Texas is the Democratic white whale. Every election cycle, some enterprising statewide (or national) Democratic candidate tries to flip the state by winning the governorship, a senate seat, or the state’s electoral college votes. And recently, they haven’t had much success. Texas has elected Republican governors since 1994 (when George W. Bush won his first term), has sent two Republican senators to Washington DC for over two decades, and hasn’t gone for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford in 1976.
But a new poll from Gallup might be giving some Democrats fresh hope that this year will be different.
Gallup recently polled adults in every state, and found that 39 percent of adult Texans approved of President Trump’s job performance and 54 percent disapproved. So is this evidence that Democrats will unseat Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in 2018 and finally land their white whale?
I tend to think not.
The topline percentages from Gallup look bad for Republicans, but they’re a lot less scary when you realize this is a poll of adults and not voters. Not all adults vote, and polls that survey registered voters, rather than adults, show a better approval rating for Trump. For example, this map shows the difference between Trump’s approval rating in the recent Gallup poll and Morning Consult’s September 50 state poll (which polls registered voters).
Texas is dark orange—meaning that Trump has a much higher approval rating in the registered voter poll than the poll that includes all adults: He registered a 50.6 percent approval rating in Morning Consult and 39 percent in Gallup. It’s possible that some of that difference is due to noise and changes in public opinion on Trump since September. But demographics also tell part of the story.
This graphic shows the difference between the Gallup and Morning Consult numbers for each state plotted against the non-Hispanic white proportion of the population. The fit isn’t perfect, but the pattern seems real. Gallup gives Trump a much lower level of support than Morning Consult in states with larger non-white populations.
This makes sense. In general, the American electorate is typically whiter than the overall population. According to University of Florida’s Michael McDonald, white voters made up slightly less than three quarters of the 2016 electorate. The American Community Survey’s 5-year estimates for 2016, on the other hand, put non-Hispanic white share of the overall population at 62 percent. Moreover, data from the Current Population Survey reinforces the point that Hispanic and black voters (many Texans are black or Hispanic) generally—though not always—turn out at a lower rate than white voters.
I don’t have Gallup’s or Morning Consult’s original data. But it intuitively makes sense that a poll that samples all adults (Gallup) would produce less Trump-friendly numbers than a poll that looks at likely or registered voters (Morning Consult). Nonwhite voters overwhelmingly cast their ballot against Trump in 2016, and nonvoters have been shown to be more Democratic and Trump-skeptical than registered or likely voters.
That’s not to say that Gallup’s approach has no merit. It’s important to understand what the American people broadly want, think, and feel. It’s also worth comparing the opinions of all adults to that of the general electorate and primary electorates in order to understand the ways in which these smaller groups do and don’t represent the larger public.
But there are more relevant data points when it comes to forecasting elections.
For example, Morning Consult found that Trump had a 50.6 percent approval rating in Texas in September. They also recently found that Ted Cruz had a 50 percent approval rating among registered voters in his state. Most of the head-to-head polling that tests Cruz against Rep. Beto O’Rourke, the likely Democratic nominee, has come from campaigns. But Sabato’s Crystal Ball rates the race as “Likely Republican.” Inside Elections and Cook Political Report also rate the race as “Solid” for the Republican.
Obviously there’s time for conditions to change. Maybe the race will become competitive, or maybe Cruz will pull further ahead. But the point is that this Gallup poll doesn’t tell the whole story, and for now it looks like Democrats still aren’t in a position to catch their white whale.
