Perry in Texas

Rick Perry has an under water approval rating in Texas and he's leading Barack Obama by a smaller margin than John McCain won the state by in 2008...but at least he is leading Obama, which is more than he could say the last time we polled the state.

45% of Texas voters approve of the job Perry is doing to 48% who disapprove.  Those aren't good numbers but they do represent improvement from a June PPP poll of the state when Perry was at 43/52.  The better numbers are attributable to Republicans really rallying around him. He was at 73/21 with them before but now it's 78/14.  He continues to be very unpopular with independents though (32/61) and even in a state that still has a lot of conservative Democrats his crossover support is virtually nonexistent with just 13% of voters approving of him across party lines. The numbers with independents are particularly troublesome for Perry- if that's where he is with swing voters where they know him best, can he expect to do well with those folks in key swing states like Ohio, Colorado, and Virginia?

Perry leads Obama in a head to head 51-44. Those aren't terribly impressive numbers given that John McCain defeated Obama by 12 points in the state, but they do at least represent an improvement for Perry since June when he actually trailed the President 47-45.   Perry polls the best of any of the Republicans in Texas- Mitt Romney leads Obama by 6 points at 47-41, Ron Paul's up by a single point at 43-42, and Obama actually leads Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachmann by 46-45 and 45-43 margins respectively.

Obama's approval rating in Texas is only 40% with 55% of voters disapproving of him. Most notable is that only 2% of Republicans give him good marks to 95% unhappy with his job performance- it's hard to recover from that no matter how well you do with Democrats and independents in a state where the plurality of voters identify with the GOP. 

There are a couple things keeping him from getting completely crused in the state though.  One is the Hispanic vote- he's up 28 points on Perry, 35 on Romney and Paul, 43 on Bachmann, and 45 on Gingrich with those voters. In the case of Perry that margin is equal to what Obama won Hispanics by in Texas in 2008 and with the others it's a wider spread.  This is one state anyway where he is not slipping with Latino voters. 

The other thing helping Obama stay somewhat close in Texas is that, like in most places, voters just aren't responding very positively to the Republican alternatives to him.  Beyond Perry's poor approval numbers Romney's favorability is a net -17 (32/49), Paul's is -25 (29/54), Gingrich's is -27 (29/56), and Bachmann's is -28 (27/55). With Obama's approval numbers what they are he should probably be trailing the entire Republican field by double digits. But he's not because of the unpopularity of the GOP candidates themselves.

Texas is probably a pipe dream for Democrats next year, especially given the overall national political climate. But the numbers here still show some things Republicans should be worried about- the fact that the voters who know Perry best don't like him, and that Hispanics continue to support Obama overwhelmingly.

Full results here

Comments

[pbrower2a]

Wow! A Republican nominee needs to win Texas by 15% or so to have a reasonable chance to win nationwide, and both Perry and Romney fall short of that by about half.

[Obama 2012]

It is a little bit disappointing to see Perry doing better than last time around but still a 7 point lead in his home (very very red) state is not a strong performance for Perry. Obviously if Perry only wins Texas by 7 points he will lose nationally by a wide margin (at least 10 points, I think.)

I also think that Obama's new proposals (The Buffett Rule in particular) will be very popular with voters and should excite many of us who supported the President so strongly in 2008. Right now the lines are being drawn clearly and it's obvious that the President is on the side of average Americans while the Republicans are on the side of the very same millionaires & billionaires that have driven this country into the ground.

[realnrh]

That looks about right, really. Given the demographic changes in Texas (with a strongly anti-Republican Hispanic bloc gaining increasing electoral clout), it would not be too surprising to see Texas move several points to the left. Particularly when you consider that in 2008, there was a high degree of offended Texan pride driving Republicans to vote, since running against Texan-adoptee Bush was a thriving campaign theme. With a shift of a few points to the left among the voting population and a shift of a few points of partisan intensity, Texas can easily go from a R+12 to R+6. Give it another eight years or so and Texas will be firmly on the table - and if that happens, Republicans will be in a nightmare scenario with the Electoral College for a generation or more.

[Nobama 2012]

And when President Obama raises taxed on the people who are creating jobs, and unemployment sky-rockets, then Perry's 7 point edge in Texas jumps to 15+. Good, glad to see Republicans winning Texas. Glad to see the people of Texas have sense!!

[Ranjit]

Obama 2012,

So, you are saying that, suddenly people will be impressed by buffet rule and start having positive opinion of Obama? In the meanwhile "Solyndra Scandal" is in front page, "Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President" is being talked by main stream media, house prices are falling, Unemployment is increasing in all the states(16% among blacks), more and more talk about primary challenge for obama and everything is fine in your book? Please keep believing it ! If things don't change, Obama will loose to either Romney or Perry in a landslide !

[realnrh]

The people who are creating jobs are the middle-class entrepreneurs starting their own companies, not the rich twits sitting on their cash. Companies don't hire people because they get tax breaks; they hire people because their existing workforce can't meet their need for labor. The right-wing morons calling the Paris Hilton class 'job creators' are out of touch with the American economy.

[jcordes]

That's because we in Texas know Rick Perry to be the crook he is.

[Jennifer]

The polling company used here is a Democrat polling service.

The owner is a Mr. Dean Debman.

Dean Debnam is a Democratic pollster and regular campaign donor. The chief executive officer of Workplace Options, he started Public Policy Polling, a Raleigh-based political research firm, in 2002 as a side business. The company uses automated dialers for polling, message testing for candidates and advocacy, such as a recent effort urging higher impact fees in Raleigh. Clients have included Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker, City Councilman Thomas Crowder and the Conservation Council of North Carolina. Respondents are found using voter rolls which are weighted to represent typical turnout. His wife, Stephanie Fanjul, ran for mayor in 1999.

Read more: http://projects.newsobserver.com/under_the_dome/profiles/dean_debnam#ixzz1Yal5Goje

[realnrh]

Jennifer - Or, alternatively, you could develop a long enough attention span to read the poll and see the disclaimer and explanatory note: "PPP is a Democratic polling company, but polling expert Nate Silver of the New York Times found that its surveys in 2010 actually exhibited a slight bias toward Republican candidates." See, Democrats want actual data that reflects reality; it's Republican pollsters like Rasmussen whose goal is creating narratives to back ideological causes.

[Stephanie]

People who just believe this garbage without even learning how liberal polling agencies like PPP skew polls, our entire nation would be better off. PPP also said that what's his name would beat Perry in the last election.... what's his name was SPANKED!!! Bad!! So go ahead and believe it, you'll just be wrong right along with them, and Perry will continue to be Texas Governor until HE is ready to leave not when fake polls "say" he's not popular. People who believe these make me LOL!