Dr. Mark Owens, one of three political science professors involved in the newUT Tyler Polling Center, stands with students Oct. 24, 2018, during a phone banking session where they were conducting a public opinion poll ahead of the midterm election at the University of Texas at Tyler.

Former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas and former Vice President Joe Biden are neck and neck in the polls among the state’s Democratic voters.

O’Rourke is the preferred candidate of 25.2% of Texans who plan to vote in the March Democratic primary, while Biden is preferred by 23%.

The poll comes from the University of Texas at Tyler’s Center for Opinion Research, one of two statewide polling centers of its kind in Texas.

The poll was conducted between Aug. 1 and 4. It reached 1,261 registered voters and has a 2.8% margin of error at a 95% confidence interval. Results are weighted to accurately represent Texas adults.

O’Rourke and Biden were followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (16%), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (10.3%), Sen. Kamala Harris (5.3%), former U.S. housing secretary Julian Castro (4%), South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (3.9%) and Sen. Cory Booker (2.3%).

The Texas primary is Tuesday, March 3, a day known in politics as Super Tuesday, when 14 states hold their presidential primaries. It’s one of the most important days in presidential primaries because of the large number of primaries happening.

Candidates who win primaries in each state win delegates to the Democratic National Convention. Delegates are proportional to state population, and Texas is the second-largest state with a primary on Super Tuesday, behind California.

Mark Owens, the co-director of the Center for Opinion Research, said it’s likely that Democrats are going with the candidates they know best — the former U.S. Senate candidate, the former vice president and the 2016 presidential candidate.

The center also compared the results of the August poll, which took place after the second Democratic debate, with a July poll. Three hundred and thirty of the people identifying as Democrats who took the August poll also participated in the July poll. There were not enough Republican-identifying voters who took both polls to perform the same analysis.

Owens said the results show that Democrat-leaning Texans are learning more about other candidates through debates and news coverage. In some cases, Texans polled said the debate was the reason they chose to change their preferred candidate from July to August.

“Anytime we see O’Rourke, Biden and Sanders as the top three, people are still going back to the default, the names that they know,” Owens said. “O’Rourke and Biden’s numbers, they still maintain the lead, but it’s a little bit less than it was the month before.”

In July, O’Rourke and Biden polled — at 26.5% and 24.4%, respectively — higher than their August numbers. However, several other candidates saw upticks in their support from July to August.

Sanders went from 15.4% to 16%; Castro from 3.3% to 4%; Buttigieg from 1.5% to 3.9%; and Booker from 1.3% to 2.3%.

Meanwhile, Warren’s support decreased from 10.6% to 10.3%, and Harris from 8.5% to 5.3%.

Among people who took both polls, 18% switched their No. 1 candidate from July to August, and 13% said they did so because of the debate. Owens said it’s likely the other 5% were influenced through news coverage.

Respondents said that regardless of their preference, the top debate performers were Warren (18.5%), O’Rourke (18.2%), Biden (15.2%), Sanders (14.8%) and Harris (9.4%).

UT Tyler also analyzed support for candidates by race, ethnicity, gender and income level.

The results show that Warren does best with middle- and high-income voters, while Sanders and Biden do best with low- and middle-income voters. O’Rourke has consistent support among all three income levels.

Among Hispanic voters, O’Rourke is more popular than Castro. Thirty-five percent of Hispanic men and 30.4% of Hispanic women support O’Rourke, while 7.7% of Hispanic men and 8% of Hispanic women support Castro.

The percentage of those polled who believed that O’Rourke or Castro should drop out of the presidential race increased after the debate.

In July, 21.1% said Castro should drop out, compared with 29.6% in August, while 55.9% said he should run against Sen. John Cornyn in July, compared with 69.3% in August.

Fewer thought O’Rourke should drop out — 24.8% in July and 25.8% in August — but more thought he should run against Cornyn —73.1% in July compared with 71.1% in August.

The full poll results are available at https://bit.ly/2YNRRFq.

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