Against All Odds, Texas Emerges As Battleground State In Presidential Race

AUSTIN, TX — The term "battleground state" hasn't been attached to Texas for decades, what with the last time the state voted for a Democrat for president being 1976.

But that was then. With the gradual implosion of Donald Trump's campaign through a series of self-inflicted gaffes, the margin between him and Democrat Hillary Clinton has thinned to pretty much an even split. According to a new Washington Post/Survey Monkey poll, Clinton trails by a mere two percentage points in a four-way race, including third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.

The upshot: Long red, Texas is now pink. Democrats are hoping to turn the state blue, a goal that in any other election season would've been, at the very least, implausible. But given the unique dynamics of this year's election season, the state is not the bright, deep red color Republicans might have taken for granted.

The Washington Post poll released Tuesday shows Trump’s lead in the Lone Star State at just two percentage points. That's enough for the newspaper to now call Texas a battleground state — an otherwise unheard of development — along with Arizona, Florida and Ohio.

In that four-way race among the two major party candidates along with Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Trump emerges with 44 percent of the vote if the election were held today. That's just two points more than Clinton. Johnson would be the choice of 8 percent of the electorate and Stein would garner 2 percent. The remainder of likely voters had no opinion in answering the survey.

In a two-way race, the margin is the same. Trump would get 48 percent of the vote in Texas to Clinton's 46 percent.

The poll was conducted from Oct. 8-16 among 17,379 likely voters in 15 states, including 569 to 1,702 respondents in each state. The canvassing followed the release of inadvertently recorded comments from a 2005 "Access Hollywood" tape in which Trump is heard making lewd comments about women.

In the videotape, Trump boasts of being able to force himself on women without their consent given his celebrity status. Since the release of that tape, women claiming to have been victims of such action have emerged, and Trump's numbers have precipitated, and continue to fall. Since the video's release, many members from his own political party have since rescinded earlier endorsements.

A previous Survey USA poll showed Trump's lead to now be within the margin of error, making he and Clinton essentially tied. The survey commissioned by several local media outlets was released Oct. 15. In it, Trump leads Clinton by 4 points, 47 percent to 43 percent, with Johnson at 3 percent and Stein at 1 percent.

"No Republican has carried Texas by fewer than 13 points since Bob Dole defeated Bill Clinton by 5 points 20 years ago, when Texan Ross Perot siphoned 7% of the vote," survey authors wrote. "Today, Trump leads by 33 points among white Texans, but Clinton leads by 64 points among African Americans and by 23 points among Latinos."

The rough calculus doesn't bode well for Trump in the Washington Post poll, either. Clinton, it found, is currently leading in enough states to put her well above the required 270 electoral votes required to win the election if the election took place today.

The Clinton campaign appears to be taking notice of the strides it's made in Texas. On Monday, the campaign announced it would be spending about $1.5 million on a one-week television ad buy in Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.

On the other end of the political spectrum, there's worry. While it's still unlikely Texas will go entirely blue come Nov. 8, deeply conservative Gov. Greg Abbott is now just as deeply concerned about the changing political landscape in Texas, if one is to judge from a recent letter he sent potential donors that was obtained by Patch.

"They’re coming after Texas," Abbott begins his missive to one recipient of his emailed plea. "If you had any doubts about what Democrats have planned for you and me, Hillary Clinton’s VP pick, Tim Kaine, laid them bare during a multi-day fundraising blitz across Texas," he reminds. "We must keep Texas red!"

There's yet another poll favorable to Clinton, one sponsored by Scholastic News magazines. Every four years since 1940, America's schoolchildren have gone to the "polls," as USA Today reported, predicting the outcome of nearly every race, including the 13 presidential contests held since 1964.

During this year's iteration of the mock elections among students, Clinton won in a landslide — 52 percent to 35 percent for Trump. Roughly 153,000 students cast ballots in the mock elections, which took place from early August through Oct. 12. Among the schoolchildren, Clinton carried nearly every traditional battleground state: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Ohio. In addition to Texas, she also carried three other traditionally red states: Alaska, Idaho and Utah.

Despite Clinton's traction, some political operatives remain hopeful that Trump might still pull it off. Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who happens to be Trump's campaign manager in Texas, diminished the significance of the "Access Hollywood" tape as a major factor in the presidential campaign by employing a car analogy: “This story is kind of in the rear-view mirror now,” Patrick told Time Warner Cable News’ "Capital Tonight" last week.

But others don't share the "rear view mirror" outlook as it pertains to a continuing scandal. In its headline, Survey USA employs its own car analogy, but with a decidedly different spin: "In Texas, Trump Sees Clinton High-Beams In His Rear-View Mirror: A Blip on the Radar? Or Early Evidence of a GOP Collapse?"

At this point, it's anybody's guess as to what lies on the Texas horizon after the dust clears on Nov. 8. But one thing is certain: It's going to be one heck of an interesting ride.

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