Bi-poll-er disorder

One says there were almost certainly be a run-off in the GOP primary and one does not ...

A new Texas Credit Union League poll in Texas finds Gov. Rick Perry (R) leading the Republican race for governor with 49%, followed by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) at 27% and Debra Medina at 19%.

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 A new Public Policy Polling survey finds the Republican primary for Texas governor on a path to a runoff. Surprisingly, however, the runoff could be between Gov. Rick Perry (R) and Debra Medina (R), leaving Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R) as the odd-woman out.

Perry currently leads with 39%, followed by Hutchison at 28% and Medina at 24%.

This is why pollng will drive you nuts. When you see blog entries -- or for that matter, Traditional Media reports -- along with the pundit class quoting the poll's results, just dismiss it (and them). Any poll you can come up with always has nearly immediate diminishing marginal return. In layman's terms, the instant-and-then-instantly-useless value of toilet paper freshly used.

Yes, it's very important to have for a brief moment, and then it's worth shit.

Having said that -- and noting particularly that both polls show Bill White being thisclose to avoiding a run-off --  I will skooch a little farther out on the limb I crawled a few weeks ago and say that if Rick Perry is as wily a political raccoon as I believe he is, he will start laying off the attacks on Kay Bailey. Because if he should find himself in a run-off with Debra Medina on March 3, he will lose.

The most interesting information in these polls IMHO are the TCUL's numbers associated with the Democratic lieutenant governor candidates -- Ronnie Earle, Linda Chavez-Thompson, and Marc Katz -- who show 25, 18, and 8 respectively. That leaves 49% undecided.

I'd say that's exactly right. Now throw that nasty thing down the toilet, would you?