Early voting got underway in Texas on Monday with a record breaking 881,078 voters casting their ballots statewide, constituting 4.73 percent of registered voters, according to the secretary of state’s office.
As of Thursday, 3.3 million people across the state had voted, according to an update by the University of Florida’s Election Lab on early voting. This was on a par with the 15.7 percent of registered voters who cast their ballots in the first three days of the 2020 contest, though early and postal voting received greater emphasis then due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Democrats have made significant progress in Texas over the past few presidential election cycles, going from losing the Lone Star State by 15.8 percentage points in 2012 under Barack Obama to just 5.6 percent in 2020 with Joe Biden. This has sparked Democratic hopes that Texas could become competitive for the party, with former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke recently describing it as “really the sleeper battleground state.” On Friday Harris is scheduled to hold a rally in Houston with The Associated Press reporting musical megastar Beyoncé, a native of the city, will also be appearing.
Recent polls indicate Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has a lead of between four and 12 percentage points in the Lone Star State over Democratic rival Kamala Harris .
Emerson College found Trump had a seven-point lead, with 53 percent of the vote against 46 percent for Harris, when they polled 815 likely Texan voters for The Hill between October 18 and 21. The survey had a 3.2 point margin of error.
Between September 26 and October 16 ActiVote surveyed 400 likely voters in Texas, concluding Trump had a 12-point lead with 56 percent of the vote versus 44 percent for the current vice president. This survey’s margin of error was 4.9 points.
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her Republican opponent, Donald Trump. Trump has a lead over Harris in Texas of between four and 12 percentage points according to recent polling.
DREW ANGERER/AFP/PATRICK T. FALLON/GETTY
A Morning Consult survey of 2,048 Texan likely voters conducted between October 6 and 15 gave Trump a four-point lead with 50 percent of the vote, ahead of Harris’ 46 percent.
YouGov polled 1,091 likely Texan voters between October 2 and 10 for the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas. The survey gave Trump a four-point advantage with 51 percent of the vote, with Harris on 46 percent and a 2.97 point margin of error.
Addressing Newsweek Republican National Committee spokesperson Taylor Rogers commented: “The Lone Star State has felt the brunt of Kamala’s wide-open border policies allowing a flood of dangerous illegal migrant criminals into our communities, and innocent victims like Houston, Texas’ Jocelyn Nungaray have been brutally killed by illegal migrants.”
Newsweek contacted the Kamala Harris and Donald Trump presidential election campaigns for comment on Friday outside of regular office hours.
Democrats are heavily targeting the Texas Senate seat currently occupied by Ted Cruz, who is widely regarded as one of the most vulnerable Republicans in the upper-chamber of Congress.
Speaking to Newsweek Mark Penn, the chief strategist of President Bill Clinton‘s 1996 reelection campaign and Hillary Clinton‘s 2008 primary campaign, said competitive Senate and House seats are likely a big part of the reason behind Harris’s Houston rally on Friday.
He said: “I am a little surprised Harris is going to Texas as part of her end game, but then Trump keeps holding rallies in New York. Both have an interest in not just winning the presidency but in the House and the Senate, and both their visits only make sense in that context.”