A new poll of Texas’ Senate race from the University of Texas tests Sen. Ted Cruz against his two likeliest general election opponents, but frustratingly, it fails to mention the party affiliation of any candidates. Instead, the survey, which was conducted by YouGov, simply asks respondents which option they’d support as between “Ted Cruz and Roland Gutierrez” and “Ted Cruz and Colin Allred.”
It’s only several questions earlier that any of these contenders are linked with their party, in matchups looking at each side’s March 5 primary. Cruz dominates with 86% against unknown challengers, while Allred, who is serving his third term in Congress, has a wide 52-14 advantage over Gutierrez, a member of the state Senate.
(AdImpact recently reported that Allred had already spent $3 million to promote his candidacy on the airwaves while it’s not clear whether Gutierrez has followed suit, though he did just roll out an endorsement from Houston-area Rep. Sylvia Garcia.)
In YouGov’s head-to-head matchups, Cruz leads Allred 46-32 and Gutierrez by a similar 45-31 margin. Partly that’s because the two Democrats are far less well-known than the incumbent: 36% of respondents say they don’t know enough to have an opinion of Allred and 45% say the same thing about Gutierrez, while only 3% are undecided on Cruz.
But the absence of party labels may also explain why both Democrats earn such a low share of the vote. Many voters rely on partisan cues when casting their ballots, which will indeed identify Senate candidates by party. Leaving those labels off therefore fails to approximate the experience in the voting booth (or at the kitchen table) in a critical way.
Unfortunately, other outfits appear to have done the same thing, including a survey of the same race just last week from Republican pollster National Public Affairs. Regrettably, we did not catch that omission at the time, but Daily Kos Elections has long emphasized the importance of including this information and will continue to note its absence.
