According to PublicPolicyPolling, Barack Obama (who currently sports about a +2 approval rating in the Pollster.com aggregates) would trail in Texas against all four leading Republican candidates. Specifically, he'd trail Huckabee by a blowout-style 16, Gingrich by 5, Romney by 7, and Palin by 1. Their take on those results is that Obama would be competitive but only against Palin. I don't think it's quite accurate to say that being down six with about twenty months to go is out of range, though. Now, maybe this wouldn't be the case if Obama weren't a little more popular than he was a couple of months ago, but let's remember that he's not more popular today than he was on Election Day '08. But he's doing much, much better in Texas, except against neighboring-state favorite son Huckabee, than he did on '08. He also appears to be doing better against all four of these top contenders in the aggregate than he did in '08 in Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia. Strange to say it, given how ugly the South was last year, but it looks like the early numbers suggest that the big shift in the electoral landscape from '08 to '12 will be the South moving toward the Democrats. Again. 2008 was already the best performance in the South by a non-Southern Democrat since Kennedy.
Anyway, I highly recommend making a race out of Texas to President Obama. I doubt he'll be at a financial disadvantage, so getting into an arms race in an expensive state like Texas would be to his advantage overall. And the Republicans really couldn't afford to fail to defend Texas: a loss there would come very close to dooming their chances altogether. So yes, Obama: mess with Texas.
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