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Texas Attitudes Toward Donald Trump as the President Returns to Texas for a Roundtable and More Fundraising
June 11, 2020 | By: Jim Henson, Joshua Blank

President Donald Trump returns to Texas today to, per the Texas Tribune’s Alex Samuels, “participate in a roundtable discussion...with faith leaders, law enforcement officials and small-business owners to discuss race relations and policing” at the Dallas Campus of the Gateway Church. The man at the top of the GOP ticket in November will then reportedly preside over a high-ticket fundraiser for the Trump Victory Fund with a fundraising goal of $10 million, according to reporting by Todd Gillman and Gromer Jeffers, Jr., in a thorough table setter for the visit in the Dallas Morning News

Recent polls showing a close contest between Trump and former vice president Joe Biden in Texas have been getting a lot of play, including in the Gillman/Jeffers piece. While there’s little doubt that the parties are getting more competitive in Texas, there’s also little doubt that early summer polling is a poor predictor of the final outcome.  There will be lots of time to mull this as polling accumulates here.  For now, we’ve gathered University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll results that illustrate Trump’s standing in Texas, with particular attention to cross tabs for subgroups that add dimension to the overall numbers. (For those who want to dig still deeper, there are 132 items tagged with Donald Trump's name in our poll archive.)

Generic Trump re-elect

Not surprisingly, most polling has shown the president with leads in Texas, though those leads have remained rather narrow. In polling conducted this year, the average lead for Trump over Biden has been 2.4 percentage points — remarkably similar to Ted Cruz’s 2.6-point victory over Beto O’Rourke in 2018.

 

Texas Presidential Election Polling
Poll Field Dates Sample Size Sample Composition MOE Trump Biden Spread
Quinnipiac 5/28-6/1 1,166 Registered Voters +/-2.9% 44% 43% R +1
Emerson 5/8-5/10 800 Registered Voters +/-3.4% 47% 41% R +6
PPP 4/27-4/28 1,032 Registered Voters N/A 46% 47% D +1
Dallas Morning News 4/18-4/27 1,183 Registered Voters +/-2.9% 43% 43% Tie
UT/Texas Tribune 4/10-4/19 1,200 Registered Voters +/-2.8% 49% 44% R +5
NBC/Marist 2/23-2/27 2,409 Registered Voters +/-2.5% 49% 45% R +4
CNN 2/22-2/26 1,003 Registered Voters +/-3.0% 47% 48% D +1
Dallas Morning News 2/17-2/26 1,221 Registered Voters +/-2.8% 45% 44% R +1
UT/Texas Tribune 1/31-2/9 1,200 Registered Voters +/-2.8% 47% 43% R +4
Dallas Morning News 1/21-1/30 915 Likely Voters +/-3.2% 46% 44% R +2
Texas Lyceum 1/10-1/19 520 Likely Voters +/-4.3% 51% 46% R +5
CNN 12/4-12/8 1,003 Registered Voters +/-3.7% 48% 47% R +1
UT/Texas Tribune 10/18-10/27 1,200 Registered Voters +/-2.8% 46% 39% R +7
Dallas Morning News 8/1-8/3 1,033 Registered Voters +/-3.0% 49% 51% D +2
Quinnipiac 5/29-6/4 1,159 Registered Voters +/-3.4% 44% 48% D +4
Emerson 4/25-4/28 799 Registered Voters +/-3.4% 49% 50% D +1
Quinnipiac 2/20-2/25 1,222 Registered Voters +/-3.4% 47% 46% R +1

Generic Trump re-elect

While the Democratic Party was settling on a candidate, the UT/TT Poll included a question that probed support for Trump in the absence of a named opponent. Such a question allows respondents to idealize the unnamed opponent and so likely understates support for the incumbent.  Looking at results by party identification suggests a problem that has been much-noticed nationally of late: Trump seems to be struggling with independents.

Overall job approval trend

The president’s job approval has fluctuated in a narrow band in Texas throughout his presidency. 

Trump’s approval ratings have largely been fixed by steadfast approval among Republicans and even more intense disapproval among Democrats. 

Recent slippage among independents, however, is also evident in these results.

Approval of handling of the economy

Partisanship also drives assessments of how the president is handling the economy, though Democrats’ disapproval is slightly less intense than their overall disapproval.

Approval: handing of the response to the coronavirus/COVID019

Not much difference in partisan assessments of the president here, either, though Republican support is less strong than their approval of his handling of the economy or his overall rating (i.e. looking at the distribution of “approve strongly” and “approve somewhat”).  Note that these results were from mid-April, when most major cities in the state were already under some form of stay-at-home order.

Trust in Trump as source of accurate information on the coronavirus/COVID-19

You guessed it: Partisanship carries the day, though with only 29% of independents saying that they trust the information coming from the president.

The item asking about trust in COVID-19 information coming from the president was one of several assessments in the poll. The president was one of five sources evaluated that were trusted by less than half of respondents.  The top response was medical and health professionals, followed by the Centers for Disease Control. Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s trust level was 15 percentage points higher than Trump's, largely as a result of being trusted by nearly a third of Democrats, compared to the 5% who said they trusted the president.

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