51°
Nearly half of Texans plan to vote for former Republican President Donald Trump in November, according to a new survey of likely voters, while 44.6% support the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.
The UH/TSU survey finds Trump leading Harris in Texas 49.5% - 44.6%. While Trump has increased his vote share slightly in the past two months – 49.5% now, compared to 48.9% in June – Harris has chipped away at his lead, shrinking the gap to just under five points. This is notably tighter than the nine-point lead Trump held over President Joe Biden in an earlier survey conducted by the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston and the Executive Master of Public Administration program in the Barbara Jordan – Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University.
“Harris has made considerable headway among voters both in Texas and nationally in the short time since she entered the race last month,” said Renée Cross, researcher and senior executive director of the Hobby School. “That’s particularly true among younger voters, with 55% of Gen Z voters saying they will support her, compared to just 39% who backed Biden, but she also has gained among women and independent voters.”
Still, Cross noted that Texas remains a red state, with Trump maintaining a strong lead among men, white voters, and older voters.
Trump holds a narrow lead over Harris, 47% to 46%, among Latino voters—a sharp contrast to 2020 when Texas Latinos backed Biden over Trump by a 17-point margin.
The UH/TSU survey also found that Republican incumbent Ted Cruz leads Democrat Colin Allred in the U.S. Senate race by a narrow margin: Cruz holds 46.6% support compared to Allred's 44.5%. Additionally, 6.4% are undecided and 2.5% support Libertarian Ted Brown.
This second-wave survey followed Biden’s historic decision to drop out of the 2024 presidential race and Harris’ nomination. A substantial number of respondents from the June survey were reinterviewed along with new respondents added to ensure a representative sample.
Mark P. Jones, political science fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy and senior research fellow at the Hobby School said Trump's continued dominance in Texas obscures some changes revealed by the survey.
“What had been a stable race with Trump leading Biden by a margin in the high single digits for months has tightened,” he said. “Support has declined for third-party candidates, especially Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who dropped to 2% in this survey from 5% in June—with more than twice as many of Kennedy’s former supporters switching their votes to Harris than to Trump.”
Just 2.7% of likely Texas voters remain undecided in the presidential race.
Michael Adams, director of TSU's Executive Master of Public Administration graduate program stated that much of Harris’ increased support comes from Independent voters who previously backed Kennedy or Stein.
“Independent voters in Texas are fairly evenly split between Trump and Harris at 41% vs. 39%, Adams said.” “In June with Biden still in the race we found that only18 percent supported Biden."
Eight percent of Independent voters now back Kennedy while five percent favor Stein or Oliver; this compares with June when fourteen percent supported Kennedy and ten percent backed Stein or Oliver.
Among other findings:
Harris is drawing women away from Trump holding six-point lead among them fifty percent versus forty-four.
The race appears stable: ninety-six percent certain about their vote choice while only four might change minds before election.
Black favor Allred seventy-two twenty; Latinos support smaller margin forty-six forty
Allred holds seven point lead women forty-nine forty-two; thirteen point men fifty-two thirty-nine
Harris net favorability rating improved considerably since June Currently forty-eight favorable opinion while fifty-one unfavorable -3 down -14
Trump favorable opinion forty-nine unfavorable fifty one rating -1
The survey was conducted between Aug-16 English Spanish Margin error +/-2-65%.
Story by Jeannie Kever
###