A new Texas Lyceum Poll on the presidential contest is out, and our sense is that the results are more interesting than many observers may realize. We’ll start with this fact: Texas is likely to play a bigger role in selecting the Democratic candidate this year than in the past, and Texas will therefore likely play a bigger role in the 2020.

Why?

With a half-dozen Democrats still running, it’s likely the first four states to weigh in on the presidential contest will merely narrow the field, not select the eventual winner. Iowa and New Hampshire get a lot of attention for being the first, and in years past South Carolina and Nevada played crucial roles in ratifying a leading candidate.

But Democratic Party rules allow any candidate with a legitimate slice of support in a state to lay claim to at least a few delegates, so it’s unlikely we’ll have a prohibitive favorite even after these four states. That means March 3, when Texas and several other states will hold primaries, may be the crucial clearinghouse for any candidate who wants to go the distance. And, yes, it’s very possible the Democrats will head into a contested convention later this year, in which the party’s nominee is picked after a floor fight.

All that adds up to the fact that Texas will have a louder voice than it has in the past in selecting a nominee. And that’s fitting. Residents in states along the East and West coasts might think Texas is a land of big hats and big cattle, but it’s actually a very suburban state that’s on the cutting edge of figuring out policy response to important kitchen table issues, including crime and education as well as economic growth. Texas voters tend to be more nuanced than they get credit for on immigration, education, the environment and other issues.

So the Lyceum poll results are potentially instructive. Those results show that in Texas, Donald Trump leads in head- to-head matchups against every Democratic candidate, though Sen. Bernie Sanders trails by only three points (50-47). In terms of the Democratic race, Joe Biden leads (28 percent) followed by Sanders (26). Sen. Elizabeth Warren trails badly (13) and Michael Bloomberg comes in fourth (9). The remaining candidates are at risk of slipping from view. (Pete Buttigieg is at 6 points and Sen. Amy Klobuchar is at 4.)

Of the pack, Bloomberg is one to watch as the candidate with the most room to run. He’s skipping the first few contests and could find his approach of giant ad buys can work in a large state like Texas and ignite a campaign down the stretch. And unlike Warren and the others, he hasn’t gotten his moment in the sun yet, so many voters may not yet have formed a strong opinion of him.

But if we were offering advice to Biden or Sanders or Warren or Bloomberg or anyone else, it would be to consider the underlying political dynamics of Texas. The Lone Star state isn’t alone in the challenges it faces, in fact it’s likely closer to most of the rest of the country than the outlier coastal states. Unlock what the voters need in Texas, and you just might find that there is more to the Texas model than economic success.