A new poll shows Republican Ted Cruz ahead of his Democratic challenger by 8 points as the senator heads for re-election to his U.S. Senate seat.
Cruz is running against U.S. Rep. Colin Allred, a Democrat from Dallas, in the Nov. 5 election. While a recent poll showed the candidates separated by about 2 percentage points, a poll released Friday by The Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin shows a wider margin.
Cruz is leading with 44% of the vote to Allred’s 36%, the poll found. The poll, which surveyed 1,200 registered voters in Texas between Aug. 23 and Aug. 31, has a margin of error of 2.83%.
Two percent of voters said they would vote for Libertarian Ted Brown, and 4 percent said they would vote for someone else. Fourteen percent said they hadn’t thought about it enough to have an opinion.
Allred is closing the gap between himself and Cruz, according to previous polls from The Texas Politics Project. In a December poll, Allred was behind by 16 points. In a February poll, he was behind by 14 points and in April, he was behind by 13.
In June, the most recent poll before Friday, Allred trailed Cruz by 11 points.
