Posted on 04/25/2012 4:30:45 PM PDT by Bevo
UPDATED: Poll: Cruz gaining on Dewhurst in U.S. Senate race By Kate Alexander | Wednesday, April 25, 2012, 12:31 PM
Updated at 2:45 p.m. with comment from Leppert campaign
A new outside poll suggests that Ted Cruz is making up ground on Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the Republican pirmary for U.S. Senate.
Dewhurst still leads with the backing of 38 percent of the respondents but the support for Cruz has increased to 26 percent in the crowded primary. In January, the last time Public Policy Polling looked at the race, Cruz was favored by 18 percent of those surveyed.
A candidate must get more than 50 percent in the May 29 primary in order to avoid a runoff. The Cruz campaign argues that Dewhurst is vulnerable in a runoff.
But the poll indicates that Cruz and Dewhurst are tied among tea party voters, which is Cruz’s core constituency. Dewhurst has a strong 21-point lead among people who do not identify with the tea party.
Former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert came in with 8 percent of the support in the poll and Craig James, a former ESPN football analyst, had 7 percent.
The polling was conducted over four days beginning April 19, which was pretty early in the television ad war that started last week. Dewhurst is running hard-hitting ads targeted at Cruz over his legal representation of a Chinese company that was found liable for stealing the intellectual property of a Florida tire company.
Leppert spokesman Daniel Keylin said the campaign had barely begun when the poll was taken late last week.
“We’ve just placed several million dollars of television and radio ads to aggressively take our message to voters across Texas. With voters now just starting to focus on this race, the difference between the candidates will become clearer each and every day,” Keylin said.
The poll reached 400 Republican primary voters and has a margin of error of +/- 4.9 percent.
Great news in Texas. We need more TEA Party conservatives in the U.S. Senate.
Great news when 50% of the TP is supporting that lying RINO Dewhurst? Dewhurst has all the money in the world to lie his way through the primary - just like Mittens- and that swine, Mike Huckabee, is helping him.
We need Cruz, but apparently 50% of the TP is too bleeping stupid to understand who David Dewhurst really is.
Good. The Texas political landscape needs a good scrubbing to rid ourselves of self serving, perennial politicians like Dewhurst and Perry. Time for a double flush.
Thanks Clintonfatigued.
Reread the article. Nowhere does it say that Dewhurst is at 50% of the Tea Party vote. It says that Dewhurst and Cruz are tied for first among TP voters, but with two other candidates and a huge number of undecided voters, I would be surprised if more than 33% of TAp voters support Dewhurst.
I am starting to see that there are a number of people showing up claiming to be TP supporting RINO establishment types lately. You knew it was just a matter of time before the GOPe started to do this to give their worthless candidates some credibility. I bet 50% of those so called TP people are actually lying or plants.
It still means that as many TP members support Dewhurst as support Cruz. That right there is a left-hand side of the bell curve political IQ.
The only R candidate worth voting for is Cruz.
“I am starting to see that there are a number of people showing up claiming to be TP supporting RINO establishment types lately. You knew it was just a matter of time before the GOPe started to do this to give their worthless candidates some credibility.”
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I’ve noticed that also—the GOPe Empire strikes back.
Ted Cruz would be a great TRUE CONSERVATIVE Senator from Texas. Dewhurst would just be another “moderate” establishment type posing as a conservative long enough to get elected. Let’s support Ted Cruz and look forward to a runoff between Cruz & Dewhurst where the conservative vote could consolidate around Cruz.
I wish the Republican presidential primary had had something similar to the Texas runoff policy. That way, the top vote getting conservative in a state (among the many conservatives running) could later run ALONE against the establishment designee (who would have received under 50% in the initial voting round). CONSERVATIVES WOULD RULE!
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