Sen. Wendy Davis
As Ed Kilgore noted on Friday evening, YouGov dropped a load of gubernatorial race polls, including another Texas result. You may look at the topline number and feel dejected, but let me point out two things. One is that YouGov has consistently been the most pessimistic pollster for Davis. This is the third result they’ve published, and it’s the closest they’ve shown the race yet. Last month, they had Abbott up by 18, 56-38, so you could say that Davis is closing the gap. That may seem like cold comfort with such a margin, but YouGov isn’t the only game in town, and other polls have shown some movement as well in the same direction. The Davis campaign, the yang to YouGov’s ying, says its polling shows a six point race, down from nine a couple of weeks ago. Whatever the margin, the general consensus is that the race is tightening. YouGov, in its idiosyncratic way, supports that.
The other point is that YouGov had Davis up by five among women, 46-41. That appears to be the driver of the difference between this poll and the last one, in which they had Abbott up by a point, 43-42. Abbott made a big deal about his two-point lead among women in the Lyceum poll, though that lead depended on their likely voter screen. If Davis is gaining among women, that’s definitely a good sign.
Anyway. YouGov also had a Senate result, showing Big John Cornyn up by 20 over David Alameel. That result is identical to their previous poll, and it shows Cornyn leading Alameel among women by five points. Those numbers are additional evidence that something is happening in the Governor’s race. There’s still a lot of ground to make up whether you buy YouGov’s model or not, but the wind does seem to be blowing in a favorable direction.