In a recent Upshot column for The New York Times, polling guru Nate Cohen analyzes the tea leaves for recent polling in Texas and concludes, as the title of his column suggests, that “With Weakness Among Hispanic Voters, Biden Trails in Texas.” As I recently discussed in my recent blog about the Texas Latino vote, I disagree with Mr. Cohen who seems to place little weight on the more recent poll findings about the Latino vote in Texas that was sponsored by The Dallas Morning News and UT-Tyler. The following table displays the presidential preference by race/ethnicity, gender and age.
Source: DallasNews.com, October 25, 2020
In my opinion, Joe Biden’s support from Texas Hispanic voters is huge (69%) and consistent with recent polls by Pew Research Center and Latino Decisions. However, Hispanic support for Donald Trump (21%) shows a significant decline from the previous 33 percent support documented in these same polls. In addition, the current DMN/UT-Tyler poll confirms a point that I made in my earlier analysis that Hispanic women (73%) in Texas are solidly behind Joe Biden and should be targeted more aggressively in the remaining days before the election. Joe Biden also enjoys strong support in Texas from Blacks (89%) and younger voters in the 18-24 (78%) and 25-34 (59%) age groups.
Of course, polling analysts consider a number of factors to support their conclusions. In the case of the potential benefit of the Texas Hispanic vote for the Biden campaign, I believe that Mr. Cohen has simply misjudged this issue. Coupled with the surge of early voting by Hispanic voters, we have good reason to be optimistic that the Hispanic vote will prove to be very influential in the 2020 elections.