New poll shows super tight race between Ted Cruz and Beto O’Rourke…

A new poll out by Quinnipiac shows the race for US Senate in Texas within the margin of error, with Cruz only up by +3 points:

The closely watched U.S. Senate race in Texas is too close to call, with 47 percent for Republican incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz and 44 percent for U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, his Democratic challenger, according to a Quinnipiac University Poll released today.

There are wide party, gender, age and racial gaps, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN- uh-pe-ack) University Poll finds:

  • O’Rourke gets 87 – 9 percent support from Democrats and 51 – 37 percent backing from independent voters, as Republicans go to Cruz 88 – 6 percent;
  • Men back Cruz 51 – 40 percent, while women go 47 percent for O’Rourke and 43 percent for Cruz;
  • Voters 18 to 34 years old go Democratic 50 – 34 percent, while voters over 65 years old go Republican 50 – 43 percent;
  • White voters back Cruz 59 – 34 percent, as O’Rourke leads 78 – 18 percent among black voters and 51 – 33 percent among Hispanic voters.

Sen. Cruz gets lackluster grades, including a 47 – 45 percent job approval rating and a 46 – 44 percent favorability rating. O’Rourke gets a 30 – 16 percent favorability rating, but 53 percent of Texas voters don’t know enough about him to form an opinion of him.

Texas voters “like Ted Cruz as a person” 47 – 38 percent. Voters “like Beto O’Rourke as a person” 40 – 13 percent with 47 percent undecided.

And here’s the lowdown:

From April 12 – 17, Quinnipiac University surveyed 1,029 Texas voters with a margin of error of +/- 3.6 percentage points, including the design effect. Live interviewers call landlines and cell phones.

Remember how Democrats and the media were touting the early voting as if Beto O’Rourke might be the chosen one or something? And then election day happened and so many people came out to vote for Cruz that he got over 2x the number of votes that Beto did.

Well I feel the same way about this new poll, that it’s not telling us the whole truth – by a long shot. I still firmly believe that Cruz has this one in his back pocket, but I’d rather he run his campaign like it’s a close race than to relax as if he’s got it in the bank.


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