Quinnipiac polls show Trump leading Biden in Texas, deadlocked race in Ohio

President Trump leads Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden by 5 points in Texas, while the two are statistically tied in Ohio, according to a pair of Quinnipiac University polls released on Thursday.

The polls show Trump running ahead of Biden in Texas 50-45 percent. In Ohio, Biden holds a slight advantage, garnering 48 percent support to Trump’s 47 percent. 

Still, the polls suggest a much tighter race in two states that Trump carried four years ago by sizable margins. 

Winning Texas may be more of a stretch for Biden. Most recent polls show him trailing Trump there, and voters in the state haven’t gone for a Democrat in a presidential election since 1976. 

Ohio, however, has a history of swinging in presidential years. Former President Obama won the state in both 2008 and 2012 before it flipped to Trump in 2016.

Mary Snow, a polling analyst at Quinnipiac University, said that who wins the state could very well come down to a small number of voters who say they could still change their mind before Election Day.

“With six weeks to go until Election Day and most minds made up, Ohio could hinge on a sliver of likely voters who signal they may have a change of heart and the four percent who say they are unsure right now who they’ll back,” Snow said. “At this point, it’s a toss-up.”

In Texas’s contested Senate race, Sen. John Cornyn (R) holds a solid lead over Democratic challenger M.J. Hegar, garnering 50 percent support to her 42 percent.

Both candidates have net positive favorability ratings among Texas voters. Thirty-nine percent of respondents reported a positive opinion of Cornyn, compared to 30 percent who said they view him unfavorably. Hegar was also more popular than not among voters who had heard of her, notching a 29 percent favorable to 19 percent unfavorable.

Still, many voters said they did not know enough about the candidates to form an opinion. Thirty-percent of respondents said they had not heard enough about Cornyn, while 50 percent said they did not know enough about Hegar.

The Quinnipiac University polls surveyed 1,085 likely voters in Ohio and 1,078 likely voters in Texas from Sept. 17 to 21. The margin of sampling error for both states is plus or minus 3 percentage points.