As they have been for some time, Texas registered voters are fairly evenly split when it comes to President Trump’s job approval (47/48), according to a new Univ. of Texas/Texas Tribune poll (PDF), and that fairly even split extends into other areas of his presidency. Specifically, Texas registered voters narrowly think “Congress is justified in conducting impeachment investigations” (46/42) and are practically split down the middle as to whether Trump “has taken actions while president that justify his removal from office” (43/44).
Partisan voters are strongly aligned with their party’s view on the Trump presidency. More than three out of four Republicans feel impeachment proceedings are unjustified, and nearly four out of five Republicans feel Trump’s actions do not merit his removal from office. Meanwhile, 84% of Democrats find justification to the impeachment proceedings, and nearly four out of five Democrats believe Trump’s actions merit removal from office. Independents lean toward the Democrats’ views. By a 46/32 margin, independents feel the impeachment proceedings are justified but it’s an even 34/33 split as to whether they feel the President’s conduct should subject him to removal from office.
A narrow plurality of registered voters disapproves of how Trump has responded to impeachment (39/45) with the partisan splits similar to other matters involving Trump: Republicans (69/13), Democrats (9/80) and independents (33/43). In all cases, registered voters who identify as independents were more likely to be neutral or have no opinion.
Voters were evenly split on the generic congressional ballot with 43% saying they would vote for a Democratic candidate and 43% saying they would vote Republican. One out of 10 voters said they hadn’t thought enough about it to have an opinion.
Facing re-election next year, Sen. John Cornyn’s (R) job performance rating was split nearly in thirds, with 35% approving, 34% disapproving and 31% not knowing or having no opinion. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s rating was 46/39.
State leaders enjoy considerably stronger support. Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) job performance rating is 52/28, and it has been fairly steady for more than a year. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s (R) rating is 39/32, a bit of a decline from a year ago (44/31) but otherwise fairly steady. House Speaker Dennis Bonnen’s (R-Angleton) approval rating was 20/25. Half of registered votrs said they had heard “nothing at all” about “the controversy involving the House Speaker.”
©2019 Texas Election Source LLC
