Trump to visit Texas for 16th time as poll places Biden ahead of him in crucial Red state
No Democratic presidential candidate has won Texas in an election since Jimmy Carter in 1976, but things are looking ominous for the GOP ahead of the 2020 election in the key red state. Fresh polls have warned that incumbent President Donald Trump has a battle in his hand to hold on to Lone Star State, which he won handsomely in 2016, and he is now set to visit the state for the 16th time.
Trump’s campaign team has tried to put on a brave face saying it is not yet treating Texas as a battleground state even as Trump’s presumptive Democratic opponent Joe Biden has shown a trend of either matching Trump or even taking lead in a number of surveys. On July 27, a Morning Consult poll showed the former vice president leading the GOP leader by 47-45 percent.
Republicans overlook poll numbers, Dems are excited
State-based Republican strategists have tried to hide the desperate faces in the camp by saying the president loves to visit Texas to raise money and mobilize the support base.
Brendon Steinhauser, a Republican strategist from Austin who managed the 2014 campaign of long-term senator from the state John Cornyn, was quoted as saying by the Washington Examiner: "He won Texas by 9 percentage points in 2016, but he is facing a closer and tougher race in 2020. I think his multiple visits to Texas indicate that he is taking Texas seriously and is investing time here so that he doesn't lose the state this time around.”
Hogan Gidley, Trump campaign's national press secretary, underplayed the poll numbers saying Trump was also trailing Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 election but then won it in the final battle. Gidley tried to explain the scenario this year saying people were still occupied with summer-time enjoyments and fighting the virus, reported NBC DFW.
Republican Party workers are feeling the pulse on the ground to admit that the changing demographics in Texas have endangered their long-standing advantage and that more work needs to be done to win the trust of the minority voters and women from the suburbs. Texas has been badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic where nearly 6,000 people have died.
Trump will meet his supporters in Odessa for a fundraising lunch on July 29 before going to Midland where two former Republican presidents — George H W Bush and George W Bush — had lived once. There, Trump will visit an oil rig and make a speech on how his program of cutting regulation and backing private investment has boosted America’s energy production. The last time that Trump visited Texas was barely a month ago and his frequent visits to the state have bolstered the Democrats who feel that the GOP is feeling the pressure to maintain its lead in the red state.
'Biden, DNC making investments in Texas'
"The reality is that he has been coming so many times over the past two years in particular, and yet his poll numbers continue to drop," Manny Garcia, executive director of the Texas Democratic Party, was quoted as saying by NBC DFW. "The Biden campaign is already making investments into Texas, and for months, the DNC has been investing in the Texas Democratic Party," Garcia said.
However, it would still take some effort for the Dems to win Texas after nearly five decades. GOP donors have hoped over a drive to register 10,000 new Republicans and super PAC dedicated to mobilizing unregistered members of Trump’s “silent majority”. The super PAC, Engage Texas, raised over $12M but was shut in May in the wake of the pandemic. The pandemic has seriously hurt Trump’s prospects in the state with a Quinnipiac poll published last week suggesting that the voters have largely disapproved of his handling of the situation (52 percent against as 45 percent for). They felt Biden would have done better (48 percent ‘yes’ as against 45 percent ‘no’) as the president.
Both the Republican and Democratic campaigns are likely to spend and raise money in Texas, where 38 electoral votes are up for grabs.