| The numbers:
Hillary Clinton: 35%
John McCain: 36%
Hillary Clinton: 31%
Rudy Giuliani: 32%
Barack Obama doesn't fair as well in the survey, losing to McCain 25% to 32% and to Giuliani 22% to 32%.
Some thoughts: Obviously, the poll wasn't pushing leaners to break one way or another -- those numbers would be higher for all candidates with encouragement to leaners, and likely the Republicans would be faring better. Second, McCain and Giuliani are both falling in national Republican preference polls. I'd be interested in seeing numbers with Romney or Fred Thompson.
Obviously, any poll this early is of dubious value, but it's an interesting look at Clinton's base. Unfortunately, internal data is not available in the article, so we can't see if Hillary is pulling more support than Obama based on, say, the strength of her female support or what the partisan/issue breakdowns of respondents are.
Perhaps the internals will surface, and hopefully next time Texas Lyceum will include more candidates -- Romney, Thompson and Edwards -- in their questions. |
