CBS News poll: Governor Greg Abbott leads Democrat Beto O'Rourke 49%-41%
TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) - A new CBS News-YouGov Texas poll conducted for CBS DFW found Governor Greg Abbott has an eight-percentage point lead over Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke. If the election were held today, 49% of Texans surveyed said they would vote for Abbott, the two-term Republican incumbent, while 41% said they would vote for O'Rourke, a former Congressman from El Paso and former Presidential candidate.
Governor Abbott gets mixed results when Texans look at the job he's doing. Most Republicans like the job he's doing, most Democrats do not, and Independents are split down the middle. Still, in a state that leans more red than the rest of the country, Abbott is viewed as doing a better job as governor than Joe Biden is as president.
Texans rate Governor Abbott's response to the deadly mass shooting in Uvalde more negatively than positively. Governor Abbott gets negative marks from younger Texans, women, and Black and Latino people for how he has handled the Uvalde shooting. Majorities of both Democrats and Independents think he's done a bad job, but most in his own party rate his response positively.
John Cornyn
Senator John Cornyn is getting mixed marks from his own party on representing Texas' interests as it relates to guns, and this is dragging on Cornyn's overall job approval rating, which is just 35% among Texans overall.
Republicans who think Cornyn has done a bad job on gun policy overwhelmingly disapprove of his overall job performance. Cornyn's job approval among Republicans is 20 points lower than it is for Senator Ted Cruz.
Most of the interviewing for the poll was conducted as the gun safety legislation Cornyn negotiated was being considered and before it passed. More Texas Republicans said they oppose the legislation than favor it. The Texas public overall is more inclined to favor it.
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This CBS News/YouGov survey was conducted with a statewide representative sample of 1,075 U.S. adult residents in Texas interviewed between June 22-27, 2022. The sample was weighted to be representative of adults statewide according to gender, age, race, education and geographic region based on the U.S. Census Current Population Survey, as well as to 2020 presidential vote. The margin of error is ±4.7 points for the total sample.