A new poll by the nonpartisan Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation found that Kamala Harris had slashed Donald Trump's advantage in half in the Lone Star State where a lead that he had among Latino voters has vanished with the vice-president as his central foe in the White House sweepstakes this fall.
The TxHPF survey of 1,200 likely voters showed Trump up on Harris by 6 points in Texas. Trump led President Joe Biden by a dozen percentage points in the group's last poll on the Texas electorate in April.
The TxHPF poll found the number two race on the November ballot here to be substantially closer with Republican incumbent Ted Cruz leading Democrat Colin Allred by a mere 3 points in the race for the U.S. Senate. Cruz had a 5-point edge over the congressional Democrat from Dallas in the TxHPF poll in the spring when Biden was still a candidate for re-election.
TxHPF leader Jason Villalba suggested that Harris' inroads with Hispanic voters has given her a fighting chance to make the fight with Trump even closer in the nation's second largest state.
“Given the size of the Hispanic voting population in Texas, if Harris were able to bolster her support among Hispanics in a meaningful way, she would have a significantly greater chance of flipping Texas blue,” Villalba said in an analysis of the new numbers.
Trump led Harris by 4 points among Texas Hispanic voters in the TxHPF survey in April. But Harris was ahead of the ex-president by 6 points among Hispanics here in the poll that was taken September 13-18. After a 10-point swing in the Latino vote in Texas, Harris conceivably could carry Texas if she pushed her lead among Hispanics here to 16 percentage points or more based on a review of the new data.
The Villalba group poll showed Allred leading Cruz by 11 points among Hispanic voters with 50 percent favoring the Democrat who's Black. Allred was up on Cruz by only 5 points among Hispanics in the April poll.
The TxHPF poll has a margin of error of 2.83 percentage points for all voters. The error margin is 5.43 percent for the Hispanics in the survey.
Villalba - a former Texas House Republican with a reputation as a moderate -
said Trump's strength among Hispanics "continues to show a striking resilience" despite the double-digit swing in Harris' favor as Biden's replacement as the Democratic presidential nominee.
But Regina Montoya - a former Democratic congressional nominee who worked on Bill Clinton's staff - suggested that Harris' support has been contagious as far as the Senate race here is concerned,
"As evidenced by these numbers, even in Texas, the excitement and enthusiasm generated by the Harris-Walz Campaign since Biden’s departure has clearly shaped the contours of the race across the country – even in red states like Texas,” Montoya, a TxHPF board member. “The dynamism of the Harris campaign has had an obvious down ballot impact in the Allred vs. Cruz race, where Colin is now effectively tied with Cruz going into the final days of the campaign."
The TxHPF survey in September reflects the trends that other polls have established in the presidential and Senate contests here this year. Trump led Harris by 6 percentage points on average in 10 polls that were taken in Texas in August and September. Cruz was up on Allred by 4.4 points on average in polls here during the same two-month span.
But Cruz led the Democrat by only 2.5 points in four surveys on the Senate competition here so far in September.
