A plurality of Texas voters would support the award-winning actor while just one-third support the current Republican governor.
Actor Matthew McConaughey leads Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, by double-digits in a hypothetical election match-up, according to a new poll. McConaughey, who won a Best Actor Oscar in 2014 for his lead role in Dallas Buyers Club and lives in Austin, is a newcomer to politics but has been critical of both Republicans and Democrats in interviews over the past several months. The actor has suggested that he holds relatively moderate political views, and new polling published by The Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler on Sunday suggests that he could have a path into electoral politics if he were to challenge Abbott in 2022. The polling showed McConaughey ahead of Abbott by 12 points, well outside the polls margin of error of plus or minus 2.92 percentage points. The actor was supported by 45 percent of Texas voters while the incumbent governor was backed by just 33 percent of respondents. Meanwhile, an additional 22 percent of the southwestern state’s voters said they’d vote for someone else. The star of Interstellar and The Gentleman has not announced definitive plans to seek any office, but speculation has mounted over whether McConaughey may be planning to run due to recent remarks he has made in interviews.
