Texas Miscellany

-Rick Perry's future prospects for elected office in Texas are looking tenuous. Only 29% of voters think he should run for Governor again in 2014, while 64% think he should not. There's actually some possibility he could win another term anyway though. 49% of Republicans think he should run again to 38% who think he should not and obviously if you win the Republican nomination in Texas you're always going to start out in a pretty good position for the general.

The White House is definitely not in Perry's future though if Texans have anything to say about it. Only 19% of voters think he should run for President again to 73% who think he should not, and even among Republicans just 31% think he should make another bid for chief executive.

-Texans think Lyndon Johnson is their greatest President ever, although he certainly benefits from a split in the Bush vote. 39% bestow that honor to Johnson to 22% who pick George W. Bush and 19% who pick George H.W. Bush. The senior Bush is actually the best liked of the former Presidents with a 54/32 favorability rating. But voters are more passionate- for positive or negative- about the junior Bush and Johnson. Johnson has a 44/30 favorability and W. Bush's is 48/44.

-We did a Texas level version of the recent city favorability poll we did nationally and the big winner is San Antonio at 71/11, followed not far behind by Austin at 70/17. It was a little surprising to see that even among Republicans Austin maintains a 67/24 rating, they must not mind its weirdness. Dallas with a 56/25 rating took 3rd place honors followed by Houston at 46/31. By far and away the city with the worse image of those we polled was El Paso, which came in at 28/34. There was a party divide on that one with Democrats rating it positively at 34/23, but Republicans negatively at 23/43.

-Kay Bailey Hutchison continues to be the more popular of Texas' Senators with a 50/32 approval rating, better than John Cornyn's 40/37. They have similar numbers with Republicans but Hutchison is more popular with Democrats (a 34% approval rating to Cornyn's 16%) and independents (a 44/29 spread to Cornyn's 27/44.)

Full results here

Comments

[Wendell]

FYI, if you're going to do favorability ratings for our cities, you should never leave out The Valley (which is actually a similar sized region as Austin).

[Wendell]

Also, if you're going to do a similar feature for New Mexico, including El Paso in their list of cities would be extremely relevant given its close proximity and similar culture and demographics. (I.E. include El Paso, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and Las Cruces)

[Wendell]

Also! Where the hell is Fort Worth!?

[Tom Jensen]

A little bit west of Dallas

[Wendell]

Yes, but its a huge city. We in Texas do not, despite their close proximity and close economic ties (same metropolitan area, but different metropolitan divisions), consider them the same in a similar way that North Carolinians see urban agglomerations like ehe Triangle or the Triad. Dallas and Forth Worth are completely different culturally. Dallas is very much southern plains akin to places like OKC while Fort Worth is the quintessential southwestern cowboy town. I.E. It's like El Paso but lacking the historical Hispanic character.

[Tom Gibbons]

Where the West begins...but never reaches full flower.