A new poll shows U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz up 11 percentage points over U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, his challenger in this year’s U.S. Senate race in Texas.
In addition, former President Donald Trump continues to poll significantly ahead of President Joe Biden in Texas.
The June poll from the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Politics Project found that Cruz leads Allred 45 to 34 percent. Six percent said they were voting for someone else, and 14 percent had no opinion.
When broken down further, Allred had a plurality of support among Hispanic voters who responded. Meanwhile, Cruz—himself a Cuban American—boasted an impressive 34 percent with the same demographic.
Cruz also led 18- to 29-year-olds, 32 to 30 percent. Still, a significant number said they did not have an opinion on the race—28 percent.
The senator’s gains among Hispanic voters appear to be backed up by trends observed between June 2023 and April of this year. Over that period, Hispanic voters’ support for the government carrying out mass deportations rose from 47 percent to 56 percent.
Texas Politics Project’s results mirror that of other recent polls for the November elections.
Cruz was ahead of Allred by slightly more in TPP’s April poll than he was in June, leading 46 to 33 percent. That same month, a Texas Lyceum showed Cruz ahead of Allred by 10 points, 41 to 31 percent.
Elsewhere in TPP’s June survey, Trump led Biden by seven points, 46 to 39 percent, in Texas. Nine percent of respondents said they were voting for someone else, however, and six percent had no opinion yet.
Biden had the support of a plurality of Hispanic voters, 43 percent, in the poll. Trump, comparatively, had the support of 37 percent of them.
The breakdown of 18- to 29-year-olds’ support was also more pronounced between Trump and Biden than Cruz and Allred. While Cruz slightly led the demographic, Trump was underwater with the group by nearly 20 points, 28 percent to Biden’s 46 percent.
Overall, the June results represent a one-point increase for Trump compared to April, when he was at 45 percent. At the same time, Biden increased three points from April, going from having the support of 36 percent of respondents to 39 percent.
Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, a moderate Republican who narrowly claimed the Republican nomination for his district last month in a hotly-contested runoff election, was less fortunate than Cruz and Trump in his June results.
Respondents awarded the embattled speaker a 30 percent disapproval rating, and only 24 percent approved of his job performance. However, 24 percent neither approved nor disapproved, and 23 percent had no opinion on the matter.
TPP’s latest poll of 1,200 registered Texas voters was conducted between May 31 and June 9. It has a plus or minus 2.83-point margin of sampling error.
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