Updated at 7 a.m. Friday with final results from Upshot poll.

WASHINGTON — A new poll released Thursday morning showed Sen. Ted Cruz maintaining a solid lead over Rep. Beto O'Rourke in the race for the U.S. Senate.

With just less than four weeks to go before Election Day, the Quinnipiac University Poll showed Cruz ahead by 9 percentage points — the same lead Quinnipiac found in a survey of likely Texas voters three weeks ago, suggesting O'Rourke's momentum has stalled and Cruz's risk is fading.

The nine-point edge in last month's polls was by far the largest the senator had enjoyed in months and stood out as a potential outlier after a summer of polls showing a much closer contest. The next day, a Reuters/Ipsos survey showed O'Rourke ahead by 2 points.

The wide range of results has kept campaigns and pundits guessing.

Cruz's pollster has questioned the methodology and results of polls showing the challenger fighting to a tie. But the incumbent's campaign has routinely cited the close race to tamp down potentially fatal complacency. On Sunday, Cruz blasted out a donor email warning of a "2 point race."

That may be a tougher sell now, with pressure mounting on O'Rourke to turn his stockpile of cash and adoring throngs into votes.

"Is the Beto bubble bursting or just hissing away with a slow leak? ... Beto O'Rourke has hit a wall,"

said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. "The election is far from over, but Sen. Cruz would have to suffer a major collapse for him to lose."

Voters on both sides are dug in: 97 percent of Cruz voters say they are sure they won't change their minds, as do 95 percent of O'Rourke voters. And only 1 in every 50 hasn't decided which will get their vote — meaning O'Rourke's hopes would hinge on exploiting an enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats, because there aren't many uncommitted voters left to woo.

Thursday's survey also included results in the race between Gov. Greg Abbott and Democrat Lupe Valdez, the former Dallas County sheriff. It showed a commanding 58 to 38 percent lead for Abbott among likely voters — the latest to show him with an insurmountable lead.

The survey showed a much higher job approval rating in Texas for President Donald Trump than in most of the country, at 51 percent approval and 46 percent disapproval, suggesting he may not be as much of a drag on Cruz as Democratic strategists had hoped.

Cruz's ratings aren't far off: 52 percent favorable, 44 percent unfavorable, reflecting the polarization in Texas' electorate. Views of O'Rourke are even more lopsided: 45 and 47. Having more Texans view him unfavorably does not bode well, and may reflect the quickening barrage of attacks from Cruz and his allies in recent weeks.

Cruz pollster Chris Wilson embraced this survey, saying it shows O'Rourke "is now the most unpopular statewide figure in Texas."

Cruz maintaining steady lead. Another key point: ⁦@BetoORourke⁩ is now the most unpopular statewide figure in Texas. By far. “If you’re going to run in Texas, you can’t be a liberal, man” #txsen https://t.co/cNAVrfMJd2 — Chris Wilson (@WilsonWPA) October 11, 2018

Quinnipiac surveyed 730 likely voters from Oct. 3 to 9. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.4 percentage points.

In May, a Quinnipiac survey showed Cruz ahead by 11 points — his best result in any public polling since the March primaries.

One poll released last week by CBS News/YouGov showed Cruz leading by 6 points. Another from Emerson College showed him ahead by 5 points. Those tracked more closely with a flurry of polls dating to mid-summer showing a tight race, with O'Rourke, a three-term El Paso Democrat, lagging by as little as 1 point — a statistical dead heat.

The CBS poll showed 1 in 10 voters still undecided, which would make the situation more fluid.

The RealClearPolitics average of polls now shows Cruz ahead by 6.6 points, up a tick from 6 points before Thursday's Quinnipiac survey.

Thursday's survey is the first released publicly since the bitter fight over Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, but it was in the field both before and after his confirmation and swearing in on Saturday, so the impact of that fight is hard to gauge.

Cruz, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, stood by Kavanaugh as Democrats aired allegations of sexual misconduct decades earlier.

O'Rourke kept a relatively low profile through that fight, though he expressed clear sympathy for women who accused the judge of assaulting them in high school and college. Once the confirmation went through, he came out directly and said he would have voted no, as did all but one Democrat in the Senate.

Rep. Beto O'Rourke spoke during a campaign rally with country singer Willie Nelson at Auditorium Shores in Austin on Sept. 29. (Drew Anthony Smith / Getty Images)

The second debate between Cruz and O'Rourke will be Tuesday in San Antonio, airing live statewide at 8 p.m. It's unclear if they'll debate a third time as agreed. A debate set for Houston on Sept. 29 was called off due to uncertainty over the timing of Senate votes on Kavanaugh.

The candidates and outside allies have begun spending heavily from stockpiles of donations that poured in over the last weeks and months.

O'Rourke has consistently drawn bigger crowds than the incumbent, and he holds far more campaign events, though he may need to, to overcome Cruz's near-universal name recognition and the Texas electorate's decades-long preference for Republicans.

A recent Austin concert with O'Rourke and Willie Nelson, the country singer and marijuana legalization activist, drew at least 50,000 people — the biggest campaign rally in the country since the 2016 presidential race.

That reflects widespread enthusiasm that doesn't always show up in polls.

"O'Rourke may be attracting massive crowds, but Cruz has a better favorability rating," Brown said.

The Democrat also enjoys a marked financial edge — a thrill for Democrats nationwide eager to end a GOP streak that has shut them out of statewide office in Texas for two decades.

The latest quarterly campaign filings aren't due until next week but Cruz has already revealed that he raised $12 million from July to September. That's an impressive haul, and his fundraising puts him at the top of the list for this year's GOP Senate contenders. But filings from ActBlue, an online donation platform for Democrats, show O'Rourke raised nearly that much in July and August alone. He also brought in more than $6 million the last week of September.

Days before the Kavanaugh confirmation vote, a dozen protesters ambushed Cruz and his wife at an upscale Italian restaurant near the Capitol. They accused him of turning a blind eye to credible allegations from women who accused the judge of accosting them long ago.

Video of the confrontation went viral, giving heart to antagonists and also sparking backlash.

Republicans have cited it as evidence of a "mob" mentality on the left, invoking a fraught term to stoke fears. Democrats call that cynical and hypocritical, given the tea party uprising of 2010 and the angry marches and shouts from activists on the right during that era.

The Quinnipiac results are in line with a New York Times Upshot/Siena College Poll completed Thursday night, which showed an 8 point lead for Cruz. In an unusual move, results are displayed in real time.

Texas elections haven't been competitive for so long that pollsters have relatively little experience in the state.

One top independent analysts, the Cook Political Report, has rated the Cruz-O'Rourke race a tossup. Other handicappers view it as competitive but with the Republican favored.