Friedman Leads Democratic Primary In Poll

There is a new political website here in Texas called The Texas Tribune, and it looks like it could turn out to be a valuable resource for political junkies like myself. You can find it listed in the blog roll on the sidebar of this blog. I urge you to go over and check it out.

One of the interesting articles on the site today is about a poll they commissioned to look at the current picture of politics in Texas. One of the interesting things in the Texas Tribune/University of Texas poll was the division between Republicans and Democrats in the state.

I think most people (including myself) believed that Republicans had a significant majority in party membership in Texas. It turns out that is just not true. Here is the poll's breakdown of party membership:

Republican..........32%

Independent..........31%

Democrat..........32%

Other/Not Sure..........5%

When the Independents are asked if they lean toward one party or the other, the Republicans fare a little better. Then you have the Republicans with 45% and the Democrats with 41% and 14% saying neither or not sure. Frankly, these are better numbers for Democrats than in many years, and show they could be ready to compete in statewide races.

In the race for governor in the Republican primary, the poll shows Rick Perry with a 12-point lead over Kay Bailey Hutchison. However, there are still 18% of Republicans who have not made up their mind. This race is still fluid, and could go either way in the next few months.

The really interesting part of the poll was the standings in the Democratic primary race for governor. Supporters of both Tom Schieffer and Hank Gilbert (and some of my progressive blogger friends) have been treating the candidacy of Kinky Friedman (who I support) as a joke. That may be a mistake on their part, because Kinky has a significant lead in this early poll.

Now, I'm not saying this poll means Kinky Friedman will win the primary. There are far too many undecideds to say that (although I hope he does). I just believe if they continue to ignore him and treat his candidacy as a joke, they could get a nasty surprise on primary election day.

Here are the poll figures for the Democratic race for governor (noting that Thompson has now withdrawn and Earle has not declared his candidacy):

Kinky Friedman..........19%

Tom Schieffer..........10%

Ronnie Earle..........5%

Mark Thompson..........3%

Felix Alvarado..........2%

Hank Gilbert..........0.3%

Other..........6%

Undecided..........55%

Although Kinky has the early lead, this is still anybody's race.

There was another part of the poll that I found interesting. It seems that 3% of Texans describe themselves as agnostic and another 3% as atheist. About 10% said they were spiritual, but not religious. In addition, 24% said they never attend religious services and 26% said they attend only once or twice a year (that's 50% who don't regularly attend church). All of those numbers are higher than I expected.

This was an interesting poll, and I welcome The Texas Tribune to the Texas political mix.