Via Political Wire, we have a new Texas poll done by Survey USA (PDF). It shows Bush leading Kerry by a 58-37 margin, which is very close to what the spread was in 2000, and is slightly better for Bush than the Rasmussen result from early June. It’s hard to judge a poll in isolation, and as Texas is a non-swing state we may not see another result for awhile, but there are a few interesting bits to speculate on.
The survey says that Kerry leads Bush by a 58-36 margin in “West Texas”. I’m going to step out on a limb here and guess that this is basically El Paso, since I’m pretty sure Midland and Odessa are firmly in the Bush camp. More intriguing is the item that says Bush has a 50-47 lead in “Houston”. Bush carried Harris County by a 54-43 margin in 2000, so depending on how they define “Houston”, this may be evidence that the Democrats are finally on the verge of regaining some parity here. There’s no more data specific to a city, but overall in “Urban” areas the race is a 48-48 tie, while Bush cleans up in the suburbs to a 68-28 tune and carries rural areas 62-33.
Among age brackets, Bush does best with the 35-49 demographic, scoring a 63-32 margin, but he does least well among 18-34 year olds, winning with a 52-44 tally. Will they become more Republican as they pass into the next age group, or is this a sign that the Democrats are making inroads with the new generation? Beats me, but it’ll be something to watch.
One last thing – Bush does slightly better among “Non-Military” (60-36) than he does among “Military/Vet” (57-39). It’s probably just noise, but I thought it was worth a mention anyway.
I’ve said before that I believe Kerry needs to beat Al Gore’s showing by at least a few points if the redistricted Congressional incumbents are to have a good chance of survival. This result shows there’s still a lot of work to be done by the Democrats. They’re still raising money for the fall GOTV effort. Help them out if you can.
UPDATE: Byron offers some analysis.
Strange.
KPRC-2 reports a dead heat in Harris County:
http://www.click2houston.com/politics/3674834/detail.html
One would expect him to be polling ahead in Harris County and behind in Houston proper. Something odd seems to be going on.
In the PDF, Bush’s conservative base is much more solid behind him than Kerry’s liberal base is behind him, something that’s been the case in almost every reputable poll (something that bloggers and reporters tend to get wrong, consistently). That’s kind of interesting also.
From the KPRC story:
“In Harris County, 50 percent said they would vote for President George W. Bush, while 47 percent said they would vote for Sen. John Kerry. With a margin of error of 3.7 percent, the results make Harris County a statistical tie, according to pollsters.”
That’s not exactly true – if that result is accurate, there’s a 3-1 chance Bush is ahead by some margin. It specifically says “Houston” in the SUSA file, so either KPRC got a clarification on this or they’re just assuming SUSA meant “Harris County”.
Also from KPRC:
“In East Texas, which includes Austin and San Antonio, Bush also leads two-to-one, with 63 percent for Bush and 33 percent for Kerry.”
In what bizarre universe are Austin and San Antonio “East Texas”??? Very strange.
Obviously SUSA does not know the lingo of Texas, I wonder what their definition of North Texas is, they’d probably say Amarillo.