Polling for Mayor

KHOU/KUHF do some polling. "Don't Know" is the runaway favorite!

In a straight candidate name-only ask ...
13.2% - Annise Parker
9.6% - Gene Locke
5.2% - Peter Brown
2.8% - Roy Morales
67.7% - Don't Know

"Informed" ask ...
15.8% - Annise Parker
13.6% - Gene Locke
12.8% - Roy Morales
10.2% - Peter Brown
45.9% - Don't Know

These numbers track with everything I've seen both public and private. It's just a low-information election right now. Even with Peter Brown's ad buy, it was apparently a very low-dollar buy (which is incredibly strange given his financial resources).

All in all, a very odd open-seat Mayoral contest. I don't doubt that a lot of the credit for this is that it's a tough economy to go asking for spare $5,000 or so from people. But even without that, I think there were a number of ways to be on the air in an affordable way that at least spoke to the people likeliest to be in the market for early Mayoral info.

Come November, we'll see what this bears out. Lower turnout? A good November showing for the one candidate to be on the ballot for the past 6 cycles? A surprise or two? Who knows. The game is entirely up in the air right now and it's about time for things to start getting defined a little better.

Kuff picks apart Gene Locke's presser on his campaign's "statistical dead heat." Actually, every campaign could say the same thing. Recall that a 4.4% margin of error means that in the informed ask, Peter's 10.2% could turn into 14.6% while Parker's 15.8% could turn into 11.4%. So where's Roy Morales's press release announcing his own statistical dead heat? That would really underscore the lunacy of declaring anything from a poll where Don't Know is the only clear frontrunner.