Dems Hoping To Unseat Senator Cornyn Finding It Hard To Get Recognized

U.S. Senator John Cornyn
Photo credit © Caller-Times-USA TODAY NETWORK

AUSTIN (1080 KRLD) - The race among Democrats to challenge Texas Senator John Cornyn appears wide open at the moment, with several candidates vying for voters’ attention — with limited success thus far.

Among likely Democratic primary voters, fewer than 1 in 4 are familiar with Chris Bell (24%), Royce West (21%), or M.J. Hegar (20%). When asked whom they will vote for, Hegar leads (12%), followed by Sema Hernandez (6%), West (5%), Amanda Edwards (4%), Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez (4%), and Bell (3%).

“The Democratic primary race for the U.S. Senate has received little attention from voters, more than half of whom have yet to make a choice among a field of candidates with scant statewide name recognition,” said James Henson, co-director of the poll and executive director of the Texas Politics Project. “With comparatively more well-known Democrats either sitting the race out or making largely unsuccessful runs for the presidential nomination, Democrats so far lack a clear frontrunner to galvanize their efforts to unseat the incumbent in 2020.”

The University of Texas/Texas Tribune survey of 1,200 registered voters was conducted from Oct. 18 to Oct. 27 and has an overall margin of error of +/- 2.83 percentage points. Questions on Democratic primaries had 541 respondents and a margin of error of +/- 4.21 percentage points. Overall, 39% of respondents said they would vote in the Republican primary, 45% said the Democratic primary, 9% said they would not vote in either and 7% did not know.