The latest PPP Presidential polling hits Texas. I guess one of the benefits of Perry now being an official candidate is that we might see some more polls hit the state. It should be interesting to see the right-wing bloggers contort themselves to comprehend Perry’s amazing ability to underperform in the state. Overall, the new poll isn’t as newsworthy as the last one they did, but here’s the main thing I think should be taken away from it …
For more detail, I’ll refer you to Ron Brownstein.
Here’s a side-by-side of June’s poll with today’s …
Obama vs 6/11 9/11 ---------------------------- Perry ...... 47-45 ... 44-51 Palin ...... 46-44 ... ----- Bachmann ... 44-47 ... 45-43 Cain ....... 43-43 ... ----- Pawlenty ... 43-44 ... ----- Romney ..... 42-50 ... 41-47 Paul ....... 40-45 ... 42-43 Gingrich ----- ... 46-45 ---------------------------- 2008 Vote .. 41-52 ... 42-50
In June, my reaction was that I felt the poll was timed poorly to coincide with the end of the legislative session and that the result was that the electorate was particularly low-tide for Perry. That he’s now up 7 points with some time separating him from the craziness of session doesn’t surprise me much. I think there’s room for a little bit of improvement since the economy and off-season piling on of Obama might raise the ceiling for Perry to something closer to Bush’s 60% showing in the state.
Of more concern to me is that, in reality, Texas is not uncompetitive based on the numbers in the state. To the extent that it’s deemed uncompetitive, it’s because of the size of the state and the need to campaign aggressively in at least six to eight of the 20 media markets. Of those, the markets for DFW, Houston and San Antonio markets ain’t cheap. So the cost of moving the needle by a percentage point is substantially higher than it might be for a state with only a handful of media markets. But if Team Plouffe ever decides to replicate their Florida surge model to Texas, I’m on record as suggesting there’s a different way to stitch together a successful majority here than has been tried before.
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