Posted on 07/01/2011 10:48:12 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Could President Obama beat Rick Perry in Texas in a general-election showdown?
According to a new poll by Democratic firm Public Policy Polling, Obama would beat Perry 47 percent to 45 percent. That’s within the poll’s 3.5-point margin of error. But in that same poll, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul beat Obama by 8 and 5 points respectively, while Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty would also win the state (albeit within the margin of error) in the general election.
Dave Carney, a top political adviser to Perry, dismisses the PPP poll, telling National Review Online in an e-mail, “PPP has a long track record in Texas of being wrong.” He pointed to a June 2010 PPP poll that had Perry tied with Democratic gubernatorial Bill White at the same time a Rasmussen Reports poll had Perry 8 points ahead. Perry went on to win in November by a 13-point margin.
“That poll’s wrong,” agreed Ted Delisi, a strategist who has worked as a consultant for Perry during previous gubernatorial campaigns. “I don’t think President Obama has a chance of carrying Texas, regardless of who the Republican nominee is going to be.”
Carney said the poll would have “zero impact” on whether Perry opted to run in 2012.
Yet, pair that with a May University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll showing that only 4 percent of the state’s Republicans would vote for Perry in the GOP primary, and there are bound to be questions about Perry’s in-state popularity — and if Texas Republicans aren’t crazy about him, will Republicans nationwide be interested in nominating him?
Right now, it’s certainly not the case that GOP voters nationwide are skeptical about a Perry candidacy. A Fox News poll released yesterday showed him in second place, commanding 13 percent support among primary voters.
Larry Sabato, director of University of Virgina’s Center for Politics, thinks that the PPP poll “reflects Perry’s controversial nature.” “He is not the most popular figure there. He’s got a lot of enemies. He went as low as 39 percent in his 2006 reelection,” Sabato observes.
Still, Sabato says he “laughed” at the PPP poll’s results. He remarks, “I don’t care how much money they spend. President Obama isn’t carrying Texas.”
Joshua Trevino, vice president of communications at the free-market, non-partisan Texas Public Policy Foundation, points out that Perry is no stranger to defying the odds in competitive races. “With Governor Perry in particular, you are looking at a guy who has fought and won many elections starting from a pretty unfavorable position — most famously, the last gubernatorial election,” he says.
In that election, popular, moderate Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchison mounted a primary challenge against Perry. According to a February 2009 PPP poll, she had the support of 56 percent of likely GOP voters to Perry’s 31 percent. But on Election Day a year later, Perry won 51 percent to Hutchison’s 30 percent — even with tea partier Debra Medina siphoning off 19 percent of the conservative vote. Once again, Perry had proved it wasn’t accidental — or even just lucky — that he’s never lost an election.
In March, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told donors in Texas that Obama might make a “serious play” to win the Lone Star State, according to Politico. If that’s still the Obama campaign’s endgame, they must be hoping it’s not Perry who wins the Republican nomination.
— Katrina Trinko is an NRO staff reporter.
If he can win Texas.... I will totally give up on saving this country.
Well, this poll WAS conducted by PPP, which pretty much all of us know lists hard to port...
Yeah, that's like taking a gay marriage poll in a gay bar.
Obama has no chance here, nor a lot of other places.
wasn’t DailyKos suing them for giving them bogus information earlier?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
OK
That’s what all those Section 8 subsidized housing vouchers are about: importing Eric Holder’s people into Republican strongholds.
I would love to see the “internals” on that one........
think PPP is trying to coerce the GOP nominee??
PPP does not want Obama to run against strong candidates!!!
I live in PA, and I can think of 10 people that I know personally who voted for obama and will probably vote for him again.
You can argue with democrats until you’re blue in the face, but they get angry and won’t listen to reason. They’re also uninformed because they watch CNN & MSNBC.
depends on the number of illegals voting....
“If he can win Texas.... I will totally give up on saving this country.”
One of the problems of blue state people fleeing blue states is that they bring their blue state politics with them. An ideological disease vector, in other words.
That said, I don’t think Texas is that degraded yet.
Let’s put it this way...
Obama lost Texas by 12 points to John McCain, and that was when Obama was generally popular and was widely considered to be the Hope and Change that this country was looking for.
Now suddenly, we are to believe that with double digit U6 unemployment, a huge debt that threatens to bankrupt this country and record budget deficits, Texas is going to suddenly love him?
Something is rotten in the State of Texas ( with apologies to Shakespeare and Marcellus ).
I agree.
If Obama ever wins anything here in TX, then all you folks moving here from Dem states and voting Dem better be ready to move again. Texans won’t put up with that kind of garbage. Remember: “When in Rome”....
He lost Texas by 12 points and almost a million votes against McCain (!). How does he win it next time, especially since the bloom is now off the rose?
There are loads of idiots thriving on his propaganda.
The economy is just bubbling isn’t it? The recession is over and everything is great! The housing industry has had three times the starts last month of the peak period of June 1974.
I’ll call B/S.
Recent polls tell us Obama will beat Palin in Alaska and Perry in Texas?
Something is not right (with the polls).
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