We Have a Poll ... Tomorrow [UPDATE: Today!]

UPDATE: The story is now posted.

First off, Morales clocks in with a mere ~7%. The timing of the poll offers a full week for Locke's ads to be on the air. The runoff polling scenarios are an interesting read as well.

But the biggest news is the crosstab among A-A voters: 25.8% Locke, 22.6% Brown. Nobody should expect that to hold, although it's an open question as to whether Locke can get over 80% of the black vote. Interesting that Zogby's take for Locke is to "rediscover his inner African-American-ness." Is that just another way of asking if Locke is black enough? I might have suggested the less inflammatory "Stick to the base" analysis if it were me.

The story only points out that Parker and Brown are polling about even among self-IDed Dems. To my way of thinking, all the more reason for Parker to shore up that base instead of just trying to ding Brown. At the end of the day, there's still 36.0% undecided and that pool is far bigger than soft-Brown supporters.

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Via email, Marc Campos leaks what's been trickling around town yesterday ...

Sunday's Chron has a poll that shows CM Peter Brown with 23%, Controller Annise Parker with 19%, and Gene Locke with 13%.

Commentary got it half right. The Chron co-endorsed Parker and Locke.

Co-endorsement aside (which ranks as well beyond lame) ....

The polling is interesting for a variety of reasons, all in spite of the fact that the undecideds are still way too high to make a mountain out of this sizable molehill.

For one, the poll was in the field during Locke's first week on the air. So there's some qualification of the results that's warranted here. He'll drop around a million or so on the airwaves for the last month of the campaign. Whether that month is enough for him to grow his total or not remains to be seen. I'm told there may be some interesting crosstabs to expect that will fill in some of the blanks for this. Obviously, Gene hasn't consolidated the African-American vote yet, but it's an open question as to whether or not he can.

The other aspect that's of interest is the closeness of Parker and Brown. That definitely colors some of the heat that's been evident lately and underscores the importance of Peter's ad blitz. But I'll be curious to see if there's a partisan breakdown in the crosstabs. I'm guessing Morales is an asterisk and that much of the GOP vote is heading to Peter. So it's an open question, at least for now, whether it makes sense for Annise to hit Peter or just try and consolidate more Anglo Dem constituencies. How the two fare in Meyerland and Garden Oaks will be of some importance since both are in the "Anglo Dem" fold yet don't exactly have a core base for either side. Where they go may be a good indicator of where a lot of the non-GLBT Anglo Dem votes go.

Being in a runoff with Peter is a good place to be if you're Parker or Locke. I'd guess that it makes some sense to save some of those punches for November 4th and shore up your base vote until then.