According to a new Houston Chronicle Zogby poll, Harris County (TX), the largest county in Texas, might cast more votes for a democratic presidential candidate over the republican challenger for the first time since 1964.
http://www.chron.com/...
The Houston Chronicle has a new poll this morning conducted by Zogby International and the numbers are extremely encouraging and a bit unexpected. 602 confirmed Harris County registered voters were surveyed and by about a 7 percent margin, both Barack Obama and democrat senate candidate Rick Noriega lead in the poll over their respective running mates, John McCain and incumbent senator John Cornyn.
A couple of notes on Harris County. It's the largest county in Texas as it's the home to Houston, the nation's fourth largest city. Almost 2 million people can vote in Harris County (13.3 million Texans can vote total). So while Harris County can't decide Texas by itself, it can certainly influence the state's results.
As I said above the fold, Harris County hasn't voted in the majority for a democratic president since LBJ. Texas did vote for Jimmy Carter in 1976 but apparently that wasn't because of Harris County. The county is now comprised of 40 percent minorities (hispanics and blacks) and tends to vote more to the left than nearby counties like Montgomery, Fort Bend, Brazoria and Galveston Counties, which in many cases contain the Houston suburbs. So look for Harris County to vote increasingly to the left in future elections.
Noriega is from Houston but I believe his poll numbers are even more surprising than Obama. As I've written before, he has virtually no money to campaign with, and the DNCC has done nothing to help in that regard. Even though the Clintons have helped with appearances on his behalf, they were in far south Texas and Dallas, not Houston.
Make no mistake about it, it would still be a major shock if McCain or Cornyn were to lose Texas. Houston proper will likely vote Democrat. Austin will definitely vote blue. Dallas could and might, although I think they're slightly more conservative. It may be the case where the city of Dallas votes for Obama but the entire DFW metroplex (Dallas-Fort Worth, larger than the Houston metropolitan area) votes a bit more for McCain than Obama. San Antonio should vote for Obama, and possibly parts of West Texas (El Paso and Lubbock) and then far south Texas swing Obama's way.
One would think that would be enough for Obama to win the state in a major upset. But that's just not the case because people don't realize how big of a state Texas is. First of all, the suburbs of the big cities are still conservative. And secondly, everything in-between of Houston and Dallas, and Houston and San Antonio, and Fort Worth and Lubbock will vote red. Far east Texas will vote red. That is a lot of land and a lot of people. And that's why ultimately I believe Texas will go for McCain, perhaps by less of a percent that the polls currently indicate.