Texas GOP lieutenant governor candidate Dan Patrick speaks to the media before his watch party in Houston Tuesday. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)
An election eve poll sponsored by national Hispanic groups suggests — at least, by inference — that Republican Dan Patrick captured a towering percentage of Tuesday’s non-Hispanic vote in the race for lieutenant governor. And that Hispanics probably didn’t vote in increased numbers, as Democratic diehards hoped.
The Latino Decisions pollshowed Hispanics in Texas broke decisively in favor of Patrick’s Democratic rival, fellow state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte. She had 68 percent to his 29 percent, in the poll sponsored by the Latino Victory Project, National Council of La Raza and America’s Voice.
The poll was conducted Thursday through Monday among Hispanics who had already voted or were certain to vote. Texas was among 10 states in which pollsters interviewed a larger number of Hispanic voters, to obtain a statistically reliable sample. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.
So Van de Putte’s 39-point margin among Hispanics theoretically could have been as small as 29 percent.
Meanwhile, with three quarters of precincts reporting Tuesday, Patrick was beating Van de Putte by 21 points — 59 percent to 38 percent.