With a month until Election Day and trailing 50 to 36 in the new WFAA-Belo Texas Poll, Democrat Bill White needs an issue to rev up voters against incumbent Republican Gov. Rick Perry.
White concedes that he is the underdog, but says education is the issue that will propel him past Perry.
We need to prepare Texans to compete for good jobs; that means college and careers," he said. "We've fallen behind."
The WFAA-Belo Texas Poll found education is important to likely voters, but not as much as jobs and the economy, where they said Perry would do a better job.
What's left to help White?
Poll participants were told that the Democrat is the former mayor of Houston, but 51 percent said they are not more likely to support him because of that job experience.
"It probably helps him more with his own party, but the majority of people say that it wouldn't make a difference to them," said Public Strategies pollster David Iannelli.
To the statement "He refused to participate in candidate debates," since Perry has declined, 45 percent said that would make them less likely to vote for that candidate; 38 percent said it made no difference.
"It's not a home run issue, but it is one that I wouldn't hesitate to — if I were Bill White — to hammer away on a little bit," Iannelli said.
On the flip side when responding to the statement, "He supports the policies of Barack Obama," likely voters said they would be less likely to support that candidate by a margin of 56 to 29 percent.
It's clear why White steers clear of the president.
Although newspapers don't like that Perry won't meet with them, our poll found 58 percent of likely voters say an editorial endorsement makes no difference to them.
E-mail bwatson@wfaa.com
Public Strategies conducted a statewide telephone poll of 1,000 registered voters in Texas September 27-October 2, 2010 on behalf of BELO. The sample included 704 likely voters – those who say they vote in “most” or “all” school, local and primary elections. The margin of error for random sample of 704 likely voters is ±3.7 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence interval.
To ensure the sample was representative of the population of Texas, weights were applied to the full sample on gender, age, ethnicity and party affiliation. All respondents were screened to ensure they are registered voters. To filter for likely voters, respondents were also screened to ensure they vote in most or all school, local and primary elections.
