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.”
Cruz doesn’t seem to have whatever it takes to be a successful candidate but he seems to stand for the Constitution and cutting the feds drastically to conform to the Constitution. For that reason I’d love to see him as Trump’s VP. Anyone know of any inklings that Trump may do that (I know it’s still a bit early).
Texas will be the deciding factor on any 3rd party attempts from the R side.
From what I’ve read, a lot of “experts” expect the sore loser law to prohibit anyone registered for the R primary to run again in November.
No non-Democrat candidate can win POTUS without Texas 38 evs.
Trump + Cruz seems to be shaping up.
Neither did Kerry at this time in 03 - nor Obama at this time in 07 - neither did McCain at this time in 07 - and they all three won their nominations by a mile and of course Obama won the Oval twice. Also, neither did Newt at this time in 11, and he later led the entire pack on two different occasions.
I have no interest in Cruz as VP.
Cruz as president, or stay where he is in the Senate.
Maybe I’m politically naive, but Mr. Cruz doesn’t have to have a ‘strategy’ in relating to Donald Trump.
Naturally there will be some disagreements, maybe even irreconcilable differences, but I wouldn’t expect TC to ‘attack’ Trump like the others. Cruz only needs to state his case in his usual way (clear and concise) without getting personal, it seems to me.
Ted Cruz understands, unlike others in the GOP race, that the stakes are too high to play into the media’s hands and satisfy their sick appetite for discord.
Trump/Cruz seems like an excellent team. They seem to respect each other, both love America, and most likely would work well together to rescue the country.
Cruz will play a serious role in Trump admin. VP/Cabinet/SCOTUS.
For selfish reasons, I would prefer Cruz on SCOTUS because then we get 30-35 years of a justice who knows and follows the constitution.
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.
What a joke of a poll. How is Hillary leading anybody in Texas? I’m no Rubio fan, but there’s no way he’s behind in Texas and no way Trump leads her by only 2 Even Mitt won by 16.
LOL
Sure he will.
Isn't there a Trump thread for you to slobber on?
What’ll they say if Cruz and Trump team up?
I also want Cruz as President, if he can show that he will actually follow through and do the things he says he will do.
IMO, the only way I see Cruz becoming President is via a Trump VP. If Trump has a good-to-great presidency, his VP, Cruz, would have an excellent chance of walking into the subsequent presidency.
IMO, Trump’s choice for VP is critical (as it was with Reagan with unfortunate disastrous results) because if he has a good-to-great presidency, whoever his VP is has a good shot at becoming the next President.
I was thinking about that this morning. Trump - prez; Cruz - VP.
At first I thought Cruz wouldn’t do it because he would feel he could do more good in the Senate.
But then I thought, at his age, he could be President in four years if Trump accomplishes most of what he wanted and wants to go back to business, or,
If Trump stays in for eight and I’m way okay with that, Cruz could be in for the next 8. Okay, I’m dreaming but these two could so transform the country in 16 years.
I’m counting on the probability that minorities; ie Blacks will not be so motivated to vote this time with Obama out of the running.
And I cannot see Hillary attracting the minority vote at all.
Can’t we all get along? /s
If Trump is helping anyone its the democrats.
He supports normalization with Cuba, he supports keeping the Iran deal, He supports funding the “good parts” of planned parenthood (Crony capitalism) He supports the renewable fuel standards and ethanol subsidies (More crony capitalism). Lord only knows where he actually stands on the Syrian “refugees” since he’s taken at least 3 different positions in the past 2 weeks. He’s gone from the idiotic position of we’ll bomb ISIS and take their stuff to the even more goofy We’ll let Russia bomb ISIS and then we’ll take their stuff.
If the truth is no longer acceptable at FR, then its time for me to ride the lightning.
That’s what I’ve thought about too.
I have reason to believe that God in his eternal grace and mercy may just bring about a rebirth of freedom for the next little while in the country, thereby blessing many and sending light around the world for one last in-gathering before it all comes crashing down.
:)
When you stop slobbering on Trump thread, I will give it a serious consideration.
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