A new poll, old result: Greg Abbott is winning big over Beto, despite DPS failures
The last major Texas election poll arrived Friday, and it showed how far Democrats still need to go to compete in Texas.
It’s a Republican year in a Republican state, and nothing about that has changed in the last poll before early voting starts Monday.
Gov. Greg Abbott, a Houston lawyer and former state attorney general, now holds an 11-point lead over earnest challenger Beto O’Rourke, a former El Paso congressman and City Council member.
The two candidates once considered Republicans’ weakest and most damaged — Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton — both hold 14-15-point leads over underfunded and little-known Democratic opponents Mike Collier and Rochelle Garza.
The Abbott-O’Rourke election has been as close as 7 points in other polls. But as Election Day draws closer, it has reverted to the expected pattern of a “red wave” election in which Republicans will swamp Democrats and first-term President Joe Biden.
Texans are voting their bank accounts over anything else. Their top two issues in the poll: rising prices and the economy.
But more than one-third also agreed that the No. 1 issue for the state is either the border or immigration.
Only 4% of voters polled said abortion is the most important issue facing America. Only 2% listed education.
The Texas Politics Project poll asked 1,200 registered voters Oct. 7-17 with a 2.8% margin of error.
Of all the quixotic campaigns Texas Democrats have run since 2002 — when they lost control of the Texas House and fell from relevance in state government — this has been one of the strangest.
With Democrats at risk nationwide, party donors sent their money outside the state, not to races for Collier and Garza.
So the other Democrats had to depend on coattail votes from O’Rourke.
He had all the money, but he also had a 50% disapproval rating. That’s only improved to 47% in the latest poll.
So, Democrats’ leading candidate started the race with half of Texas against him.
In the latest poll, Abbott wins independent voters by 31 points. He wins women voters, 49%-47%.
The two candidates are even tied among Hispanic voters, reflecting both first lady Cecilia Abbott’s deep family roots in Monterrey and O’Rourke’s poor performance in the Rio Grande Valley, once a Democratic base.
Abbott has been able to keep his lead despite a miserable record at the single agency that could have lost him this election: the Texas Department of Public Safety.
The tarnished star on DPS and Texas Rangers’ badges has never looked worse than during the 77-minute shooting May 24 that killed 19 children and two teachers at a Uvalde elementary school.
A total of 91 state troopers responded. Yet somehow, the local school police chief wound up with most of the blame for their turgid inaction.
Then, after a fumbling response by troopers more accustomed to stopping speeders or giving driving tests, the DPS covered its tracks both to Abbott and the public.
Not until three months later did the DPS suspend two troopers and announce investigations into three more.
The Texas Tribune and ProPublica quoted retired Houston police Chief Charles A. McClelland: “I don’t know how the public, even in the state of Texas, would have confidence in the leadership of DPS after this.”
But Texans show less confidence in O’Rourke.
This story was originally published October 21, 2022 at 8:55 AM.
