Abbott 44%, Davis 32%

In third place was "no opinion", with 17%.

“Abbott remains strong and this, in a lot of ways, confirms the strategy that we’ve seen from his camp: Leave well enough alone,” said Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin and co-director of the UT/TT Poll. “The Davis campaign seems to be not able to reverse the trend.”

That's about right.  I don't think this is the reason that Chris Murphy was brought in to replace Karin Johanson, by the way.  But certainly he takes over a campaign that appears to be treading water, for any variety of reasons inside and outside its control.

Dan Patrick is still riding the wave.

In the the race for lieutenant governor, Republican Dan Patrick has the biggest margin in the pack of statewide races, leading Democrat Leticia Van de Putte 41 percent to 26 percent, with 23 percent undecided and the remainder going to third-party candidates and unnamed candidates.

Historical trends holding.

Republican candidates lead in all of the other statewide nonjudicial races, with the number of undecided voters climbing as you go down the ballot:

• U.S. Sen. John Cornyn leads Democrat David Alameel 36 percent to 25 percent in a race where 26 percent of the voters said they have not made up their minds. Rebecca Paddock, a Libertarian, got 5 percent, the Green Party’s Emily Sanchez got 3 percent and 5 percent said they would vote for “someone else.”

• In the race for attorney general, Republican Ken Paxton leads Democrat Sam Houston 40 percent to 27 percent, with 27 percent undecided. Libertarian Jamie Balagia and Green Jamar Osborne each have 3 percent.

• Republican Glenn Hegar leads Democrat Mike Collier 32 percent to 25 percent in the contest for comptroller of public accounts, followed by Libertarian Ben Sanders at 5 percent and Green Deb Shafto at 2 percent. In that race, 37 percent said they had not formed an opinion about their vote.

• In the race for land commissioner, Republican George P. Bush leads Democrat John Cook 36 percent to 25 percent, followed by Justin Knight, a Libertarian, at 6 percent, and Valerie Alessi from the Green Party at 3 percent. Thirty percent of the voters were undecided.

• Republican Sid Miller leads Democrat Jim Hogan by 8 percentage points in the agriculture commission race, with 32 percent to Hogan’s 24 percent. The Green Party’s Kenneth Kendrick got 5 percent and Libertarian Rocky Palmquist got 4 percent in that race. The remaining 34 percent were undecided.

• The numbers in the race for railroad commissioner were similar: Republican Ryan Sitton, 32 percent; Democrat Steve Brown, 24 percent; Libertarian Mark Miller, 6 percent; and Green Martina Salinas, 4 percent. The other 33 percent have not picked a favorite.

I would not expect to see any great shakeups in the numbers before Labor Day.  All the bad news for Republicans, with the possible exception of the fallout from their various party platform disasters, is baked in here.  Update: Notice in the next post that I reconsidered and abandoned this premise after some time to analyze the results... and not just because the TexTrib pollsters decided they agreed with it.

It's going to be a long hot summer for Battleground Texas volunteers, sweating it out to have something to show for their hard work in November.