The mixed-mode sample includes 412 registered voters surveyed over the phone by the University of Texas at Tyler with support from ReconMR and 820 registered voters randomly selected from Dynata’s panel of online respondents. The margin of error for a sample of 1,232 registered voters in Texas is +/- 2.8 percentage points, and the more conservative margin of sampling error that includes design effects from this poll is +/- 3.1 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.
Other poll stories
Pricey gas, taxes, insurance: Why 63% of Texans feel more financial stress
Texas poll: What residents say about Abbott, O’Rourke, the border, abortion, marijuana
What Texans say about Abbott’s order for CPS to investigate families with trans kids
Texans largely support Abbott’s border policies but split on Texas-Mexico wall, poll shows
Most Texans do not want Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, new poll shows
Texas headed in wrong direction, voters say
