Sanders builds 6-point lead in Texas primary: poll

A new poll of Texas voters published Friday by Univision shows Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) with a 6-point lead over his rivals in the crucial Super Tuesday state, particularly among Latino voters.

The poll, conducted by polling firm Latino Decisions for Univision and the University of Houston’s Center for Mexican American Studies, shows 26 percent of Texans support Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary, while former Vice President Joe Biden and former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg are tied in second place with 20 percent support each.

A poll conducted by the same firm in September showed Sanders at 13 percent support.

No other candidate breaks the 15 percent threshold required to win delegates in the Texas primary taking place on Tuesday.

The poll also focused on Latino voters in Texas, a group that Sanders leads with 31 percent support, to Bloomberg’s 23 percent and Biden’s 19 percent.

Respondents also picked their second-choice Democratic presidential candidate.

Biden is the second choice candidate for 20 percent of Texan voters, Sanders the second choice for 19 percent, Bloomberg for 18 percent and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has 16 percent.

Among Hispanic voters, the leading second-choice candidates are Sanders at 23 percent, Biden at 20 percent, Bloomberg at 17 percent and Warren at 14 percent.

Polls have consistently shown Sanders doing well with Latino voters, including in Nevada, where he won last week’s caucuses by a wide margin. 

Sanders is also leading in most polls in California, a state with a heavy Latino presence that will provide the biggest pledged delegate haul on Super Tuesday. 

Although no Democrat has won a statewide election in Texas since 1994, the state has been targeted by Democrats for the general election.

According to the poll, President Trump and Sanders are in a dead heat in Texas in a general election match-up, with the support of 45 percent of respondents each.

Bloomberg comes in slightly ahead against Trump with 44 percent support to 43 percent.

Biden also matches up competitively with the president, with 43 percent support for Biden against 46 percent for Trump.

Warren, former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) all trail Trump by a margin wider than the poll’s margin of error.

Among Latino voters, all Democrats lead Trump by a wide margin, but Sanders has the biggest lead.

In a Trump versus Sanders match-up, 65 percent of Latino respondents said they’d vote for the Vermont senator, and only 25 percent for the incumbent.

The poll also shows an improvement in favorability among Latino voters about Trump’s performance, with 38 percent approving of his job as president, while 62 percent disapprove.

That’s a 14 point bump from September’s poll, when 24 percent of Texas Hispanics said they approve of the president’s job performance.

Among all Texas voters, 52 percent approve of Trump’s handling of the job, while 48 percent disapprove.

The poll was conducted Feb. 21-26 among 1,004 registered Texas voters, including an oversampling of 504 Latinos, and has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points for the general population numbers and 4.4 points for Latinos.