https://www.univision.com/univision-news/politics/univision-news-poll-democrats-surge-in-texas-no-longer-a-safe-state-for-trump-in-2020
Absolutely incredible poll out of Texas from Univision. First bit of good news, the poll found not one, not two, not three, but SIX candidates that beat Trump in Texas, two of which are by solid margins, and Beto wasn't even one of the polled candidates! In fact, every candidate they polled beat Trump by at least a point, meaning that Texas is a battleground state no matter who we nominate! Second, the poll does a lot to undermine Biden's "I'm the only electable one" narrative. Sanders actually wins by a stronger margin than Biden!
And in more ways than one. First, Biden drives more people to be certain to vote for Trump than does Sanders. That is, Biden is the more polarizing candidate, who makes voters considering Trump most likely to feel certain in that choice, while Sanders has more people in the "leaning Trump" column and fewer in the "will vote for Trump" column. Second, Sanders drives out the Democratic base more, with more people in the "will vote for Sanders" column than Biden has in his "will vote for Biden" column, though both have the same amount of leaners. Third, Sanders does way better with Hispanics. Not only is Sanders the most favorable candidate in the field among Texas Hispanics (Biden 2nd, Castro 3rd, Warren 4th), he also gets way better results with Texas Hispanics in the general, getting a whopping 8% more of the Texas Hispanic vote than Biden does!
They polled a bunch of other interesting stuff too. One notable thing I saw included that the Senate is also competitive, with John Cornyn only pulling ahead of a generic Democrat by a mere 1%! Meaning that if Beto or Castro dropped out and ran for Senate, they'd probably do better than the generic Democrat benchmark and actually stand a chance of winning! Cornyn is relatively unknown, especially among the state's Hispanics, so it would be really easy for a well organized campaign with a well known figure running it to work to define Texas' understanding of Cornyn, pulling it to be significantly more negative. A full 38% of the state hasn't formed an opinion so it wouldn't be hard to make them hate him. Another interesting bit in the poll was all the questions about gun control and other issues. Texas, believe it or not, is about as supportive of the more popular gun control measures (universal background checks 86%, red flag laws 81%, ban assault weapons 68%) as most national polls I've seen on the matter, and place a significant amount of blame for mass shootings on the availability of guns, white supremacists, and Trump's rhetoric (majorities place "a good amount" or more blame on these things).
The moral of all this? Texas. Is. Already. Fucking. Purple. Not magenta, not fuchsia, not any sort of red-purple. Just straight up purple. That's not a "maybe sometime decades from now as the next generation comes of voting age" thing. It's a now thing. Texas is purple guys. It's totally winnable, in fact it might not even be the hardest state to win within the realm of possibility, Georgia's probably harder. Not that it would matter, because Texas has more electoral votes than Michigan and Pennsylvania combined, and if we win Texas, we wouldn't need Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Georgia, Arizona, Florida, or North Carolina. Trump could win every state he won last time except for Texas, but just by losing Texas he'd lose the presidency. Texas is just that big of a fucking deal. And it's FUCKING PURPLE.
And before someone says this is just one poll, it's just the latest of several to say that Sanders and Biden could win Texas from Trump, so no, it's not just one poll.
