Poll: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz lead in Texas

2016 Presidential Candidates: Then & Now See how the latest crop of candidates looked before they were running for the highest office in the land ... 2016 Presidential Candidates: Then & Now See how the latest crop of candidates looked before they were running for the highest office in the land ... Image 1 of / 56 Caption Close Poll: Donald Trump, Ted Cruz lead in Texas 1 / 56 Back to Gallery

AUSTIN – Donald Trump leads the Republican field in Texas, but U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz is close behind and is the second choice for more than a third of the mogul's supporters, according to a new poll.

On the Democratic side, former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is ahead, according to the poll by released Thursday by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Texas Lyceum.

Clinton is behind former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Cruz and Trump among likely voters in a hypothetical general-election matchup.

But Clinton trails Trump by only 2 percentage points, within the margin of error, and she is ahead of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida in a head-to-head matchup.

"Mrs. Clinton actually polls better in Texas right now than one might have expected," said University of Texas at Austin professor Daron Shaw, who oversaw the poll along with Joshua Blank, Lyceum research director. "But this is primarily due to her greater name recognition and the divisiveness of the GOP contest at this early stage."

With Trump at 21 percent support and Cruz at 16 percent, the difference between them was within the margin of error for this question on the poll.

The poll also asked voters for their second choices and found that 37 percent of Trump supporters picked Cruz next, according to the Lyceum.

The poll also found similar job approval ratings for President Obama and Gov. Greg Abbott among all Texans, looking beyond registered or likely voters.

Fifty-six percent said they "strongly approve" or "somewhat approve" of the job Abbott is doing, while 52 percent said Obama is doing a "very good" or "somewhat good" job.

Because the job approval items were asked of all Texas adults, Shaw said, "the preponderance of non-white respondents produces relatively strong numbers for Democrats."

The poll of 1,000 Texans was conducted Sept. 8-21 and has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

The margin of error is bigger for the subsets of registered or likely voters, Republicans and Democrats.

It is plus or minus 3.35 percentage points among all registered voters and plus or minus 3.9 percentage points for likely voters. For the Republican primary ballot, the margin of error is plus or minus 6.01 percentage points, and it's plus or minus 7.15 percent for the Democratic primary ballot.

pfikac@express-news.net

Twitter: @pfikac