| Yesterday, Public Policy Polling released numbers indicating Kay Bailey Hutchison with a massive lead against Rick Perry.
Today, Public Policy Polling released polling data for both potential primaries if KBH were to win or vacate her seat.
We tested Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst, Attorney General Greg Abbott, and state Senator Florence Shapiro on the Republican side against Houston Mayor Bill White and former Comptroller John Sharp on the Democratic side.
The first major problem I see with this is that it ignores the slew of announces or explicitly interested Republicans looking to run in Texas. That list includes former Secretary of State Roger Williams, Railroad Commissioner Elizabeth Ames Jones, and Railroad Commissioner Michael Williams to name a few.
This list includes three higher profile, statewide Republicans. It is curious that there is no data on these three declared candidates.
That being said, nobody is close to crossing the 50% plus 1 mark.
Abbott, who has not announced plans to seek the seat, appears to be the strongest initial candidate. 43% of voters in the state have a favorable opinion of him compared to only 25% that view him negatively. He leads Sharp 44-36 and White 42-36 in possible contests.
What is interesting here is that White and Sharp seems to only be polling at the natural or suppressed Democratic base. However Abbott v. White pushes Abbott down 2 points.
Dewhurst is almost as strong, with a 43/30 favorability breakdown. He leads Sharp and White by slightly more narrow margins than Abbott, 42-36 over the former and 42-37 over the latter.
Again, this poll only seems to show Democrats win Democrats and Republicans win the Republicans. That means the independent voters and soft voters either don't know or don't care.
It seems inevitable that one of those heavyweights will get into the race if there is indeed a vacancy, but we also tested Shapiro to see how competitive the contest would be if the GOP ended up nominating one of the less well known candidates who have already made their intentions to seek the seat known. Shapiro leads White 37-36 but trails Sharp 37-34, an indication the race could pretty much be a tossup if a more well known Republican doesn't run.
This makes sense. Dewhurst and Abbott have been on statewide ballots multiple times, Florence Shapiro has not. Her base of support seems to be close to Rick Perry's 2006 election numbers. It also indicates if a Democratic candidate can get the resources need to run an aggressive statewide campaign, this could become a fun race to watch.
The PPP poll seems to prove this point.
...it's worth noting that Sharp and White have a lot more room to grow in terms of name recognition. 43% of the electorate has no opinion of White and 41% has none of Sharp, figures much higher than the 27% for Dewhurst and 32% for Abbott.
All this being said, there is still no race. This is all a fun game brought to you by speculation and hypotheticals. Because this poll doesn't go through the whole field of Republicans, it leaves us with knowing what many inside political circles have been guessing for a while. With no resources, Democrats are behind. |
