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- Public opinion polls show that Joe Biden and Republican President Donald Trump effectively tied in Texas.
- They also suggest that the former vice president is leading among those helping to establish his staggering early vote totals.
- As of Tuesday, nearly 8 million Texans had cast their votes, which is close to 90% of the 2016 total vote, a higher percentage than any state in the country.
Less than a week before Election Day, Joe Biden is tantalizingly close to an award that has eluded generations of Democratic presidential candidates: Texas.
Public opinion polls show that Biden and Republican President Donald Trump effectively tied for lone star status. They also suggest that the former vice president is leading among those helping to establish his staggering early vote totals.
As of Tuesday, nearly 8 million Texans had cast their votes, representing 90% of all 2016 votes, a higher percentage than any state in the country, according to the University’s US Elections Project. from Florida.
Trump appears to have the upper hand with voters planning to vote Nov. 3, according to polls, which also show he is improving his position among Hispanics in Texas, a large constituency, reflecting the modest gains he has made with that demographic at the level. national since 2016.
Texans don’t register by party, which makes it difficult to say with certainty who is leading early voting.
A victory for Biden in Texas, who has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976, would end any chance of Trump’s reelection.
However, the Democrat’s campaign has been cautious not to lose its focus on the battlefield states. Four years ago, Hillary Clinton was criticized for a miscalculation by spending time in Republican states at the end of the campaign only to lose seemingly strong Democratic states to Trump.
“We’ve really focused on our top six states,” said Jenn Ridder, campaign nation state director, referring to Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Florida and North Carolina. “But in these last 10 days, if we can do a little bit to put (other states) to the limit, we are going to seize that opportunity.”
Biden’s running mate, US Sen. Kamala Harris, will visit Texas on Friday, and billionaire Michael Bloomberg plans to spend $ 15 million on Texas and Ohio in a last-minute attempt to change both states from Republican leanings.
The campaign’s reluctance to go all-out has frustrated some Texas Democrats, including Julian Castro and Beto O’Rourke, who ran for their party’s presidential nomination in 2020.
“They have invested close to zero dollars in the state of Texas and they are doing well,” O’Rourke told reporters last week. “Imagine if they invested some real dollars.”
First votes
Texas added a week of early voting to ease the crowds on Election Day amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Harris County, which includes Houston and has become a Democratic stronghold in recent years, has already garnered more than 1.1 million votes.
But early voting is increasing in every corner of the state, including Republican areas like Denton County, near Dallas, as well as in Democratic centers like San Antonio’s Bexar County. Both counties have already exceeded the total votes cast in 2016.
Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University, conducted an Oct. 13-20 poll with the University of Houston that showed Biden leading among those who had already voted by a margin of 59% to 39%. But Trump led by a similar amount among those who planned to vote on November 3.
“Democrats are clearly dominating the starting turnout,” Jones said. “The fundamental issue for Republicans is whether they can get their voters to come forward on Election Day.”
Blue change
Aside from early voting, there are signs that Texas’ shift to the Democratic Party is not a mirage.
Trump and Biden have been close in state polls all year, and Democratic and Republican candidates are fiercely contesting dozens of congressional and state legislative races.
As in other parts of the country, Trump has seen his poll numbers erode in the rapidly diversifying Texas suburbs. That could have dire effects on Republicans who vote against it, Jones said.
Biden has made progress among independent voters, who make up about 10% of the state’s electorate, according to James Henson, director of the Texas Policy Project at the University of Texas.
An October poll by Henson’s organization found that Biden outperformed Trump among independents, 45% to 37%. In 2016, Clinton lost to the same group by nearly 30 percentage points.
Democrats also target more than 3 million newly registered voters in the state, many of whom moved to Texas from predominantly Democratic states.
Rebecca Acuña, Biden’s campaign manager in Texas, noted that early voters include close to a million people who have never voted in a presidential election, many younger and more diverse voters likely to lean Democratic.
“We have every reason to believe that Texas is a disaster,” Acuña said.
The Trump campaign, citing its own internal analysis, claimed that the president is ahead by hundreds of thousands of votes between the first votes. Trump won Texas by a nine-point margin in 2016.
In recent days, Trump has tried to hurt Biden with the state’s dominant oil and gas industry by playing on the comments he made in last week’s debate about the need to eventually transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.
“Texas voters recognize that Biden’s radical anti-energy agenda will destroy the state’s economy,” said Trump campaign spokeswoman Samantha Cotten.
However, some Texans didn’t buy it.
Chase Lowe, a 35-year-old sales executive in Austin who considers himself independent, has skipped the presidential election in the past because he was skeptical about how much either party could do for the average middle-class American.
“My thoughts this year have completely changed,” said Lowe, who said he will vote for Biden. “Trump is simply disgusting to the country. The division increases and it seems we are in a time of hatred.”
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