Stockman: 5 polls show Cornyn being pushed into runoff

The alternative news outlet JP Updates:

In the latest poll out of Texas by Human Events-Gravis Marketing, there’s some trouble for current Senator John Cornyn who is running for re-election.

When asked “if the election were held today, would you vote for Republican Steve Stockman or Republican John Cornyn?” Cornyn holds a 15-point lead, 43% to 28% Stockman, while 29% of the voters are still undecided.

“Congressman Stockman is much closer than expected,” Douglas Kaplan of Gravis Marketing said. “Cornyn is under 50% with a significant amount still undecided, which is dangerous territory for an incumbent. The poll was conducted before Cornyn’s recent cloture vote on raising the debt limit, which could hurt him among conservative primary voters.”

When asked if they approve of Rep. Stockman, 55% said they’re unsure while 28% approved and 18% disapproved. When asked the same about Sen. John Cornyn 49% said they approve, 26% disapprove and 24% were unsure.

The poll was conducted between 2/10/14 and 2/12/14, 729 likely Republican voters participated in the phone survey. The poll has a margin of error 3.6%.

Stockman is crowing about this, and heaps on some additional derision for the incumbent.

This is the fifth independent poll published in Cornyn’s race.  All five show Cornyn failing to win over 50 percent.  Cornyn has refused to release his internal polling results and has begun directly attacking Stockman, which usually indicates a candidate is in trouble.

A University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll conducted between Oct. 18 and Oct. 27, 2013 found Cornyn with only 39 percent support among likely Republican primary voters, far below where a two-term incumbent and member of Senate leadership should be.

An Oct. 26, 2013 Gravis poll showed Cornyn failing to win a majority in a two-way race against five different candidates.  It showed Cornyn getting only 41 percent against Stockman, whom many voters were not familiar with.

A Public Policy Polling survey conducted Nov. 1-4, 2013 found “49% [of Republican primary voters] say they would like their candidate next year to be someone more conservative, compared to only 33% who say they support Cornyn.”

PPP concluded “John Cornyn is in grave danger of losing a primary next year if a serious campaign is run against him. Cornyn’s approval with Republican primary voters is only 46%, with 33% of voters disapproving of him.”

Even a poll by WPA Opinion Research conducted Dec. 10-12, 2013, and touted by Cornyn himself, showed Cornyn only at 50 percent among likely Republican primary voters. At the time of the poll many voters were not aware Cornyn had an opponent.

I don't have any idea how much stock to place in this data.  Primary polling is even less reliable than it is ahead of general elections, and this latest one is an ultraconservative source with an agenda.  Let's just mark it down as a data point worthy of some chat for now.  I find it more interesting that Cornyn's other Tea Pee challenger, Dwayne Stovall, appears to be finding some traction, especially with a video ad you can see here, which earned him the coveted Big Jolly endorsement.

If the conventional wisdom here is this far removed from the battle on the GOP ground, and one of these two morons forces Cornyn into a May runoff, I can certainly believe that Big John will be too politically wounded to hold on.  At this point I still don't see it, but stranger things have happened.

If you are still reading, then you can click over to view the results of a Central Texas Republican Assembly (sounds Communist to me) straw poll from almost two months ago that has Stockman ahead of Cornyn 45-41, with Stovall and four others registering no support whatsoever.  This is why you can't pay too much attention to these things so early... and why paying anything but marginal attention to them is like nailing a rack of ribs to a tree to lure Bigfoot.

Update: Juanita Jean is encouraged.  And on some level, I am a little surprised that this guy isn't ahead of Cornyn.  Maybe he should have run for governor, or lieutenant governor, or...