Multiple polls released on Tuesday showed a competitive presidential race in Texas, usually a reliably Republican state.
A University of Houston poll showed Donald Trump leading Hillary Clinton by 3 percentage points, 41-38, with a 3-percentage-point margin of error. Nearly three-in-ten independent voters labeled themselves undecided in the survey, while 11 percent of all respondents had yet to make up their mind.
The University of Houston poll surveyed 1,000 Texans from Oct. 7-15 by landline telephones and cell phones.
A SurveyMonkey/Washington Post online poll unveiled on Tuesday found public opinon in Texas to be similar to the Houston poll. The SurveyMonkey poll found Trump ahead of Clinton by 2 percentage points, 48-46, with 5 percent of respondents answering that they had no opinion.
The SurveyMonkey poll surveyed 1,332 likely Texan voters online from Oct. 8-16. No margin of error was calculated for the survey because such a figure is only applicable to randomly sampled surveys.
The Republican nominee has won every presidential election in Texas by double digits this century. While Clinton’s effort to turn Texas blue appears to remain a tall task in 2016, the possibility of a single-digit victory for Trump in the Lone Star State is increasing. Real Clear Politics’ average of Texan polling shows Trump up 5.8 percentage points as of this article’s publication on Tuesday.
