New Poll Shows Cruz and Dewhurst Neck and Neck

The Cruz campaign alerted me to a new poll from the Azimuth Research Group that shows David Dewhurst and Ted Cruz neck and neck. In fact, they show Cruz leading, 32% to 31%, though they note that before rounding, the actual amount is less than 1%, and in any case within the +/-3% margin of error. Tom Leppert was third with 8%, Lela Pittenger as fourth with 5%, and Elizabeth Ames Jones edged out Glenn Addison for fifth, 4% to 3%.

While this is certainly good news for the Cruz campaign, a few caveats are in order:

  • Azimuth is a relatively new polling organization; in fact, I think they only started doing polling this year. Without a track record to for results in previous elections, there is no way to judge how effective their polling methodology is.
  • One of the polls they did earlier this year showed Ron Paul leading the Presidential race at 22%, substantially higher than any other polling company.
  • That, plus Pittenger coming in fourth, would suggest that the poll disproportionately samples people who are unusually active in politics, and thus not reflective of the actual makeup of Republican primary voters, which would boost Cruz in comparison to Dewhurst.
  • As such, I would take these results with several grains of salt until replicated by one of the more established polling services like Gallup or Zogby.

    • Still, even with those caveats, this is great news for Cruz five months out from the primary, as it shows a huge bump from the PPP poll of a month ago, which showed him at 12%. Even if you think the methodology overstates Cruz’s gain by 50%, that would still put him at 22%, a 10% increase in a single month. The poll was conducted 10/12-10/17, so it might show the effect of Cruz’s National Review cover appearance.

    Outlier or not, I can’t imagine anyone is happy with this result over at the Dewhurst campaign. With his money and name recognition, Dewhurst was supposed to be winning the race running away at this point. He’s not.

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    This entry was posted on Monday, October 17th, 2011 at 12:07 PM and is filed under Elections, Republicans, Texas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    3 Responses to “New Poll Shows Cruz and Dewhurst Neck and Neck”

    1. New Poll Shows Support for Dewhurst Down to 22% « Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog says:
      November 2, 2011 at 12:41 PM

      […] voters down to 22%, which is about half what previous polls have shown, and even less than that possibly anomalous Azimuth Research Group poll that showed both Cruz and Dewhurst tied around 30%. The UT/TT poll shows Cruz in second place at […]

    2. Elana G. says:
      January 4, 2012 at 11:22 AM

      “•One of the polls they did earlier this year showed Ron Paul leading the Presidential race at 22%, substantially higher than any other polling company” Politics don’t always go the way we ‘think’ or are ‘convinced’ they should….

    3. Ted Cruz on Sean Hannity Tonight Discussing Fast and Furious, And a Bit on Polling « Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog says:
      January 25, 2012 at 8:59 PM

      […] and I would not take that University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll as gospel either. (Much less the Azimuth Research Group […]

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