05.05.08
Noriega Edging Up, Cornyn Below 50%
I have to admit I was not expecting this today, Texas Senate: Cornyn 47% Noriega 43%, and it was a wonderful surprise!!
It’s time to add United States Senator John Cornyn to the list of potentially vulnerable Republican incumbents in Election 2008. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in the state find Cornyn leading Democratic state legislator Rick Noriega by just four percentage points, 47% to 43%.
Any incumbent who polls below 50% is considered potentially vulnerable. That is especially true when a little known challenger is so competitive in an early general election match-up.
More analysis from Kuff, Some good poll news from Rasmussen.
The key question for this year is what exactly is the partisan mix in Texas these days. The old wisdom of 50R/35D/15I would seem to me to not be operative any longer. There’s plenty of evidence – election results from 2006 in which Democrats won or were competitive in districts that were not thought to be friendly to them, the unprecedented turnout in the Democratic primary, and so on – to suggest that there’s more Ds and fewer Rs than there were just an election cycle or two ago. We can also expect, for the first time since 2002, the Dems will have enough money to run a real statewide campaign, and to get voters out in a way that hasn’t happened recently. Pollsters are going to have to make some different assumptions about who is a likely voter, and what the ratio of Ds to Rs is, and I figure we’ll see some conflicting results because of that.
This isn’t 2004, and there isn’t a Bush on the ballot or, and maybe more important, the Bush machine at work in Texas either.
Rick’s Blog has all the reaction to the poll from around the nation and state, Blogs Buzzing Over Senate Poll Showing Noriega Competitive.