TX Gov: SUSA says Perry @ 41%, leads Strayhorn by 21%

[Sam Spade]

Getting regular polls from SUSA of the TX Gov. race now.  Quite nice.

Anyway, there ain't much different from the other poll, except this sample is probably a tad too Republican (in the same as the other was probably a tad too Democrat).

http://www.surveyusa.com/client/PollReport.aspx?g=c90fa3e7-dd42-4dfd-917b-a05519181646

[Sam Spade]

That seems like an awfully low number of undecideds. . .

SUSA pushes undecideds hard, always has.  Perry will have a solid 40% though, unless he does something stupid (which can and does happen).

[Sam Spade]

That seems like an awfully low number of undecideds. . .

I think that has to do with the way the question was phrased. "If you were standing in the voting booth right now..."

I'd be interested in seeing how Kinky would be doing without Strayhorn in the race.

Without Strayhorn, it would become about...

Perry 45%-50%
Bell 20%-25%
Kinky 20%-25%

Republicans would move back to Perry, Democrats would split between Bell and Kinky.  Strayhorn right now is most likely pulling about even between Democrats and Republicans, so this is my best guess.

The best opportunity for Perry to be knocked off is Strayhorn and that becomes most favorable if Kinky leaves the race.

[Sam Spade]

Think the map will have many counties in the >20 shade?

Will Bell probably at least win the counties that border Mexico?

Could Friedman win any counties, maybe Travis?

Stayhorn has got to win a few?

Granted, it's a subsample, but if Perry is pulling in 45% of the Hispanic vote with the rest split amongst the other three (the last SUSA poll showed this as well), you can expect him to win pretty much all of those border counties (maybe Bell wins Starr County and a couple of the still-reliable Democratic ones). 

Things have changed down at the border, though the Rep. party has no bench there, they continue to get greater amounts of votes in statewide and federal elections.  Rural areas, especially.

Bell's support is going to be mainly among inner-city Dems, so his votes will probably get nullified by suburbs.  He might stand a chance in Dallas County, but that's probably not it.

As for Kinky and Strayhorn, the most likely candidates are the plethora of rural uninhabited counties that dot a good part of the state.  It's simply easier to win a county when there's only 1,000 people voting, as opposed to 100,000 people voting.  Travis County is a possibility, though, I agree.

[Sam Spade]

Bell and Strayhorn need to drop out and endorse Kinky. Why the hell not?

Eh.  Would lead to a 60%-40% Perry win, but if that's what you want, hey go for it.

The only one who can beat Perry is Strayhorn and only if Kinky gets out of the race.

[Sam Spade]

As I have said before, I think people are getting a little to confident in the fact that Kinky can't win. After all he does have Dean Barkley on his squad (the same guy that coordinated Jesse Ventura's independent campaign for Minnesota governor). I like how he stole the media from Perry. Dean bought the charity boots, gave me a warm feeling inside.

Minnesota has a strong tradition of independent and third-party candidates.  Texas is almost the exact opposite; the rules are set up to discourage third-party candidates to the extreme.  The Libertarian party regularly runs candidates in Texas, but since there are large parts of the state where Democrats and Republicans don't compete, they can perform better than in other states where the parties regularly do battle in most areas.

Besides, unless Kinky can make inroads into the ultra-Republican suburbs of Houston, DFW and San Antonio or into Hispanic voters (these two groups form the base of Perry's coalition), where are his votes going to come from?  In the last two SUSA incarnations of this poll, Perry is pulling over 45% of Hispanics against three other candidates, which seems quite astonishing to me. 

Is he going to steal away the core Democrats that Bell will get simply because he has a D next to his name (ie, parts of South Texas and inner-city Houston, Dallas and San Antonio)?  Is he going to pull the moderate Democrats and Republicans who are presently supporting Strayhorn because she has tons of money to compete?  Independents simply aren't a strong enough voice in the state to win on them alone.

I'm just presenting some logical questions and some concerns dealing with his candidacy and the possibility of his winning.  To me these are realistic questions, granted there is still a lot of time left, but the way coalitions work in Texas, you have to be able to make inroads into certain groups in order to have a shot.

[Sam Spade]

Vlad, are you honestly claiming that Perry is guranteed nothing? 60% of Texas voters voted for Bush. Where do you think these guys are going? Are they gonna vote Bell? No. Are they gonna vote Friedman? No. They're gonna split between Perry and Straythorn, and most will go to Perry, while the remaining 40% will split between Friedman and Bell. Perry has been very, very stable in the polls, constantly hovering around 40%. It's fairly obvious that he's unlikely to lose more than that. Despite Straythorn losing support, she's the only one actually competing for voters that could vote Perry, and thus the only one who is actually able to win.

This is exactly right, Gustaf.  As I have said before, Perry has a stable 40% at the polls that will vote for him barring major scandal or a "Clayton Williams" moment.  These are the hardcore social conservatives in rural Texas, Republican party banner-wavers, suburban voters and a surprisingly strong number of Hispanics in rural and suburban Texas.

And the really important point is about half of Strayhorn's voters (about 7-10% of the voting populace) are moderate Republicans (like the poster M at this site, who's been gone for too long a while), who are only voting for her because they think Perry's too conservative on social issues (and perhaps not enough on economic ones) and they like having a option that reflects their beliefs more.

If she left the race, they would move over to Perry pretty quickly.  The rest of her voters would divide between Bell and Kinky.