Donald Trump could carry Texas with a double-digit margin of victory if the polling for the 2024 general election underestimates his strength among the electorate here as much as it did four years ago when he won the Lone Star State by nearly 6 percentage points.
That's the good news for GOP partisans in the nation's second largest state with the vote just eight days away. But U.S. Senator Ted Cruz could lose to Democrat Colin Allred in a thriller next week if the same comparative standard is used to gauge the Republican incumbent's odds for a re-election victory over the Dallas congressional member who's trying to give him the boot.
According to the RealClear Polling average for surveys on the U.S. Senate contest in Texas in 2018, Cruz entered election day with a lead of 6.8 points in the face of opposition from Democrat Beto O'Rourke. But the Senate race turned out to be three times closer here than the polls had detected when Cruz beat O'Rourke by a mere 2.6 points. The polling average was off 4.2 percentage points in the clash that pit Cruz against O'Rourke.
The opposite proved to be the case at the top of the Texas ticket when Trump fumbled the White House away for the Republicans in 2020. The RealClear Polling average for Texas before the general election that year showed Trump with a lead of only 1.3 points here heading into the general election that President Joe Biden won that year in both the popular vote and the Electoral College. But Trump defeated Biden by 5.8 points in Texas in 2020 when the polls were off by 4.5 points compared to the actual outcome here.
With Trump up on Democrat Kamala Harris by 6.8 points in the RealClear average on the White House race in Texas, the former president would win by 11 points here next week if he outperforms the polling this time around at the same rate that he did in 2020.
Cruz - in dramatic contrast - would lose to Allred by 0.3 points if the pollsters have overestimated his popularity in the runup to the 2024 election as much as they did six years ago.
The ABC News data analysis site FiveThirtyEight showed Trump on Monday with his highest average polling lead in Texas so far this year at 7.7 percentage points.
Prominent election handicapper Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia still has both the presidential and Senate battles in Texas rated as likely Republican. Sabato predicts that the GOP will seize control of the upper house of Congress with 51 seats. That's net gain for the Republicans of one.
But the Cook Political Report shifted the Senate race in Texas to leans Republican while the state remains likely GOP at the top of the ticket in 2024.
The Capitol Inside crystal ball sees Trump taking Texas as expected with a victory margin in the 5 point range. The U.S. Senate contest is a toss up in the rankings here, however, amid the countdown to the November 5 election. The Senate fight has bounced in recent weeks from leans GOP to toss up where it can be found today.
The two most recent Texas voter polls could give Republicans a false sense of security here. Trump has a double-digit advantage in both.
A New York Times survey that was released on Monday found Trump up on Harris in Texas by 11 percentage points. But Cruz led Allred by only 4 points in polls that was conducted by Siena College for the NYT during the past week.
The latest ActiVote poll that was taken over the course of six days ending Sunday showed Trump and Cruz with leads of 10 points and 5 points respectively among likely Texas voters. But a GBAO Strategies poll for the Allred campaign found the contest deadlocked here at 46 percent apiece during the past week.
The New York Times/Siena College and ActiVote surveys have showed Trump running stronger in Texas than other independent polls since Harris emerged during the summer as his Democratic foe.
more to come ...
