Posted on 10/01/2015 9:48:02 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
AUSTIN - U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s friendly approach to mogul Donald Trump might be paying off in Texas.
A poll released Thursday by the nonpartisan, nonprofit Texas Lyceum showed that Trump leads the Republican field in Texas, but Cruz is close behind and is the second choice for more than a third of Trump’s supporters.
Cruz could be expected to have a strong swath of support among Republicans in his home state.
But his strategy with regard to Trump may have kept Cruz from alienating a bigger share of businessman’s backers. Trump, as he has led in polls, has been harshly criticized by some other Republicans after controversy-stirring remarks on immigration and about prominent women including, Fox News’ Megyn Kelly and GOP candidate Carly Fiorina.
Putting aside Trump’s remarks on women, Trump on policy issues including the need to halt illegal immigration “has been saying a lot of the things that Cruz has been saying for a long time,” said Josh Blank, Lyceum research director.
But rather than taking a sour-grapes approach, Blank said, “Cruz has been pretty happy to say, ‘Thank God he’s been bringing up these issues. He’s right.’ And he has been kind of sitting, waiting in the wings for Trump to eventually drop out.
“It’s safe to say Cruz would benefit most in Texas if Trump were to drop out. I think he would benefit most in a lot of places, amongst the traditional candidates,” said Blank.
Cruz also benefit in Texas from being a home-state senator, Blank pointed out.
With Trump at 21 percent support and Cruz at 16 percent, the difference between them was within the margin of error for that question on the poll.
The poll also asked voters for their second choices and found that 37 percent of Trump supporters picked Cruz next, according to the Lyceum.
On the Democratic side, former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton is ahead in the primary battle, according to the poll.
In a hypothetical general-election matchup, Clinton is behind former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Cruz and Trump.
But Clinton trails Trump by only 2 percentage points, within the margin of error, and she is ahead of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida in a head-to-head matchup.
“Mrs. Clinton actually polls better in Texas right now than one might have expected,” said University of Texas at Austin professor Daron Shaw, who oversaw the poll along with Blank. “But this is primarily due to her greater name recognition and the divisiveness of the GOP contest at this early stage.”
The poll of 1,000 Texans was conducted Sept. 8-21 and has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
The margin of error is bigger for the subsets of registered or likely voters, Republicans and Democrats.
It is plus or minus 3.35 percentage points among all registered voters and plus or minus 3.9 percentage points for likely voters.
For the Republican primary ballot, the margin of error is plus or minus 6.01 percentage points, and it’s plus or minus 7.15 percent for the Democratic primary ballot.
With the big GOP field and primary voting months away, the poll found that “haven’t thought about it enough” got a bigger percentage among expected primary voters than a number of the candidates.
On the Republican side, 5 percent hadn’t thought about it enough - a bigger percentage than those who supported Trump, Cruz, Bush, surgeon Ben Carson and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Fiorina.
Twelve GOP candidates had less than 5 percent support support, including Rubio, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and two who have dropped out - former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.
Among Democrats, 23 percent said they hadn’t thought about it enough.
Clinton had 36 percent support; U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont had 24 percent; Vice President Joe Biden, who hasn’t announced, had 15 percent, and Jim Webb, former U.S. senator from Virginia, was at 2 percent. Lincoln Chafee and Martin O’Malley had zero support.
Aside from the 2016 race, the poll found similar job approval ratings for President Obama and Gov. Greg Abbott among all Texans, a bigger group than registered or likely voters.
Fifty-six percent said they “strongly approve” or “somewhat approve” of the job Abbott is doing, while 52 percent said Obama is doing a “very good” or “somewhat good” job.
Because the job approval items were asked of all Texas adults, Shaw said, “the preponderance of non-white respondents produces relatively strong numbers for Democrats.”
I like Cruz. I just don’t see him getting elected here. But I do see him walking into the presidency if he is Trump’s VP.
I agree, Jim. I think God will help this country in this time of incredible need.
Maybe you should look up the definition of the word “slobber.”
And then you can go back to where you came from and hyperventilate some more about how tall your idol is, and ooooh, isn’t he just magic?
I think its time to go crap all over some Trump threads since it seems to be fine for the Trumpanzees to follow from one Cruz thread to the next and fling crap.I am so sick of lying unethical people who don’t have the manparts to vet their own candidate before coming here to infect this thread.
Hypocrite!
He also appears to be a second choice for the Paul people, many Huckabee people, and a goodly number of Carson people. That might just be a good enough package when the field winnows.
Shortsightedness can be repaired these days.
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>> “Cruz doesn’t seem to have whatever it takes to be a successful candidate” <<
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Amazing then that he was able to garner an overwhelming win over a billionaire candidate in his senate contest.
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SCOTUS is the big reason why Cruz is our only hope of success in the presidency.
SCOTUS is the nation’s main and possibly only big problem, and it is clear that only Cruz has the understanding to correct it.
Without fixing the court, our attempts at immigration, crime, and entitlement programs will fall to legislation from the bench.
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entropy12 is a “blurb” troll.
All entropy12 does is inject illogical blurbs into threads about the election.
He doesn’t just blurb on Cruz threads, he hits’em all.
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Good grief the self-alleged Cruz supporters posting idiocy and insults on Trump threads are an humiliation of the site.
Yes, and he isn’t very bright.
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You did well on Apple Pie; shame you didn’t stick with it.
Yes, with a few unexpected twists and turns.
Same meme, same verbal diareah from the Cruz haters.
Ted Cruz ( God willing and God’s help ) will be the next President of the United States of America.
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