Press Releases

NEW POLL: Texas Senate Race Within Single Digits

Jan 24, 2018

Poll Also Finds Strong Support for Candidates Who Take Up the Mantle of Reform with 63% More Likely to Support a Candidate Who Refuses Corporate Money

Washington, D.C. – A new poll commissioned by End Citizens United (ECU) and conducted by PPP shows a single digit contest in the U.S. Senate race in Texas with Representative Beto O’Rourke trailing Senator Ted Cruz by only eight points, 45 to 37 percent. See the full poll results here.

The poll also found strong support for Beto O’Rourke’s pledge to not accept corporate PAC money with 63% of Texans more likely to support a candidate who has pledged to not accept money from corporate special interests. As both a representative in the House and in his bid for U.S. Senate, O’Rourke has pledged to not take any special interest money. In the poll, after voters learned of O’Rourke’s no PAC pledge, he gains a two-point lead over Senator Cruz.

“The results of today’s poll should be deeply troubling for Senator Cruz. As voters become more familiar with Beto and his promise to not accept a dime of special interest money, it is clear he will continue to gain momentum,” said Tiffany Muller, president of End Citizens United. “Senator Cruz’s record of protecting Big Money and special interests will be a deciding factor to Texans come November.”

To see the full memo on the poll with other key takeaways, click here.

PPP surveyed 757 Texas voters from January 17-18, 2018. The margin of error is +/- 3.6%. 73% of interviews for the poll were conducted over the phone with 27% interviewed over the internet to reach respondents who don’t have landline telephones.

In December, ECU named Senator Cruz to its Big Money 20 target list for the 2018 midterms. The members of the Big Money 20 are incumbents who do the bidding of special interests while also voting to keep the rigged system in place. For example, after benefiting from at least $3 million in outside spending in his 2012 Senate race, Cruz introduced a deceptively named bill to allow mega donors and special interests to give unlimited contributions directly to candidates. His call to eliminate super PACs was a veiled attempt at erasing the already weakened barrier between mega-donors and candidates. Over his career, Cruz has repeatedly attacked campaign finance reform, saying that “money absolutely can be speech” and that efforts to reform money in politics was about “silencing” citizens.

Founded in 2015, ECU is a traditional political action committee (PAC) with more than three million members, including 157,000 in Texas. In June, O’Rourke was the first challenger ECU endorsed for the 2018 cycle. It was the first major endorsement for O’Rourke.

# # #