A Dead Heat for Governor: the Final Poll Puts Gina Hinojosa at 48 and Greg Abbott at 47, With No Clear Leader
The Senate race has the money record and the market frenzy. The race underneath it may be the closer one: the last New York Times/Siena survey of Texas has the governor's contest separated by a single point, well inside the margin of error.
The number is 48 to 47. In the final New York Times/Siena poll of likely Texas voters, released Sunday and reported Monday, Democrat Gina Hinojosa stands at 48 percent and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott at 47 in the race for governor — a one-point gap against a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points, which leaves the contest, in the poll's own terms, without a clear leader on the eve of Election Day.
The same survey is the one giving the Senate race its seven-point Democratic lead, which is what makes the governor's number stand out: Texas voters in this poll are not moving as a bloc. A Democrat leads the Senate race by seven while the governor's race — the office that signs or vetoes what the Legislature sends, appoints the state's agency heads and commands its emergency powers — sits at a coin flip. Split-ticket voting of exactly that kind is what both parties' turnout operations will be hunting for in the returns Tuesday night.
The two Democratic nominees closed the weekend together. Hinojosa appeared alongside Senate nominee James Talarico at The Espee in San Antonio on Sunday, two days before the election, where Talarico cast his own race in underdog terms — "San Antonio, we are the underdogs in this race," he said, as reported by FWRD Axis. Whether that framing travels down the ballot is precisely the question a 48–47 poll cannot answer. Texas decides it Tuesday, 7 to 7.
