Houston Chronicle 2/29/08: Obama leads statewide 48% to 41%

[RiverStone]

By R.G. RATCLIFFE and ALAN BERNSTEIN
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama appears to be consolidating a lead over Hillary Rodham Clinton among most constituent groups in Texas except Hispanics, according to a new tracking poll.

The survey found Obama leading 48.2 percent to 41.7 percent over Clinton statewide. The poll, conducted Tuesday through Thursday for the Houston Chronicle, Reuters and C-SPAN by Zogby International, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

On the Republican side, U.S. Sen. John McCain appears headed to victory in Texas over former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Texas congressman Ron Paul of Lake Jackson. McCain led with 53.4 percent support to Huckabee's 26.8 percent and Paul's 10.7 percent in a survey that had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. McCain led among all groups, including self-identified conservatives.

The tracking poll, which will be conducted daily until next Tuesday's election, found Obama leading with both men and women. He and Clinton were essentially tied among Anglos, but he held 84.9 percent support among blacks and she had the support of 54.9 percent of the Hispanics surveyed.

That Hispanic backing helped give Clinton a lead in South Texas of 66.7 percent. She also led in West Texas, which would include heavily Hispanic El Paso.

Obama led in every other region and was supported by about 60 percent of those surveyed in Houston and Dallas — which have more nominating delegates at stake than all of the region from San Antonio to Brownsville to El Paso.

more:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/hotstories/5580776.html

[Ilsa]

1. I participated in this IVR Texas poll last night:

http://ivrpolls.com/index.php

Turnout in Texas is extremely high and includes a high percentage of first time primary voters. For this reason, I decided to begin with a sample population from all registered voters and screen responses to determine likely voters. Initial questions dealt with general election matchups and presidential choice in 2004. The resuts of the 2004 question matched election results fairly closely, so I believe it to be a fairly representative sample. In the general election matchups, Republicans win all matchups easily though not at Bush-like margins. Obama does slightly better than Clinton against Huckabee while Clinton does much better than Obama against McCain. Clinton had almost the same percentage against each Republican, while Obama's percentages varied.

Unfortunately, the screening questions produced too few primary voters to be as precise as I would like for the tight Democratic primary race. The five point margin of error is higher than the difference between the two candidates in many recent polls, and I will need to increase the sample size before I am comfortable releasing detailed percentages. That said, after weighting to expected demographics, Obama received the support of one more respondent than Clinton did.

Obama increased his numbers among African-Americans and Latinos. In previous polls, women over 60 was the only African-American segment where Clinton was competitive. Obama is now dominating that group as well. Younger Latinos are now going for Obama as heavily as younger voters overall.

Clinton improved among white voters and Bush voters. She was stable among white Kerry voters, but there has been an increase in younger white Bush voters who will vote GOP in November, but vote for Clinton in the primary. Obama still has a significant number of older white Bush voters crossing over temporarily, but the effect is mostly offset now.
SNIP

There is a little more in the article.