TEXAS — Vice President Kamala Harris nearly cut former President Donald Trump’s lead in Texas in half, according to a new poll released Thursday. 

Trump leads Harris among likely voters 49.5% to 44.6%. The survey from the University of Houston and Texas Southern University is among the first to measure where things stand in Texas since President Biden dropped out of the presidential race. In June, the same pollsters found Trump leading Biden in Texas by nine points.

Two groups appeared to drive much of that shift toward Harris. 

“One are [Robert F.] Kennedy voters. Kennedy fell from about 5 percent to 2 percent and twice as many as his voters went to Harris than went to Trump,” said Mark Jones, who was one of the report’s authors and a Senior Research Fellow at the Hobby School of Public Affairs. “And then also undecided voters. They broke for Harris as well.” 

Trump now leads the independent voting bloc by just 2 percentage points, down from a 24-point advantage in June. 

The survey also showed Democratic U.S. Senate Candidate Colin Allred remains within striking distance of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Cruz holds a two-percentage point lead over Allred, 46% to 44%. That’s virtually unchanged from the group’s June poll. 

“At the end of the day, for Cruz to be successful, what he’s going to need to do is tie Colin Allred to the less popular Kamala Harris and many of her progressive policies that are to the left of where the average Texas voter is,” Jones said.