Hobby Poll
The H-Town municipal elections are still three and a half months away. Mail ballots don’t go out until September. Here is from the Hobby poll that dropped this morning:
The Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston conducted a representative survey of City of Houston likely voters to identify their preferences and opinions regarding the November 7, 2023 municipal election.
The survey was fielded between July 12 and July 20, 2023 by contacting likely voters via SMS messages through which the respondents were directed to an online survey platform with the option to complete the survey in English or in Spanish.
The survey population of 800 has a margin of error of +/- 3.5% and is representative of those City of Houston residents who are likely to vote in the 2023 mayoral election. The results of the survey will be presented in a series of two reports.
This report examines the mayoral and controller races in November as well as potential runoff scenarios in the contest for mayor. The second report will focus on policy issues facing the City of Houston.
Executive Summary As of July, the November 2023 Houston mayoral election is effectively a two-candidate race between Texas State Senator John Whitmire and U.S. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee.
In November, 34% of likely voters intend to cast a ballot for Whitmire and 32% for Jackson Lee.
One in five (22%) likely voters is undecided and 12% intend to vote for one of 12 other candidates. The remaining 12 candidates have a November vote intention ranging from 3% to 0%: Gilbert Garcia (3%), Lee Kaplan (2%), Robert Gallegos (2%), MJ Khan (2%), Derrick Broze (1%) and Robin Williams (1%), with each of the remaining candidates having a vote intention of less than 0.5%. More than one-half of likely voters did not know enough about Garcia (57%), Kaplan (69%), Gallegos (57%), Khan (64%), Broze (78%) and Williams (78%) to have an opinion about potentially voting for them.
This compares to a mere 6% who did not know enough about Jackson Lee to have an opinion about voting for her and a more substantial 23% who did not know enough about Whitmire to have an opinion about voting for him.
In a mayoral runoff election between Whitmire and Jackson Lee, Whitmire’s vote intention is 51%, well ahead of Jackson Lee’s at 33%. One in eight (13%) likely voters remains undecided in a Whitmire and Jackson Lee runoff while 3% would not vote in the runoff if these were the two candidates.
44% of likely voters indicate they would never vote for Jackson Lee, compared to only 13% who say they would never vote for Whitmire.
48% of likely voters hold an unfavorable opinion of Jackson Lee (40% very unfavorable), compared to only 16% who hold an unfavorable opinion of Whitmire (8% very unfavorable).
In a runoff election against Jackson Lee, Whitmire holds an advantage among most key socio and demographic groups of likely voters with two exceptions: Black Houstonians and Democrats.
In a runoff election, Whitmire’s vote intention among women is 5 percentage points greater than that of Jackson Lee, 43% to 38%. Whitmire’s vote intention among men is 31 percentage points greater than that of Jackson Lee, 58% to 27%, in a runoff election.
Whitmire holds a substantial advantage over Jackson Lee among white likely voters (63% to 21%) and among Latino likely voters (54% to 27%) in a runoff election.
Jackson Lee has a substantial advantage over Whitmire among Black likely voters (64% to 19%) in a runoff election.
Jackson Lee is the favored runoff candidate among Democrats, with a 55% to 28% advantage in vote intention over Whitmire.
Whitmire is the favored runoff candidate among Republicans, with an 88% to 2% advantage in vote intention over Jackson Lee.
Whitmire is the favored runoff candidate of Independents by a 60% to 18% margin over Jackson Lee.
Stay tuned.
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This is a chilling story from the Trib: Texas A&M put professor on leave for allegedly criticizing Dan Patrick | The Texas Tribune.
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It is Dollar Dog Night at The Yard this evening. I will be wearing the T-shirt in the featured photo.
We won a thriller last night and are two games back. Let’s do it again.
