Texas has seen its gap between Democrat and Republican potentially close in recent presidential elections, but the latest polling shows former President Donald Trump stronger than ever in America's largest red state.
Trump leads President Joe Biden by 7 points in a head-to-head matchup (48% to 41%) in the latest University of Texas polling, extending that lead to 9 points when third-party and independent candidates are added (45% to 36%).
Factoring in the Republican Party presidential primary, Trump's dominance in the state shows even more, as he is leading South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley by 71 points, drawing 80% support to just 9% for his last remaining primary opponent.
Notably, Texas is such a strong state for Trump that Haley even trails Biden by 9 points (40% to 31%) in her hypothetical head-to-head matchup, damaging the claim by the Haley campaign that she is the best candidate to face Biden in the general election.
If she cannot beat Biden in the largest red state, she would be the worst GOP candidate to face Biden, as Trump said in Saturday night's rally in the battleground state of Michigan. That rally aired live and in its entirety on Newsmax and the free Newsmax2 streaming platform.
The full field hypothetical general election matchup poll results by the University of Texas:
- Trump 45%
- Biden 36%
- Former Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 6%
- Independent Cornel West 3%
- Green Party candidate Jill Stein 2%
In the Senate race, incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, leads Rep. Colin Allred, D-Texas by 14 points (46% to 32%), a range that far exceeds Cruz's past reelection margins, potentially showing Trump has helped turn Texas more red, not less, as some Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans had hoped.
The Texas Politics Project Polling from the University of Texas conducted the poll Feb. 2-12 among 1,200 registered voters, and the results have a margin of 2.83 percentage points.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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