U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas led congressional Democrat Colin Allred by 4 points on Thursday in the latest poll on his bid for re-election to a seat that appeared to be safe before Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic ticket two months ago.
Conducted in a collaboration with The Hill and Nexstar television stations around the state, the Emerson College survey found Donald Trump up on Harris by 5 points in the Lone Star State - a gain of one from a poll that the school took in Texas during the first week of September. Cruz had the same 4-point advantage over Allred in the Emerson College poll earlier this month.
But Cruz hasn't performed as well in the polling on the fight with Allred as he did in 2018 when he had a lead of almost 7 percentage points on average in independent polls in October that year for a battle with former U.S. House member Beto O'Rourke who the incumbent beat by less than 3 points.
According to the analytic experts at the ABC News site FiveThirtyEight, Cruz was ahead of Allred by 3.4 points on Thursday in the aggregation of polling on the Senate contest here. FiveThirtyEight showed Trump leading Harris tonight by 5.9 points - which is identical to the average margin that the former president enjoyed based on four polls on the White House competition in the nation's second largest state so far in the month of September.
Trump carried the Lone Star State in 2020 when he defeated Biden here by 5.6 points. But Texas appeared to be in play four years ago based on the 538 analysis of polling here that showed Trump up on Biden by a mere 1.1 percent on the day before the general election. Biden caught Trump at one point in late July that year and appeared to have a razor-thin advantage here for about a week.
Cruz - in contrast - has watched the current Democratic challenger slash his lead in half since he was up on Allred by 6.4 points in late May according to the ongoing 538 aggregate of polling on the Senate clash in Texas in 2024. FiveThirtyEight showed Cruz leading Allred by 3.4 points tonight. Trump's support in Texas has changed little with Harris as his central foe.
Capitol Inside has rated the U.S. Senate battle here as a toss-up with less than five weeks to go before the general election on November 5. But Trump remains a slight favorite here in the Capitol Inside rankings of the most competitive races on the Texas ballot this fall.
Cruz's campaign acknowledged this week that he's in the fight of his political life with the November vote approaching. But the incumbent may find some solace in the fact that the pollsters at Emerson College came the closest on the Texas Senate race in 2018 when they found the state's junior senator ahead of O'Rourke by only 3 points the week before the general election that year.
But Cruz led Allred by a mere 2 points on average in the three most recent polls here. Morning Consult actually found Allred ahead by 1 point in a survey here September 9-18 before the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation showed the solon up on the Democratic challenger by 3 points in a poll September 13-18.
Two of the nation's most prominent election forecasters - Larry Sabato and Charlie Cook - have the Texas Senate contest ranked as likely Republican along with races for the upper house in Congress in Florida and Nebraska. Texas had been solid R in the past.
A Cruz super PAC released a new advertisement on Thursday that slams Allred for his opposition to a bill that would have banned transgender females from participating in high school sports for girls.
