The race has clearly turned in Perry’s favor in recent polls. At 53%, Perry’s lead is close to impregnable. Even if it the race were closer, White has shown no ability move the numbers in his direction. I think Rasmussen has lost some lustre in this election cycle, but he has a reputation to protect, and I don’t think he is cooking numbers at this stage of the race. It is entirely plausible that Perry has broken through 50%. White’s TV has been terrible from day one and shows no sign of getting better. It’s almost as bad as Hutchison’s. Has the Perry camp discovered a secret method of hypnotizing their opponents into an ineffective stupor? When Perry started attacking White over the B-TEC issue, which I regard as entirely phony, the White camp allowed Perry’s ads to run unanswered while they became embedded in viewers’ minds. This was an attack on White’s character. Why did they wait so long to answer it? I suspect that the White and Hutchison campaigns were so ineffective is the same: The candidates were too deeply involved in their own campaigns. The Hutchison campaign was said to be rife with second-guessing. A lot of candidates can put together a first-class campaign team, but it doesn’t do any good if the candidate is always looking over their shoulders. Perry never makes this mistake. He has the best team around and he lets them go about their business. White has been close to Perry in a lot of polls, but the key numbers now are their respective ceilings and floors. No Rasmussen poll has given White more than 44% percent of the vote. You can’t win with 44%. No Rasmussen poll has given Perry less than 48% of the vote. The Belo poll earlier this week seemed like an outlier at 50% for Perry, 36% for White, and the Lone Star Project’s Matt Angle made a good case against the Belo numbers: the screen was based upon city and school board elections, which overrepresent Republicans (the people who vote in school board elections are homeowners) and underrepresents Democrats who vote in primaries. But Rasmussen tends to confirm the Belo poll.