A new poll shows Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico leading Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton ® by 5 points over a month before the November midterm elections.
The Texas Public Opinion Research (TPOR) poll released Friday showed Talarico with 49 percent support from voters and Paxton with 44 percent support, with 3 percent saying they are undecided. This new poll is the second in a monthly series of polling results released by TPOR. Last month’s poll showed Talarico’s ahead by 6 points, 48-42.
Independent voters favor Talarico by double digits, 58-26, with 5 percent who say they are undecided. Paxton holds the lead among white voters and voters 55 years and above. Talarico leads among Latino voters, Black voters, voters under 55, college-educated voters, men and women, the poll stated.
All of the polling institutions are pretty aligned this time around, so that kind of discredits the “fake news” argument. Too many independent sources are saying the same thing.
That said, polls are based on historical data. And polls might not do a good job of trying to account for the abnormal fuckery that has been happening this cycle. Off cycle gerrymandering, purges of democratic leaning voters, scares about mail-in voting, etc.
People shouldn’t assume this is a lock. People need to show up in high numbers.
People also forget that most campaigns want to be able to claim they are ahead in the polls. Strong poll numbers can lead to the bandwagon effect, while trailing poll numbers can cause people to give up.
Too many people remember Hillary losing in 2016 but fail to consider the specific context of her being an unpopular candidate. Believing that your side is going to win isn’t normally a reason to stay home, unless you have some objection to the turd sandwich your side nominated.
So be encouraged by good polls, don’t be discouraged by bad polls, and then get off your and vote no matter what the polls say.