With the race for Texas governor just two months away, Republican incumbent Greg Abbott continues to have an edge over Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke, according to a new poll.
Election Day for the high-profile race and others up and down the ballot is Nov. 8. As election season enters its final stretch, a poll by The Texas Politics Project released Wednesday found that immigration and border security ranked as the issue most important to voters, followed by the economy, abortion and gun violence.
The poll includes 1,200 Texans who said they are registered voters and were contacted in late August and early September.
Here are some key takeaways.
Abbott leads O’Rourke. Is that lead narrowing?
The poll has Abbott leading with 45% of votes to O’Rourke’s 40%.
But the margin is narrower than some recent polls, including a June version of The Texas Politics Project poll that put Abbott up by 6 percentage points. Polls taken last month by the University of Houston/Texas Southern University and The Dallas Morning News/UT Tyler had Abbott up by 7 percentage points.
“The poll results illuminate an election environment in which the Abbott/O’Rourke match-up is the most competitive race for the office Texas has seen in decades,” said an analysis of the results by Jim Henson and Joshua Blank of the Texas Politics Project. “Yet the results also reveal the political and structural advantages Abbott still holds, and the significant obstacles O’Rourke still faces in putting together a coalition of voters capable of overcoming those advantages.”
Forty-five percent of those polled said they had a favorable or somewhat favorable opinion of Abbott, compared to 41% who said the same about O’Rourke.
The narrowing margins mentioned in the analysis was highlighted by O’Rourke’s campaign in a Wednesday news release as a “notable sign of weakness.” But Abbott pushed back against the notion that the 2022 race could be closer than years past during a Wednesday press conference in Fort Worth.
“The game ain’t over yet, and we’ll see how close it is when all is said and done,” Abbott said.
Nearly half think abortion laws too strict
Of those polled, 49% said abortion laws should be less strict. Last month, the Texas “trigger” law prohibiting most abortions went into effect, with exceptions for medical emergencies.
Forty-five percent of those surveyed identify as “pro-choice” compared to 38% who consider themselves “pro-life.”
Texas’ “trigger” law does not make exceptions for rape or incest, but 79% of those polled by The Texas Politics Project said abortion should be legal in cases where the pregnancy was the result of rape. Seventy-seven percent said abortion should be allowed when the pregnancy is the result of incest. In cases of rape and incest, 32% of those polled said abortion access should be available at any point during a pregnancy.
The poll also asked about potential future policies related to abortion access after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Among the findings, half of those polled said they support the state expanding legal access to abortion services. Twenty-nine percent support penalizing companies that fund abortion-related travel. Twenty-six percent are in favor of dedicating more state resources to enforce Texas’ ban and barring people from accessing abortion in states where it’s legal.
The Supreme Court’s decision has also raised questions about federal rights to contraception, interracial marriage and same-sex marriage.
Fifty-three percent of those polled said same-sex marriage should be legal, and 32% said it should be illegal. Eighty-three percent of respondents said contraception access and interracial marriage should be legal.
Texans think not enough done to stop mass shootings
A majority of those polled believe elected officials have not done enough to prevent mass shootings — 57%. Twenty-two percent said the state has done enough and 4% said the state has done too much. Fifty-four percent said gun control laws should be more strict.
Looking at the split between Republicans, Democrats and Independents, a large majority of Democrats — 86% — said the state has done too little to curb mass shootings. Among Republicans, 39% said enough has been done while 32% said too little has been done. Sixty percent of Independents said enough hadn’t been done to stop mass shootings.
The poll comes after the May shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde where a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers. Since then, law enforcement response to the attack has been under scrutiny. Some 76% of those polled believe the delay to confront the gunman contributed “a lot” to the shooting’s severity. Nearly 50% of those polled also said flaws in school safety response, mental health system weaknesses and the weapon sued were large contributing factors.
A report from a Texas House investigative committee found there was a uncoordinated law enforcement response and that the campus had a culture of keeping doors unlocked. The committee report said it’s unclear whether a faster response would have saved lives or reduced injuries. Most of the victims who were killed likely died immediately, according to the report.
“However, given the information known about victims who survived through the time of the breach and who later died on the way to the hospital, it is plausible that some victims could have survived if they had not had to wait 73 additional minutes for rescue,” the report reads.
How do voters feel about busing migrants?
Those polled largely supported Texas’ busing of migrants to other parts of the country. The effort to send migrants to Washington D.C., New York City and Chicago has cost the state $12 million as of mid-August, according to a previous Star-Telegram report.
The poll found that overall, 52% of those surveyed strongly supported or somewhat supported the state paying to bus migrants out of Texas. Thirty-five percent were somewhat or strongly opposed.
Eighty percent of Republicans strongly or somewhat supported the effort while 62% of Democrats strongly or somewhat opposed the policy.
Who leads in other statewide races?
In addition to the governor’s race, the poll looked at match-ups between Republican Ken Paxton and Democrat Rochelle Garza in the race for attorney general and the contest between Republican Dan Patrick and Democrat Mike Collier in the election for lieutenant governor.
The lieutenant governor race has garnered attention in North Texas after Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley, a Republican, said he supports Collier. The decision received backlash from the county Republican party.
The poll put Patrick 7 percentage points ahead of Collier, a narrower margin than the 12 percentage points that separated the candidates in June.
Garza trailed her incumbent opponent by 5 percentage points. Paxton was ahead by 8 percentage points in the June poll.
Some Texans think Biden didn’t legitimately win presidency
Broadening the scope to federal politics, 52% of those polled said President Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 presidential election. Thirty-six percent said he didn’t and 12% were unsure. Experts have repeatedly said there was not widespread election fraud.
The breakdown has been fairly consistent in polls by The Texas Politics Projects from earlier this year, changing by a point or two depending on the version.
Ninety percent of Democrats said Biden won the presidency legitimately compared to 20% of Republicans.
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