Texas Tribune poll has Abbott leading Davis by 5 percentage points

And twenty percent still undecided.

Attorney General Greg Abbott, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination for Texas governor, holds a single-digit lead over the likely Democratic nominee, state Sen. Wendy Davis of Fort Worth, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.

[...]

“What you’ve got is a race in which, for the first time in a long time, the Democrat is as well-known as the Republican at the outset of the race,” said poll co-director Daron Shaw, a professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin.

I have thrown many rocks at the TexTrib's polling since its inception, but I have to say that this feels about right.  It may, however, just be one of those reinforcing-one's-existing-beliefs kind of data points.

“These numbers are not evidence that the underlying fundamentals are changing in Texas,” said Jim Henson, who co-directs the poll and heads the Texas Politics Project at UT-Austin. “We have not seen a big change in party identification, and we don’t see any large-scale shifts in the underlying attitudes that are forming.”

That also feels right.

So is Abbott's woeful 40% figure just another a polling error?  Could it be an oversampling of a Davis demographic... or could it be Abbott fatigue?  If Republicans generically aren't losing support, then why isn't Abbott pulling something in the traditional 55-40 range?  Or at least 50%?  I don't think "too early" explains his sagging result.

This should be enough to get Democrats enthusiastic (not to mention getting your e-mail inbox filled with Davis financial solicitations).  There's more interesting poll results at the Trib's link, including "Don't Know" leading David Dewhurst in the GOP LG primary by 46-26 with Dan Patrick at just 13%.

Update: Harvey Kronberg thinks there's bigger news than Wendy Davis barely outside the margin of error.

The stunner in today’s Texas Tribune poll was not that Wendy Davis is within shouting distance of Greg Abbott in a general election, but that with all his money and name ID among Republican primary voters, he just hits 50%. One wobble and he could be in an unpredictable and volatile runoff where anything could happen.

Update II (11/5): So much for this being a close race early.  PPP, a polling outfit with a much better track record, released its most recent survey of Texans at lunchtime on Election Day and it has Abbott up 15, at 50-35.