Replies

"This poll, like most public polls, is wrong," said Sanchez spokesman Mark Sanders. He said pollsters are underrepresenting minorities and voter enthusiasm.

"We show this a very, very, very close race," he said.

Hmmm. Interesting to note that the Blum and Weprin poll in April had Kirk leading Cornyn 43% to 39%. Now Kirk only gets 37%. Someone told me that one of the recent polls that gave Cornyn 54% had minority turnout quite large. Sanchez and Kirk know they're going to lose. Sanchez has made the big mistake of inadvertently projecting himself as a Hispanic running for office to oust the big bad white man, which, of course, alienates and scares off white voters. Kirk has made the big mistake of assuming that Hispanic voters who turn out for Sanchez will automatically vote for him. I used to live in California, and I know that Hispanics and blacks aren't exactly the best chummies, to say the least. So Kirk is whistling dixie if he thinks that all the Latinos are going to support him. In the last TX Senate race (Nov. 2000), the Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison took between 49 and 52% of the state's Latino vote, even outperforming President Bush. Republican Orlando Sanchez took the overwhelming majority of the Houston Hispanic vote in last year's mayoral race against incumbent dem Lee Brown, and the trend is there, especially in some of the the heavily Hispanic TX counties.

But just one message to TX Republicans: Don't be overconfident. At the beginning of this campaign, that what I thought was the big thing that could kill them, and it's still probably the only thing that could help Kirk and Sanchez. To be honest, the reason the "dream team" hasn't worked is because the GOP took their threat seriously.

Some info I've read recently but can't give you link to where it was.....

Historically the black - hispanic vote runs about 15 & 12% )(27%) of the total vote in Texas. The Democrats were pushing to up the percentage to about 35% total thus reducing the percentage needed from the Anglo vote. It will be interesting to see what the numbers look like after Nov. 5