Perry's Popularity Low In Texas

(The caricature of Rick Perry above was done by DonkeyHotey.)

Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, has already indicated a desire to run for president again in 2016, and he is also expected to run for another term as governor in 2014. The next term as governor would be to keep his name in the news to prepare his 2016 run for the presidency. He has said he won't announce whether he will be a candidate for governor until June (after the current legislative term is over), but most political observers believe it is a foregone conclusion that he will run.

But if a new survey done by Public Policy Polling is to believed (and they showed themselves to be very accurate in the last election), most Texans don't want to see him run for either office (and his job approval numbers are upside-down. Consider these numbers:

DO YOU APPROVE OF PERRY'S JOB PERFORMANCE?
approve..............41%
disapprove...............54%
not sure...............6%

SHOULD PERRY RUN FOR RE-ELECTION AS GOVERNOR?
yes...............31%
no...............62%
not sure...............7%

DO YOU THINK PERRY SHOULD RUN FOR PRESIDENT IN 2016?
yes...............14%
no...............79%
not sure...............7%

And the figures are nearly as bad when only Republicans are polled. About 66% of Texas Republicans say they do not want Perry to run for president again, while only 22% say he should (and 12% are not sure). About 55% of Republicans wouldn't mind if Perry ran for governor again, they are more enthusiastic about Attorney General Abbott. When paired against four possible Democratic opponents, Abbott gets much better numbers than Perry does.

It is obvious from these poll numbers that if Perry wants a political future, he has a lot of fence-mending to do. Most Texans simply do not want to see him back on the national stage (after the embarrassment of his last presidential bid), and Democrats have a better chance of beating Perry than some other Republicans (especially Abbott).

The poll was done between January 24th and 27th of a random sample of 500 Texans and 400 Republicans.