Not surprisingly, Senator Ted Cruz's polling numbers in his home state of Texas, where he won the general election for his U.S. Senate seat by almost 16 percentage points after defeating David Dewhurst in the GOP primary run-off by almost 14 percentage points, look a lot better than the single-digits he's earning in national and early primary state polling.  The patterns in Cruz's performance in 2016 GOP presidential nomination trial heats as well as his approval ratings, however, do help confirm the widespread observation that his most natural base of support is among the most conservative of voters. They also illustrate why Texas' place in the 2016 GOP primary schedule increase his incentives to jump into a race in which he is widely viewed as a very long shot.

We've written about attitudes in Texas toward Cruz several times, most recently in the wake of the 2014 elections – as attention among insiders and political observers was turning more decisively toward 2016 – and after our February poll, which coincided with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's elevation to a top tier candidate, a rapid rise for Walker in Texas gained mostly at Cruz's expense.  In light of Cruz's formal announcement of his candidacy, and the media attention (though not surprise) surrounding it, we've put graphics from some of the recent polling on Cruz in one place for the sake of convenience.

Overall, Cruz's favorability in Texas reveal that he is as much a polarizing figure at home as he is nationally and among his colleagues. While his overall unfavorable numbers are in line with other Republican state office holders (for example, Governor Abbott is at 46 percent favorable / 28 percent unfavorable), the share who rated him very unfavorably – 28 percent – is higher than all of all the other statewide Republicans on whom we polled (Abbott [19%] Rick Perry [16%], Joe Straus [7%] and Dan Patrick [24%]).

The crosstabs by straight party ID (with true independents, and leaners folded into their lean preferences) illustrates how the polarized attitudes toward Cruz are partisan in their origin.

Looking just at self-identified conservatives in Texas illustrates how Cruz is the conservative's conservative.  He is viewed most positively by those who identify as extremely conservative (about 15 percent of Texans). But he also has appeal, albeit not as strong, with less diehard conservatives (as a piece today in the Charlotte Observer by Peter St. Onge noted).

Breaking out Tea Party identifiers provides another illustration of how strongly Cruz is embraced by the insurgent conservative wing of the GOP.  Not only are his favorability numbers very high (90 percent, with 68 percent saying "very favorable"), there is little ambiguity in these results – only 6 percent of Tea Party identifiers are neutral or don't have an opinion on Cruz (compared with 26 percent of non-Tea Party Republicans).

In the 2016 GOP presidential trial heats in the February 2015 University of Texas / Texas Tribune Poll, after three consecutive polls in which he lead the field by double digits, Cruz suddenly found himself neck-and-neck with Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

Walker (and to a lesser degree, Ben Carson) performed well in that poll among Tea Party identifiers.  But he also polled comparatively well with the non-extreme conservatives, too.

Gov. Walker's rise and the slip in Cruz's position likely reflect some ephemeral factors (the timing was extremely good for Walker, who was in the midst of a burst of positive national media attention while we were collecting data) as well as the fact that, with the 2014 elections behind us, the 2016 election was coming more info focus for the media (if not most of the public).  As a baseline before these changes, one can consider the results and the same crosstabs from the October 2014 UT/TT Poll. With the campaign now formally underway – by Cruz's own skip-the-exploratory-committee jump right into the deep end approach – the numbers are now officially an artifact of the run-up to campaign. But with Texas likely to have an early March primary with delegates awarded on a modified winner-take-all system, these numbers convey a likely wellspring of support for Cruz in his home state that has to affect campaign strategy. The final size and durability of Cruz's potential vote share remain to be determined by the other entrants in the race and by their performance (and, of course, Cruz's) in the coming months. But if Cruz's support remains in the 20-30 percent range, even mediocre performances in early primaries are unlikely to drive him from the race before the Texas primary.  Staying in is unlikely to turn the tide, but he could pick up delegates in a race with no clear front runner going into the GOP Convention – which could, in turn, provide something very valuable to him in the long-term: yet another platform.

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