Republican John McCain would beat Democrat Barack Obama in Texas if the
race were held now. But a significant number of Texans said they haven't picked
a favorite yet. Among likely voters, McCain had the support of 43% of those
polled to 38% for Obama. Libertarian Bob Barr and independent Ralph Nader
had about 1% each. One of every six voters — 17% — said they haven't decided
who will get their vote in November.

We interviewed Texas adults during the June 12-20 period, talking to 1,000
adults, half of them male, half of them female. Eight out of ten said they are
registered to vote.
The highly contested presidential contest apparently has Texans more tuned into
politics than they were a year ago. Half identify themselves as voters in "every"
or "almost every" election, and 85% consider themselves "extremely interested"
or "somewhat interested" in politics and public affairs.
The respondents come from a variety of places, 42% suburban, 28% urban, and
27% rural. Most — 59% — are married, and 43% have one or more college
degrees. Most — 54% — identify themselves as White; 32% as Hispanic; and 11%
as African-American. The party splits are 32% Republican and 44% Democrat —
but the ideological splits go the other way, with 42% calling themselves
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conservative, 34% saying they are moderate, and 19% identifying themselves as
liberals.
Methodology
The 2008 Texas Lyceum Poll is a telephone-based multi-stage cluster sample of
Texas adults. Telephone coverage within the state of Texas is approximately 97%.
Randomized selection procedures were assiduously followed throughout the
process, even at the level of selecting individuals within the household. The final
sample size is 1,000 adult Texans. The instrument itself relies on questions that
have been used previously in national polls, and have been shown to be both
valid (correlating with plausible independent and dependent variables) and
reliable (robust to question order and interviewer effects). A Spanish version of
the instrument was developed and respondents were given a choice of
participating in English or Spanish. Bilingual interviewers were utilized, and
approximately 48 interviews (5% of the sample) were completed in Spanish. The
overall response rate (completed interviews/contacts) is 37%. This rate is
partially the result of an extended time in the field, which facilitated call-backs.
The overall margin of error for the sample is +/- 3.1 percentage points at the 95%
confidence level. The data used to generate top-lines and tables are weighted by
U.S. Census Bureau estimates with respect to age, gender, and race. For example,
Census data indicate the proportion of 18-29 year old Hispanic females in Texas,
and we use these estimates to weight the survey data. As expected, the most
significant weights are applied to young, male, minority respondents (who are
under-represented here, as they are in almost all polls in the U.S.).