President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden are deadlocked in Texas, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll, suggesting a competitive race in a state Trump carried by 9 points in 2016.
The poll shows Biden and Trump tied at 47 percent. Biden’s strongest support comes from Black voters, women, and young voters between the ages of 18 and 34, while Trump is propelled primarily by men and white voters.
But the poll also offers some promising signs for Biden’s prospects in the state. He trails Trump by only 11 points among white voters with college degrees, a bloc the president won in 2016 by a wide 31-point margin.
Biden also leads Trump 50 percent to 39 percent among independents, who broke for Trump in 2016 by a 24-point margin, according to exit polls.
The Quinnipiac poll suggests that with just 13 days to go before Election Day, Biden may be putting up a fight for Texas, a state that for much of the year has leaned toward Trump and one that the president almost certainly needs to carry in November if he hopes to win another term in the White House.
In the state’s Senate race, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) carries a solid but not insurmountable 6-point advantage over his Democratic challenger MJ Hegar at 49 percent to 43 percent. That’s a slight improvement for Hegar since a previous Quinnipiac poll released last month showed her trailing Cornyn by 8 points.
Texas hasn’t broken for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976, and voters in the state haven’t chosen a Democrat to represent them in the Senate since 1988.
But Democrats have started making increasingly aggressive electoral plays in the state, given its rapidly growing population and changing electorate. White voters’ share of the electorate has decreased by about 11 percentage points since 2000, while Hispanic voters now make up nearly one-third of the electorate.
There are similar trends at play in other typically red states such as Georgia, where recent polls suggest a tight race between Trump and Biden.
Democrats came close to picking up one of Texas’s Senate seats in 2018 with former Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s (D-Texas) high-profile campaign against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Cruz ultimately won by less than 2 points.
The Quinnipiac University poll surveyed 1,145 likely voters in Texas from Oct. 16 to Oct. 19. It has a margin of sampling error of 2.9 percentage points.