AUSTIN (KXAN) — Texas Sen. Ted Cruz will have to fight hard for a third term in office if a new poll’s findings hold through the November general election.
According to findings published Thursday morning by Emerson College Polling and Nexstar Media, the Republican incumbent is locked in a statistical tie with two Democratic challengers. Pollsters asked a group of 1,315 registered Texas voters during the period of Jan. 13-15 who they would support if Cruz ultimately faced either U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, D-Dallas, or State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio.
Allred and Gutierrez are among nine candidates on the ballot in the March primary that will determine which Democrat faces Cruz in November.
In one hypothetical matchup, the poll found 42% of voters said they would support Cruz, while 40% would vote for Allred. Eight percent said they would prefer someone else, while 11% said they’re undecided.
If Cruz faced Gutierrez in November, though, the poll showed a tight contest, too — Cruz 41%, Gutierrez 40%. In this potential scenario, 8% would prefer other c andidates, and 11% are undecided.
According to the pollsters, the margin of error came to about 2.6 percentage points.
During an appearance earlier this week on Fox News, Cruz endorsed former President Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary. He also told host Sean Hannity that he anticipated the Democrats spending at least $100 million during this campaign cycle to unseat him in November. However, he remained optimistic about the outcome.
Who’s ahead in the Democratic Senate primary?
With more than six weeks left until the state’s primary election, the Emerson/Nexstar poll showed the largest share of Democratic voters in Texas remain undecided on who they’d like to see take on Cruz later this year.
According to the findings, 37% of Democrats said they’re unsure who they plan to support in their party’s primary, representing a plurality of the pool of 460 Democratic respondents.
The candidate who captured the most support, though, is Allred. The poll found 29% of the voters said they plan to vote for the former NFL linebacker. This number tracks closely to what the University of Texas and the Texas Politics Project found in its poll conducted last month, which showed Allred leading with 28% as the voters’ first choice among the primary candidates. At that time pollsters also found that a plurality (38%) had yet to make up their mind either.
In the Emerson/Nexstar poll, the two candidates who came closest to Allred are Gutierrez (7% support) and former Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzalez (6% support). None of the other six primary candidates included in the poll got above 5% support.
“Significant portions of several key constituent groups are undecided in the Democratic Senate primary, including Hispanic Democratic voters, Gen Z and Millennial voters and voters without a college degree,” Spencer Kimball, executive director of Emerson College Polling, said. “In order to avoid a runoff, Allred needs to make inroads with these voters, like he has with Democrats in their 60s and with postgraduate degrees, 52% of whom respectively support him.”
The Texas primary will happen on March 5, while the general election is set for Nov. 5.
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