Poll: Cruz and Trump run neck and neck in Texas
Each gets 27 percent in Internet survey of the state’s likely GOP voters.
Sen. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are the top presidential choices of likely Texas Republican voters with 27 percent each, according to a new poll.
More than any of the New York mogul’s other GOP rivals, Cruz has sought to align himself with Trump, especially with his hard line on immigration. At the same time, Cruz has suggested that he hopes to eventually inherit much of Trump’s support if and when the tycoon’s candidacy fades or he leaves the race.
But the University of Texas/ Texas Tribune Internet survey
of 1,200 registered voters, conducted Oct. 30 to Nov. 8, indicates that, for now, Trump is Cruz’s most formidable rival on his home turf and the man he must beat if he is going to get a big lift out of the state’s relatively early primary March 1.
Cruz has been at or near the top of Texas polls over the past year, with a variety of candidates nipping at his heels.
In October of last year, Cruz was the choice of 27 percent of likely Republican voters in a UT/Texas Tribune poll, followed by former Gov. Rick Perry at 14 percent. In February, Cruz had 20 percent to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s 19 percent. In June, Cruz had 20 percent to 12 percent for Perry and 10 percent for Walker. Both Perry and Walker have since bowed out.
A Texas Lyceum poll conducted in September found Trump leading Cruz 21 percent to 16 percent.
Trailing Trump and Cruz in the new Texas survey are Ben Carson, with 13 percent, and U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, at 9 percent. By the time March 1 rolls around, the field presumably will be winnowed, and Carson and Rubio, both less well known in Texas than Cruz or Trump, could have growth potential if they are still in the race.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who was born in Austin, and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the son of former Texas congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul, each had 4 percent.
Bush was born in Midland, and both his father and brother are Texans who won the White House. His low standing confirms that the Bush era in Texas politics is over, at least for now, and that he probably cannot look to the Lone Star State to help revive his sagging fortunes.
Trump has belittled Bush on the stump, and former President George W. Bush recently expressed his distaste for Cruz — who worked on George W. Bush’s 2000 presidential campaign. Politico reported that the former president told donors at a Colorado fundraiser last month, “I just don’t like that guy.”
Jim Henson, head of the Texas Politics Project and co-director of the poll, said the Texas Republican Party lurched to the right almost as soon as George W. Bush left the state in 2001 to become president, and it hasn’t looked back. Cruz reflects the new tea party cast of the party.
On the Democratic side, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is the first choice of 61 percent of likely Texas Democratic voters polled. Thirty percent preferred U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Martin O’Malley, the former mayor of Baltimore and governor of Maryland, who was campaigning Thursday in Austin, was the choice of 1 percent, which is about where he is polling nationally.
“I’ve got them right where I want them,” O’Malley told Evan Smith, CEO and editor-in-chief of the Texas Tribune, at a taping of the KLRU interview show “Overheard” on Thursday.
O’Malley said the race was now down to three candidates, that Clinton and Sanders are both “divisive figures from our past,” and Democratic voters are only now being introduced to his next-generation candidacy.
The good news for O’Malley out of the UT/ Texas Tribune poll was that only 4 percent of Democrats said they wouldn’t vote for him, though only 5 percent said they wouldn’t vote for Clinton or Sanders.
The poll’s margin of error was 4.21 percentage points for the Republican race and 4.57 percentage points for the Democratic primary.