UT/Trib poll: Clinton and Cruz lead in Texas

Ted Cruz leading the GOP presidential pack in the Lone Star State, which will take the spotlight of Super Tuesday, when voters in more than a dozen states hit the polls on March 1. Cruz worked for Abbott as Solicitor General of Texas. Cruz had 37 percent and Trump had 29 percent, with Marco Rubio placing third with 15 percent in the poll of Republican primary voters.

Abbott, who will formally announce the endorsement at an event on Wednesday afternoon, praised Cruz’s character and his consistent conservative positions in the video. Cruz’s wife Heidi was skeptical of his prospects, and Cruz admitted he “had no business at all with interviewing for the job, much less doing it”. The result was alarming: Trump 31 percent, Kasich 26 percent, Cruz 21 percent, Rubio 13 percent, and Ben Carson at 5 percent.

“To my fellow Texas conservatives I say this: We need to deliver”, Abbott said.

Without mentioning Nevada victor Donald Trump, Cruz said Texas won’t be swayed by “blustery rhetoric” and that “the time for the clowns and the acrobats and the dancing bears has passed”.

Trump called Cruz, the Texas senator, a “soft, weak, little baby” and repeated his accusations that Cruz is a “liar”.

Cruz has said the next president should appoint Scalia’s successor and any candidate nominated by President Obama should not even receive a hearing or a vote.

Republican front-runner Donald Trump has won his first endorsements from sitting members of Congress.

Kasich’s campaign is banking everything on Michigan’s March 8 primary and is making clear the candidate has no plans to drop out soon.

“This race is narrowing, but not narrowing in a way for the lines to actually cross – especially in Texas”, said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at UT-Austin and the poll’s co-director.

Super Tuesday is coming up, when Texas will make its voice heard for presidential nominations. “That’s why I’m supporting Ted Cruz for president”.

The worries come after Cruz finished third in SC, where evangelical or born-again Christians made up 74% of the GOP electorate.

If Trump were to attain such a second-place showing in Texas, and if that left Cruz far underneath the 50 percent mark, Cruz’s credibility as a stop-Trump candidate would be utterly trashed. Some 12 percent said Clinton would be great, while 12 percent said the same for Trump. His advertising has been just as centered as on targeting Rubio, and Cruz’s aides at times appear close to obsessed with thwarting Rubio’s ascendance into a top-tier candidate.