Texas could be more competitive in the 2024 election than previously thought, according to a new poll which shows Donald Trump might be at risk of losing the state.
Most surveys conducted among likely voters in Texas before President Joe Biden dropped out of the race in late July had shown former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, significantly ahead.
But Biden’s exit and Vice President Kamala Harris‘ rise to the top of the Democratic ticket has upended the race, with Harris enjoying a surge in polling.
A poll by the University of Houston Hobby School and Texas Southern University’s Barbara Jordan Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs released in July had Trump nine points ahead of Biden. That survey, conducted between June 20 and July 1, found 49 percent were supporting Trump while 40 percent were backing Biden.
But the latest survey by the schools has Trump ahead of Harris by just about five points. While the survey could be an outlier, it suggests the race in Texas, which has reliably voted for the Republican candidate in every presidential election since 1980, could be tighter than previously anticipated. But if the trend continues over the next two months Trump could lose the Lone Star State.
Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Dallas, Texas. A new poll suggests Texas could be more competitive in November’s election than previously anticipated.
Brandon Bell/Getty Images
The August survey of 1,365 likely voters found 49.5 percent plan to vote for Trump, while 44.6 percent are planning on supporting Harris.
Two percent said they are supporting independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 0.2 percent support Green Party candidate Jill Stein and 0.5 percent back Libertarian Chase Oliver. Another 2.7 percent said they were undecided. The poll has a margin of error of 2.65 percent.
The August poll also resurveyed 878 respondents who took part in the earlier survey to assess how their voting intentions may have been affected by the change in the Democratic ticket.
It found Trump retained 97 percent of his June vote, while Harris retained 96 percent of Biden’s June vote. It found almost half (44 percent) of Kennedy supporters had switched to Harris, while only 21 percent shifted their support from Kennedy to Trump.
The Trump campaign has insisted that Harris’ bump in the polls would be temporary.
Both the Trump and Harris campaigns have been contacted for comment via email.
Another recent poll found Trump leading Harris by a larger margin in Texas. The ActiVote survey of 400 likely voters, conducted between July 31 and August 13, had Trump ahead by seven points, 53 percent to Harris’ 47 percent.
And Trump is leading by 6.6 points in Texas, according to Race to the White House’s polling average.
Meanwhile, experts recently told Newsweek it was unlikely that Harris would be able to use the enthusiasm for her candidacy to flip Texas blue.
“I do not think that Texas will be in play. At all,” Matthew Eshbaugh-Soha, a professor of American politics at the University of North Texas, told Newsweek last week.
“This does not mean that Harris will avoid Texas. She will visit, to raise money and generate some exposure for herself and her campaign. There is nothing in the mix that indicates future performance will be any different from past performance; I don’t see anything that may shake up the presidential vote in Texas.”
Mark Jones, Professor of Political Science and fellow in political science at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Texas, added that while Harris is “likely to make the race more competitive than it would have been had Biden been the Democratic nominee, I don’t see Harris doing much better than Biden did in 2020, and thus a Trump victory in the mid-to-high single digits is the most likely scenario today.”