Six days before Super Tuesday, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump are now tied in Texas, according to a new public opinion poll commissioned by WFAA-TV.
Cruz and Trump both had 32 percent support from likely and actual GOP primary voters, with a 3.9 percent margin of error.
It is the most recent survey of Texas voters and the first one to show Cruz no longer leading in his home state.
“He’s fading,” said Cal Jillson, professor of political science at Southern Methodist University, of Ted Cruz’s candidacy. “Trump has proven to be stronger and more resilient than anyone expected.”
Marco Rubio is a distant third in the WFAA Texas TEGNA poll with 17 percent, John Kasich has 6 percent, Ben Carson has 5 percent and another 5 percent of respondents remain undecided, the poll revealed.
Sure, it’s a poll that was commissioned by a Dallas TV station but you’d have to be delirious to say this is surprising. The super-charged evangelical bloc and superior ground game were supposed to be propelling Cruz and they’ve all but abandoned him in the last two contests. If he ties or loses to Trump in Texas, there wouldn’t be much rationale for going forward. Most of the Cruz campaign’s focus has been on Super Tuesday, and you can bet none of that focus was on having to fight hard for Texas.
Trump has taken conventional primary wisdom and made it look extraordinarily unwise. Most of the speculation about how he can be defeated is predicated upon a political playbook that has been thrown into a wood chopper and no longer exists.
As Steve Green wrote earlier today, this is do or die time for Cruz or Rubio. More so for Cruz, though.
So he better figure out something he can do soon.
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