Governor +11 | Perry 48% White 37% Undecided 11% (AJP)
+10 | Perry 50% White 40% Glass 08% Shafto 02% (UT/TT)
+09 | Perry 51% White 42% Undecided 05% Other 02% (RAS)
I won't get into methodology other than to say AJP was essentially a lobby issue poll with horse-race questions tacked on, the UT/TT poll finally pushed leaners but is still a YouGov Internet Poll, and Rasmussen is, well, Rasmussen. For a state as big as Texas with a hot race, it's been entirely disappointing how little quality polling is done here. I don't say that because all the polls show Perry and GOP candidates ahead- they are, but I'm about 100% positive that next cycle, I'm going to have Burnt Orange Report partner with a non-partisan polling firm and help fix this.
Thoughts- I've never seen 3rd Party candidates poll this high in Texas. Up to 15% of the vote in the Railroad Commissioner race is potentially tied up between the Libertarian and Green party. The GOP sponsored Green Party appears to be well on its way to getting the 5% needed to get automatic "fuck with the Democrats" ballot access in 2012. This could be due to a lack of oxygen and awareness of downballot races. It's also an expression of a very angry electorate that without other information, is willing to vote against both the Republican & Democratic parties.
While White is closing the gap in the Governor's race, it's marginal- not to mention there are a week's worth of votes already cast. It's not a question of just winning all the undecideds, it's forcing some of Perry's voters to switch to White (or Libertarian Kathie Glass). There is some hope there as the UT/TT poll notes...
While 72 percent of White's voters support him "very strongly," only 53 percent of Perry's voters say the same. Glass has very strong support from 40 percent. All of Shafto's voters say they only "somewhat strongly" support her.
According to the UT/TT poll, the GOP has an +18 generic congressional ballot lead and a +15 generic state legislative ballot lead. Governor Perry's job approval is 45/37 compared to President Obama's job approval of 35/59 of which only 14% strongly approve and 53% strong disapprove. When 9 out of 10 voters who disapprove of Obama, stongly disapprove, and that makes up a majority of the electorate... that says it all.
Little surprise that Rick Perry has worked to nationalize the Governor's race. Now he just has to decide if he wants to run for President in 2012 or for an unprecedented 4th term as Governor in 2014... if he wins re-election eight days from now.
With a month to go before the election, we're finally starting to see Texas get its fair share of polling. As a traditionally underpolled state, our state's media (and bloggers) obsess over each morsel of polling information we get. Campaigns can go months trumpeting (or downplaying) whatever the most recent poll says. As a result campaigns and the media have never really had the opportunity to work an environment where polling is ubiquitous enough that polls get viewed in the aggregate and don't have to picked apart one by one.
For an underpolled state like Texas, polls can be an especially powerful narrative weapon. When I was working on the Rick Noriega for US Senate campaign in 2008, there were multiple times where a poll would show a single digit race and the campaign had a good week of fundraising and momentum- all of which would be halted weeks, if not days later by another poll showing a gaping double digit deficit against Cornyn. It's just an example, one which many campaigns in Texas, even Bill White, have had to deal with.
Sure, it's useful to keep up with the polls to glean insight, but there are multiple sites which are aggregating those polls and smoothing out the individual problems in any given poll- the three major of which I've posted below for the Texas Governor's race (though these do not include today's Texas Lyceum poll which would improve all these charts for Bill White).
Point being- we shouldn't get emotionally caught up with each poll that comes out in Texas in the next 30 days. There's not enough time to analyze each for varying degrees of validity, partisanship, or quality though bloggers and the traditional press will do their best to do so.
It's up to each individual activist to decide how much they want to pay attention to polls or how much they are going to let it affect their level of volunteering in the next 30 days.
My advice- stay informed, but stick to your gameplan just the same as if there were no polls at all.
This afternoon the 2010 Texas Lyceum Poll was released. I've embedded the full Lyceum release below the fold and made it available for viewing here. It follows a less thorough WFAA/Belo poll released yesterday showing a Perry-50, White-36 race.
Below are the main numbers of interest from the Lyceum Poll.
General Information: From September 22-30, 725 adult Texans responded to a statewide telephone survey asking about their attitudes towards the current political and economic environment, the 2010 elections, and issues likely to come up in the 2011 Texas state legislative session. Since all numbers reported herein pertain to the upcoming November elections, they are based on a sample of 416 likely voters, with a margin of error of +/- 4.75 percentage points.
Governor 48% Rick Perry (R)
42% Bill White (D)
05% Kathie Glass (L)
01% Deb Shafto (G)
03% Undecided
Lt. Governor
47% David Dewhurst (R)
30% Linda Chavez-Thompson (D)
07% Scott Jameson (L)
04% Herb Gonzalez (G)
12% Undecided
Attorney General
56% Greg Abbott (R)
29% Barbara Radnofsky (D)
04% Jon Roland (L)
11% Undecided
Generic Congressional Ballot
41% Republican candidate
29% Democratic candidate
Generic State House Ballot
38% Republican candidate
31% Democratic candidate
My thoughts-
Besides the incredibly small number of undecided numbers in the Governor's race, but even in the two other statewide races polled, the most interesting number here the 47% that Dewhurst received. In a race with almost no media or attention, Dewhurst is polling below Rick Perry and a full 9 points below Greg Abbott. Not only that, but 11% of the vote is choosing third-party candidates compared to 6% in the Governor's race and 4% in the Attorney General race. The 7% for Libertarian Scott Jameson and 4% for Green Herb Gonzalez is surprising- if I had to explain it, I'd argue that in general 3-party support is higher in downballot races (a fact born out in past Texas elections) and the rest may be due to the Green Party candidate being Hispanic.
Dewhurst has never been particularly popular, having slipped into his current office in 2002 by the narrowest margin of any statewide official. But if this poll is right, it has me wishing that Linda Chavez-Thompson had those millions of dollars to fund the base GOTV operation she's advocated for her entire campaign- a missed opportunity for sure. The silver lining here is that if Dewhurst wants to run for US Senate or Governor down the line we know he's got a weak spot which we should exploit.
As to the Governor's race, closer is aways better and some of the internal fundamentals noted by the poll analysis (posted below) are very good for Bill White. But White is still only at 43% and even if he got all of the undecideds and the Green vote he's short of Perry.
From the poll analysis...
Amongst self-identified independent voters, Bill White has a 16-point advantage (White 50%, Perry 34%) with Glass also garnering a not-insignificant 10% of the independent vote. Moderates also support White over Perry (White 67%, Perry 22%). Perry dominates among Republicans and conservatives, however, and it is this support that fuels his overall edge.
Down ballot, Dewhurst leads Chavez-Thompson among independents (Dewhurst 35%, Chavez-Thompson 21%), but trails among moderates (Dewhurst 34%, Chavez-Thompson 42%). Abbott leads amongst both independents and moderates, but overwhelmingly among independents (Abbott 45%, Radnofsky 14%) and only slightly among moderates (Abbott 43%, Radnofsky 37%). Independents favor the Republican Party in the Congressional election (Republican Candidate 32%, Democratic Candidate 25%), but moderates favor the Democratic party candidate by 10-points (Democratic candidate 39%, Republican Candidate 29%). As for the State House election, Democrats lead amongst both independents and moderates, by 13-points in the case of independents (Democratic Candidate 24%, Republican Candidate 11%) and 18-points in the case of moderates (Democratic Candidate 39%, Republican Candidate 21%).
When Texas' newspapers released a poll last week on the then-current state of the race, one number caught the eyes of a couple reporters: the fact that Rick Perry had a 10-point lead among women in Texas. It made me scratch my head in disbelief. As Seth Myers and Amy Poehler love to say, "REALLY!?!?"
"Perry is doing extraordinarily well among women," said Mickey Blum, whose firm, Blum & Weprin Associates Inc., conducted a poll on behalf of the American-Statesman and other newspapers. She said that in years of polling in Texas, this might be the first time she's seen more women than men backing the Republican.
The poll found that 50 percent of women who are likely voters prefer Perry, while 40 percent prefer White. Overall, 46 percent of likely voters picked Perry and 39 percent liked White, the poll said.
That one poll, absolutely, shows Perry with a lead. But an analysis of ten polls released since May suggest that the newspaper's findings, while not unique, do not fit the actual “trend” of women’s support in the Texas Governor’s race. Here is a look at whom women have supported in ten previous polls where crosstabs were available:
Newspapers, by relying solely heavily on their poll and not making note of what all these other polls have reported, may be not providing the full context on this particular story. I would love to see their full crosstabs so I could better understand if they over-sampled or under-sampled any one population.
Peggy Fikac, writing in the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News, discussed whether or not Perry's looks could be a factor:
No, really, women aren’t any more shallow than men.
When a poll by a group of newspapers including the San Antonio Express-News/Houston Chronicle showed that about 50 percent of women likely to vote favor GOP Gov. Rick Perry — compared to 40 percent for Democratic challenger Bill White - some called it a testament to Perry's looks.
Ladies -- are you voting for Rick Perry because he's super dreamy? (Rachel, I expect a weigh-in on this one!)
Fikac dismisses the looks argument, saying it is "a bit annoying." She also, though, pointed out how men seem to be showing a reverse trend this year:
The interesting part, in the face of all that GOP interest, is what's happening with the men.
Of likely voters in the poll by Blum & Weprin Associates Inc., men and women gave the GOP "an equal edge," noted pollster Mickey Blum: Women were 52 percent Republican or leaning Republican (compared to 34 percent Democratic) and the split among men was 48/31 GOP to Democratic.
I'll try to find the crosstabs for men later -- I had this chart together before Fikac's story ran. In the mean time, I hope this conversation adds more context to the stories we've seen pop up to date, and lets everyone see that in this crazy election year, it is best to look at a larger context if you're searching for trends.
Finally, I also wanted to emphasize one strong voice on this -- from Rachel Farris, who wasn't commenting on this poll, but on the larger national trend in her post, The Princess and the Poll:
Perhaps the reason independent and Democratic women aren’t "revved" up is because they actually have something known as “brains” in between their ears. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist -- or for that matter, a recent college graduate who can’t find a job -- to take a look around and see that while Sarah Palin’s daughter does the cha-cha and enchants the hearts of millions, Sarah Palin’s tea party is busy imprinting the minds of the remainder. And with the most prominent, popular female “leaders” splashed on TV in the neverending news cycle being Palin and O’Donnell, who in their right mind would be revved up by them?
[...]
So what will it take? Well, here’s what keeps me up at night -- maybe it’ll give you nightmares, too: You never really know how much someone's willing to fight for something until it gets taken away from them. Put that under your pillow and sleep on it.
Now that the long primary season is over the sprint to the general election has began, and the struggle to control the narrative continues. The Republicans are going to try and promote the narrative that this election is about repudiating the agenda of the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats, while attempting to use the enthusiasm of the Tea Party without losing to many elections in places like Delaware and New York. The Democrats are going to be trying to tout some of their legislative achievements while ignoring others, and they will be using their fundraising advantage to ensure that their Senate and House majorities are not taken without a fight. The question that will be answered is how will each party be able to affect the narrative, and how will that affect the polls and subsequently the election. So, what do the polls look like now?
According to analysis by Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight (now at the New York Times), the Republicans have a two-in-three chance of winning the majority in the House and a one-in-four chance of winning the majority in the Senate. The current conventional wisdom seems to be that the Republicans are going to win the majority in the House and slim the Democratic majority in the Senate. The forecast vary, but only a few analysts are predicting that the Democrats will be able to maintain control of the House. John Sides at the Monkey Cage created a useful graph of the predictions that shows that most are predicting the Democrats are going to be on the wrong side of the majority in the House.
There has been much ballyhoo lately over polls showing Bill White behind Rick Perry. White would do well to remember that given a choice between a Republican and a Democrat talking like a Republican, the real thing wins every time.
I am so sick of Democrats trying to play the Republican's game using their words and playing to their strengths. We haven't tried this in a rather long time, but why not try to run on Democratic values? Running as Republicans sure hasn't worked. We haven't won a statewide race since Governor Ann Richards. Obviously pretending that we are just like the Republicans doesn't work.
Believe it or not, there are actually more of us out there. We just don't vote our numbers because we feel like we'll just loose anyway. So why bother? When we promote ourselves as Republican lite, we turn away voters that have voted for us. Instead, they come away with the notion that there isn't any difference between the two parties, so why bother?
If we want to win in Texas, we need to start acting like real Texas Democrats. We need to be more like Ann Richards and Barbara Jordan and Molly Ivins and Ladybird Johnson. Ladybird faced down the old south and the KKK to promote the Civil Rights Act. She didn't say stupid bs like "I'm for family values."
Who could forget Ann Richards as the keynote at the DNC? People are still quoting it. She wasn't pretending to be a conservative. How about when Barbara Jordan stood up to President Nixon and called him out? Was she pretending to be a Republican? Does anyone remember Ralph Yarborough? Did he ever pretend to be just like the Republicans just to get elected?
We can elect Democrats in Texas statewide once more, but we'll have to start sounding like real Democrats to do it.
The Texas Tribune has released their latest poll, which shows Rick Perry at 44%, Bill White at 35%. Two key points to highlight from the poll:
Rick Perry, a ten-year incumbent, remains under 50% in the Tribune poll. That means that the only head-to-head polls to show Perry above 50% this entire election cycle are from Rasmussen, and Nate Silver has shown pretty well how their "house effect" can change polls -- and further analysis shows that Rasmussen polls early to set the narrative, then leaves come Election Day.
The Tribune poll shows that White's margin among Hispanics is only 43-32%. Anyone who believes that number is simply off-base. Translation: Bill White has enormous room to grow.
The Tribune poll is the 11th public poll we've had on the Texas Governor's race in 2010. Preferably, we would do regression based trendlines of the polls -- like those at Pollster.com -- but quite frankly, I didn't have time. (If anyone wants to make a graph with the data below, you can e-mail it to me at phillip@burntorangereport.com and I'll see if it's something we can put on our site). Instead, I've done a simple average of polls taken so far in 2010, and tried to put all our data points into one place:
I made this chart so we had easy access to all data points. Click on the name of the pollster and you will get to the original documentation of the poll.
We need better polling in Texas. Both Rasmussen and the Texas Tribune polls have highly suspect areas of methodology. Rasmussen appears to swing wildly and refuses to release any of their sample size figures; the Tribune is an internet poll that previously identified 90% of respondents as being very or fairly involved in politics. As much as I'd love to have 90% of respondents very familiar with politics, I think we all know that's not the case here in Texas.
What strikes me most about the polls above is that when Bill White was present on TV statewide -- mid-February into the primary -- he was polling within 4-6 points. Now that he's doing regional television to build name ID and we've slipped into the summer season of the campaign, the poll numbers appear to be trending back towards a generic Dem vs. Rep. ballot question. White remains in striking distance, but he's definitely got ground to gain and we need to get involved and do all we can to help him get elected.
As more polls come out, I'll update and re-post the chart. If I've messed up any numbers, let me know so I can fix them. Enjoy!
(Bumped for our weekday readers as this was a rare weekend poll post. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
One of the things that I look forward to doing more of this year is commissioning polling on under polled races in Texas. As such, I'd like to extend my thanks to the Capital Area Asian American Democrats (CAAAD), who have commissioned a poll of select competitive Travis County Democratic Primary races. (I'd also like to thank CAAAD for their advertising here on BOR as regular readers may have noticed in the past week).
CAAAD has previously polled in Austin, last released in the 2008 City Races, and privately in past primaries for its endorsed candidates. While limited, they have had a decent track record in accurately polling races, both in a review of their public and private numbers which I've had the opportunity to check. I say that largely to pre-empt the inevitable dismissal of results by campaigns they do not favor.
Poll Results IVR Poll conducted Feb 25th, 2010 by KCZ Consulting for CAAAD, choices rotated
Governor, Democratic Primary: MoE = 4.3%
Bill White 85.0%
Farouk Shami 5.8%
Someone Else 2.8%
Undecided 6.4%
This matches up with the word on the street and rumored polls showing Bill White absolutely killing the Democratic field for Governor in Travis County. With White pulling in numbers akin to his re-election rates as Mayor of Houston (91% and 87%) the race is on for second place for the rest of the field in Austin. Talk about embarrassing for Farouk Shami's multi-million dollar campaign. Ouch.
201st District Court: MoE = 4.7%
Amy Clark Meachum 52.1%
Jan Patterson 27.2%
Undecided 20.6%
If these numbers turn out to be true, Amy Clark Meachum is well positioned heading into Election Day.
299th District Court: MoE = 4.6%
Mindy Montford 40.8%
Karen Sage 31.4%
Leonard Martinez 5.8%
Eve Schatelowitz Alcantar 2.1%
Undecided 19.9%
As many have expected, the 299th District Court appears to be heading to a runoff. What is unexpected is that Mindy Montford may be the vote leader heading into a runoff. It should be noted, that if the 20% undecided break in the same way as those who have made up their mind, there is a chance that Montford could break 50% and win the election without a runoff. I'd argue that the undecided vote is more likely choosing between Montford and Sage meaning there is little additional support to be coming to Martinez or Schatelowitz-Alcantar, which makes this 4-way race much more of a 2-way race in the final days.
County Court at Law #3: MoE = 5.5%
John Lipscombe 42.3%
Olga Seelig 33.7%
Undecided 24.0%
Further down the ballot there are more undecided voters here than anywhere else. Separated by single digits, Lipscombe has the advantage needing far fewer of the remaining undecideds to break his way. But Seelig isn't out of the game after winning the endorsement from the Statesman and making a late loan of over $30,000 to her campaign.
And as a bonus question unrelated to this year's primaries...
Do you support or oppose the City of Austin banning the use of plastic bags by large retailers? MoE = 5.5%
Support 50.2%
Oppose 28.2%
Undecided 21.7%
For more information, you can visit www.BagtheBags.com with regard to that final question.
In a three-way Generic Ballot test, the latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds Democrats attracting 36% of the vote. The Tea Party candidate picks up 23%, and Republicans finish third at 18%. Another 22% are undecided.
Among voters not affiliated with either major party, the Tea Party comes out on top. Thirty-three percent (33%) prefer the Tea Party candidate, and 30% are undecided. Twenty-five percent (25%) would vote for a Democrat, and just 12% prefer the GOP.
Among Republican voters, 39% say they'd vote for the GOP candidate, but 33% favor the Tea Party option.
These are national numbers, so I can only assume that the Texas sample is even more skewed towards the Tea Party folks, possibly enough to make them the largest party in the state if they were an option.
This raises a relevant question- if there really was this much electoral support for another party, why are the Debra Medinas and other Tea Party-esque candidates running primaries in Texas bothering to do so as Republicans? Why not spend their time gathering the 45,000 or so petition signatures needed to form a new Party in Texas with ballot access for the general election? If Debra Mediana got 5% of the million or so possible GOP primary voters statewide, that would be enough for the Tea Party movement to gain ballot access. As a result, they would have a far more tremendous politics impact as a general election party.
That would be a statement and one heck of a general election.
Are Americans really more pro-life? The truth is that it is the wrong question. The question of whether or not someone identifies as pro-life or pro-choice has as much to do with the terms themselves that it does with their views on abortion.
A recent Gallup poll reported that 51% of those surveyed identified as pro-life, while 42% identified as pro-choice. For the first time since Gallup began polling on the subject in 1995 a majority of Americans self identified as pro-life. However, when you look at the public's specific views on the legality of abortion it has remained relatively constant over the last thirty-five years. Since 1975 at least 48% of those surveyed believe that abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, and at least 22% of those surveyed believe that abortion should be legal under all circumstances. While those surveyed who believe that abortion should be illegal in all circumstances has never had more than 22% and as low as 12%. Currently 53% of those surveyed believe that abortion should be legal in certain circumstances and 22% believe it should be legal in all circumstances.
CNN/Opinion Research Corporation asked if respondents would want the Supreme Court completely overturn its Roe v Wade decision, and 68% of those surveyed did not want the decision overturned. Public opinion in support of Roe v Wade has remained constant, if not increasing, over the last twenty years. This is perhaps a much more truthful depiction of the public's overall opinion on abortion, there is a difference between a people self identifying as pro-life or pro-choice and their propensity to support legal abortion. Nate Silver of 538 notes "the terms 'pro-choice' and 'pro-life' are at least somewhat fungible; years of Democrats saying things like 'I am personally opposed to abortion, but I don't think I have a right to impose my few on the rest of society'."
