Most voters in Texas are already gearing up for a rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump this November, according to a new Emerson College Polling survey commissioned by Nexstar Media Group, Inc.
Nearly seven of every 10 Republican primary voters in Texas are backing Trump, with only 11 percent supporting former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley and 7 percent vying for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has since dropped out of the race. Another 14 percent are supporting someone else or are undecided.
Biden is similarly running away with support among state Democrats, at 72 percent. Minor candidates Marianne Williamson, a Houston-based author, and Congressman Dean Phillips of Michigan are combining for 11 percent. A whopping 17 percent of Democrat voters are also undecided.
In the likely scenario where the two rivals make it back to the general election, Trump has the support of 49 percent of voting Texans, with Biden carrying only 41 percent of their support.
That would serve as a significant improvement for Trump in Texas from 2020 if the eight-percentage-point margin holds. He won the state by around 5.5 points at the time, 52 percent to Biden’s 46.5 percent.
The results thwart some Democrats’ expectations that Texas will go blue this year due to increased illegal immigration and more out-of-state professionals moving into the cities.
Instead, it shows that Republican efforts to mobilize Texans might just be working.
The Committee to Unleash Prosperity, a nonprofit founded by economists Arthur B. Laffer and Stephen Moore, released a report Friday detailing the radically different views many professionals have to average Americans, including Texans.
Ivy League graduates surveyed in the study notably diverged with ordinary voters on the issue of individual freedom. While 57 percent of voters accused the government of seeking too much control, 55 percent of Ivy Leaguers said the opposite—charging the government with pushing freedom too much.
Kevin D. Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, issued a similar warning about the divide between elites and everybody else while speaking this week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
“Elites tell us that open borders and even illegal immigration are okay,” Roberts explained. “The average person tells us in the United States that they both rob them of the American way of life.”
Trump “has the power of the American people behind him,” Roberts added.
Texas’ primary election occurs on March 5 and the general election is set for November 5.
Emerson’s poll of 1,315 registered voters across Texas was conducted January 13-15. It has a 2.6 point margin of sampling error.
