Clinton won’t get Texas, but Trump makes it a close call
One poll is never a wholly sufficient picture of where a campaign stands. One poll can always be an outlier. Which is why averaging recent polls, while imperfect, helps minimize the impact of an outlier poll.
Late on Oct. 13, WFAA, the ABC affiliate in Dallas, in conjunction with its parent company TEGNA, released the top line results of a four-way statewide poll showing Donald Trump only narrowly leading Hillary Clinton in Texas 47-43 percent, inside the margin of error.
Let’s get the caveats out of the way: To save money, the poll was conducted online by Survey USA (online polling is not as accurate as phone-based polling). The poll was conducted Oct. 10-12, so about two weeks ago.
That said, the poll showed what reasonably can be assumed to be real erosion among Trump’s support in Texas, from Republicans and also from suburban, college-educated white women.
This could have a sweeping impact in the competitive races down ballot in Texas, about eight for Texas House and one for U.S. Congress. But was the WFAA poll an outlier? The nine most recent statewide Texas polls, all conducted beginning no earlier than Sept. 1, are as follows in chronological order: Trump +6 (Texas Lyceum) Trump +22 (UPI/CVOTER) Trump +17 (UPI/CVOTER) Trump +15 (Ipsos/Reuters) Trump +17 (UPI/CVOTER) Trump +16 (Ipsos/Reuters) Trump +12 (UPI/CVOTER) Trump +4 (WFAA/TEGNA) I’m not going to average these together because I don’t think it would capture where the race is currently, as early voting begins this week.
The UPI & Ipsos polls are a rolling three-week average that updates each week as the new week rolls on and the oldest week rolls off. But these polls are at least instructive. Bear in mind the history in Texas: Greg Abbott won at the top of the ticket in 2014 (a non-presidential year) by over 20 percent. Mitt Romney won Texas by 16 percent in 2012 (the last presidential year race). John McCain won Texas by 13 percent in 2008. George W. Bush carried the state twice by more than 20 percent both times. Do I think Hillary can win Texas? At the real risk of making bold predictions in the most dynamic and unpredictable presidential race in my lifetime, no, I do not think she can.
But on Oct. 17 the Clinton campaign announced a highly unusual one-week TV ad buy across Texas in the four largest media markets.
Statewide, saturation-level television in Texas generally costs $1.8 million a week.
This isn’t statewide and I highly doubt it’s saturation-level, so my guess is this is perhaps a $500,000 buy.
Not enough to win, but perhaps enough to see if numbers start moving her way.
From a political standpoint, Clinton doesn’t need Texas.
She has many pathways to the 270 electoral votes that she needs to win the White House, including winning any one of Ohio, North Carolina or Florida. Increasingly, Arizona appears truly competitive.
So is the Texas ad buy a head fake? Is it a Hail Mary? Is it a requirement from one (or a few) wealthy Democratic Texas donors? Perhaps we will soon learn the answer. In the meantime, I remain convinced that Trump will win Texas, though by a smaller margin than any GOP nominee this century.
This will likely cost a few down-ballot Republicans their seats, especially in urban counties like Dallas, Harris and Bexar.
Apart from a significant straight-ticket voting advantage here, Republicans have a ground game advantage in Texas due to the contrast between the strong Republican Party of Texas, and the financially strapped and generally disorganized opposition, which talks a big game but has repeatedly failed to win major races for nearly 25 years.
Trump has made what was once impossible now at least somewhat plausible. Is Texas turning purple? No, it is not. Is Trump turning purple? Clearly, yes.