A new poll finds Joe Biden ahead in a district Trump won by 15 points four years ago

David Nir
and
Daily Kos
28 July 2020

To showcase just how extensively Trump's decline has shifted the playing field, the DCCC shared with the Washington Post details of an in-house poll it conducted of Texas' deep-red 25th Congressional District that finds Joe Biden edging Donald Trump 47-46 and puts Republican Rep. Roger Williams up just 45-43 on his Democratic challenger, attorney Julie Oliver.

That's a huge shift from 2016, when Williams' district went for Trump by a wide 55-40 margin. And that's exactly what Republicans intended: The 25th is part of a careful gerrymander that cracked the Austin area six ways and allowed the GOP to win five of those seats. One of those is Williams' district, which stretches far to the north toward Dallas-Forth Worth, combining a slice of the state capital with rural regions well outside of it.

As a result, the 25th is more rural (and whiter) than most of the suburban seats in Texas that are at the top of Democrats' target list. As DCCC executive director Lucinda Guinn put it, the district had only been "maybe on the outer edges of our battlefield," but that may now change. In 2018, Sen. Ted Cruz only carried this seat 52-47 over Beto O'Rourke, so it's plausible that the leftward march here is continuing.

The biggest difficulty for Oliver, though, may be getting her name out: She had just $90,000 in her campaign account as of June 30, versus $1.3 million for Williams. If the DCCC's poll is accurate, Oliver's been buoyed by the rising tide that has lifted so many Democrats, but to get past the incumbent, she'll need the resources to effectively communicate with voters.