Texas is tricky to poll due to its regional divides, large population, ethnic diversity, and lack of analogues in the behavior of other states. With the possible exception of Alaska, few states have so large a margin of error (4% for most states)... and a 4% lead for Trump in Texas is within the margin of error.
Although it is unlikely, Texas may be within reach of Hillary Clinton should Texas' educated white people vote like educated white people in other states and should Mexican-Americans vote like Mexican-Americans in California, Colorado, or New Mexico. This state has the largest number of potential Romney-to-Clinton voters (educated white voters and relatively-conservative Mexican-Americans). I expect the largest absolute swing from R to D in the Presidential election and one of the largest proportional swings from R to D in the Presidential election. Will that be enough to swing Texas? Only in a complete collapse of Donald Trump, which will make this Presidential election uninteresting.
I have been saying for some time on this forum, that I believed Texas would be much closer than most expected this year.
Although I am not a Texan, I lived and worked there for four years in the Houston area, traveled and visited almost every part of the state, and Trump does not represent the values and beliefs of a large majority of Texans in most areas.
This is an "A" polling firm, and although Texas is one of the hardest states to poll, other than perhaps Florida, it does jive we what we have seen in other recent polls of Texas, combined with national polls.
Perhaps the worst news for Trump in the details of the poll is Trump is only up 6% in the 59 counties that include Metro Houston, all of East Texas, and parts of SouthEast Texas.
This appears to indicate a complete collapse in the Houston area, as I have mentioned on other threads, with Harris County swinging heavily Democratic by 10-15%, Fort Bend county moving into a likely D model, and the upper-middle Class Anglos in Montgomery County (The Woodlands) and also the new Exxon Corp HQ acting more like a 60-40 Republican County and less like an 80-20 R County.
Considering how overwhelmingly Republican, Anglo, and evangelical the vast majority of the remaining areas are outside of metro "H-Town", this is the only thing that could explain. I wish they posted a map of which counties were included so we can run the PVI, but Trump alone, appears to be turning metro Houston deep dark Red.
