A new Emerson College poll (pdf) of 700 “likely general election voters” shows Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton, 42%-36%, with the two minor party candidates receiving the support of 16% of voters. The latter figure is far above the parties’ historical performances in this state.
This is at least the fourth poll since June showing a single-digit lead for Trump. We are excluding the WaPo/SurveyMonkey “poll,” which showed a 1-point Clinton lead, because of serious methodological concerns.
According to Emerson, three quarters of those polled who voted for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz in the primary intend to vote for Trump, and another 10% intend to vote for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. Just under half of those polled who voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary intend to vote for Clinton, and 21% say they will vote for Green candidate Jill Stein.
Women are fairly evenly split between Trump and Clinton, and men favor Trump, 49%-35%. Younger voters favor Clinton and Stein. Trump’s share of the vote increases with every step up in age group, rising from 16% among voters younger than 35 to 57% among those over 75.
Clinton leads Trump, 55%-32%, among Hispanic/Latino respondents and 84%-9% among African-American respondents. Anglo respondents favor Trump, 55%-19%. Trump leads Clinton among “independent” voters, 36%-19%. The two minor party candidates receive 31% of their support combined, a number that far exceeds their past performances.
Consistent with other recent polls, Trump and Clinton are viewed unfavorably by a majority of poll respondents. Trump (38/58) is slightly less unpopular than Clinton (33/58).
Democrats, Republicans and independents were all almost equally represented in the poll. Most polls of Texas give self-identified Republican voters and Republican-leaning voters a greater proportional share of the sample, consistent with prior election results. However, the data were weighted by the 2012 presidential election results. Poll respondents overall supported Mitt Romney, 57%-41%, over Barack Obama, which was the identical result of that election.
Nearly half of poll respondents indicated they had a college and/or advanced degree, which would appear to be an oversampling of that group.
The poll of 700 “likely general election voters” was conducted September 7-10 using only landline telephone numbers. In the past, we have noted that Emerson’s exclusive use of landline tends to skew toward older voters, but that does not appear to be the case in this poll. It’s worth noting that Emerson’s March 2014 gubernatorial election poll showed Wendy Davis within 7 points of Greg Abbott. This was the closest polled margin during 2014.
