We’ve seen Gene Locke’s poll, which showed him trailing Annise Parker by four points, 43-39. Now here’s a poll from Parker that puts her up by 13. The polling memo:
A recent Lake Research Partners survey of likely voters in Houston’s upcoming mayoral runoff shows that City Controller Annise Parker holds a strong lead over former City Attorney and lobbyist Gene Locke. In our recent survey, among likely voters with previous participation in past city runoff elections, Parker leads with 47 percent (37 percent strong) to 34 percent for Locke (27 percent strong). A fifth of voters (19 percent) remains undecided.
Parker holds this large lead even though the poll simulated high turnout among African American voters. The sample was comprised of 54 percent Anglos, 30 percent African Americans, and 12 percent Latinos.
Parker remains the best-known and liked candidate in the race and she maintains her lead even under a simulated attack. Only a substantially negative campaign from Locke can interrupt her momentum. Sixty-seven percent of voters have a favorable impression of Parker and 62 percent think she has done either an excellent (21 percent) or good job (41 percent) as City Controller. Fifty-seven percent of voters hold a favorable view of Locke.
In sum, Parker leads this race. Her deep base of personal support positions her well to win the runoff and become the next mayor of Houston.
Of interest as well is the footnote about methodology:
The survey was conducted among 600 registered voters in Houston with previous vote participation in municipal runoff elections and who are likely to vote this December. The survey was conducted November 11-15, 2009.
Like the pre-election poll that Team Parker did, this one makes a reasonable effort to identify people who really are likely to vote. That poll was a lot more accurate than the two media polls, which sampled registered voters. It would be nice to have the full crosstabs, but the sample strikes me as reasonable, and the first poll was accurate enough to give me some faith in this one. As Greg notes, the sample and methodology for Locke’s poll is less clear, though interestingly they both got about the same number of undecideds. I’m not sure if those folks will end up not voting, or if they’re just taking their time to make up their minds. Anyway, now we have a couple of data points. We’ll see how it goes from here.
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