Public Policy Polling has the governor’s race as a 15-point spread from top to bottom: Perry 39% (sound familiar?) Hutchison 28% Medina 24% Undecided 10% Rasmussen’s most recent poll: Perry 44% Hutchison 29% Medina 16% Anything can happen now. Medina’s support has grown by 50% since the Rasmussen poll even though she does not have money to spend on TV. That means she is gaining on word of mouth. I thought she would be doing well to get to 20%. She shot through that barrier without slowing down. Perry is now right back where he was on election day 2006: Governor 39%. Hutchison is holding on to a spot in a runoff, barely. Medina took votes from Hutchison in the last Rasmussen poll. This time she is taking votes from Perry. She’s +8 since the Rasmussen poll; he’s -5. Hutchison is -1. I have been telling friends for a couple of weeks now that if Medina can raise $2 million by February 16 (the start of early voting), she will be governor. What this poll tells me is that Texans are sick and tired of Rick Perry and Kay Bailey Hutchison and their career politician credentials and their negative campaigns. Medina is Sarah Palin with gravitas and without the winks. Consider Perry’s dilemma. The conventional wisdom was that there was no way anyone could get to his right. Hutchison tried and failed miserably. Medina got there, because she is genuine. Now what does Perry do? Does he attack her? Very risky. Does he ignore her? This is Plan B territory; I seriously doubt that the Perry campaign has a stop-Medina strategy. All his Hutchison-bashing accomplished was to weaken KBH to the point where Medina may have enough momentum to make the runoff. Amazing! How can anyone not love this stuff? Here is more from the poll: (Quoting from PPP) –There are major splits within the race along ideological lines. Perry is at 42% with conservatives, and Medina is now outpolling Hutchison with them by a 25-23 margin. Hutchison cleans up with moderates, leading Perry 49-29, but unfortunately for her prospects they account for only 20% of GOP primary voters. –One finding in the poll helps sum up the mood in the country right now and may give a clue as to why Hutchison is having so much trouble. Asked whether they trust Austin or Washington politicians more to solve Texas’ problems, state level politicians win out by a margin of 78-3. There’s no doubt Medina is riding the wave of discontent with the political establishment. She actually leads the race, 37-32 over Perry, with the third of primary voters who disapprove of Washington politicians. With those who are happy she trails well behind at 17%. (How weird is that? Perry has bashed Washington for a year and Medina does better among the anti-Washington crowd than she does.) Democratic Primary: White 49% Shami 19% Methodology: PPP surveyed 400 likely Democratic primary voters and 423 likely Republican primary voters from February 4th to 7th. The margin of error for the Democratic survey is +/- 4.9% and for the Republicans it’s +/-4.8%. Other factors, such as refusal to be interviewed and weighting, may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify. A word of caution. This is a very wide margin of error, almost a 10% spread. * * * * Other interesting info from the poll: Second choice of Medina voters: Perry 43% Hutchison 39% KBH job performance 51% favorable 28% unfavorable 20% undecided Rick Perry job performance 50% favorable 36% unfavorable 14% undecided Debra Medina favorability Favorable 40% Unfavorable 9% Undecided 51% Crosstabs Makeup of sample by party identification: Republican 75% Democrat 3% Independent 22% Makeup of sample by race: White 81% Hispanic 12% African American 4% Other 4% Makeup of sample by age: 68% were 45 or older