President Donald Trump is starting to see some breathing room over former Vice President Joe Biden in the Lone Star State according to the latest poll out of the University of Texas.
After being statistically tied with Biden for most of the summer the President has now built a five-percent lead with 50% support from likely Texas voters. "On one hand being consistently ahead is good," said University of Texas Politics Project Director Jim Henson. "On the other hand in Texas, if you're sometimes at five or below, that's a lot closer than people would expect an incumbent Republican President to be."
In the Senate race between incumbent Senator John Cornyn and his Democratic challenger MJ Hegar, Cornyn continues to hold a significant lead heading into Friday night's debate. According to the UT poll Cornyn has an 8 point lead over Hegar with 50% support from likely Texas voters. Hegar has the support of 42% of those polled. "The best thing for John Cornyn would be for no news to come out of this debate, and I think that's what he'll be aiming for," said Henson. He added that Hegar continues to battle the problem of a lack of name recognition. "Her largest weakness right now is that she's not widely recognized around the state or at least not as widely recognized as she needs to be to beat John Cornyn."
Governor Abbott is not on the upcoming November ballot, but he has seen his approval rating dip due mostly to the handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Abbott's 56% approval rating in April has dropped down to just 44% in October. The number of Texans that disapprove of Governor Abbott's performance has also grown from 29% in April to 46% in October. Henson said, "He's liked, but he's not quite as well liked as he was earlier in his governorship and the assessment of how he's handled the coronavirus has gone into net-negative territory overall among Texans."
View the complete UT Poll here.
