Poll numbers suggest local support for Allred’s vote on impeachment

Rep. Colin Allred voted Wednesday for both articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump — a vote Republicans see as a useful tool against the freshman Democrat.

But polling suggests otherwise.

Allred, a Democrat who beat a GOP incumbent to win his first term last year, represents a Dallas-area district.

He first announced his decision to vote in favor of the articles of impeachment on Friday.

His district though, has a long history of voting Republican. Although Allred won and his constituents narrowly voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, he is still considered a representative of a swing district.

Allred’s office declined to comment for this story, but it directed McClatchy to his Friday statement for answers about why he decided to vote in favor of impeachment.

In the statement, Allred said that he reached his decision in a nonpartisan way, by evaluating the articles of impeachment, the Constitution and the best interest of the North Texans which he represents.

“Throughout this process, I was guided by the Constitution and the values I learned growing up in North Texas. This is not about partisan politics, it is about protecting our democracy and fulfilling my role as a member of a co-equal branch of government tasked with upholding the rule of law,” he said.

Bob Salera, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee, told McClatchy that Allred’s decision “will be a problem for him when he goes up for re-election.”

Salera said that Allred was elected as part of a Texas blue wave in 2018, but polling in swing districts such as Texas’ 32nd district suggests that people largely oppose impeaching the president.

“When we look at polling in swing districts … we see that impeachment is really unfavorable in those kinds of places,” the Salera said.

However, poll data from a portion of Allred’s district seems to dispute that point.

There have been no Texas statewide polls regarding impeachment since November, near the start of public hearings in the impeachment investigation.

In a University of Texas at Tyler poll conducted between Nov. 5 and 14, 45 percent of registered voters in Texas said they supported impeaching Trump, while 47 percent said they did not.

Mark Owens, co-director of the Center for Opinion Research at the University of Texas at Tyler, said that 48 percent of registered voters in Dallas County supported impeachment, while 43 percent of them opposed it.

Among Democrats in Dallas County, 73 percent supported impeachment, while 88 percent of county Republicans opposed impeachment.

Twelve percent of Dallas County Democrats did not know whether they supported impeachment when they were asked in early November, while 2 percent of Republicans in Dallas County did not know whether they supported or opposed impeachment, according to Owens.

“I can understand Democratic voters being a bit more timid about their response,” because they weren’t sure how an impeachment now would affect 2020 campaigns, he said.

Those early November answers track alongside the numbers of registered voters in Dallas County who approve of Trump’s job as president, Owens said.

“Just because the [impeachment] hearings started … we didn’t see much of a change,” Owens said.

He also said that that it’s not surprising for Allred to vote in favor of impeachment, because it seems like a slight bit more of his constituents favor it as well.

“It’s one of the hardest votes a representative will take,” Owens said, “When someone is left with a choice of voting yes or no, you go with the plurality of the county.”

This story was originally published December 18, 2019 at 9:00 PM.