Texa-tics! I'm headed to Austin for the March 4 Primary

by Brian Leubitz [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

We know you loved Nevadatics so much, that I'll be heading to Austin to do some coverage of the Texas March 4 Primary. So, Texatics here we come! I'll be headed down on 2/29 to experience all that is the Texas primary.

A funny thing, this is really. I lived in Texas for about 20 years, and I can't really remember having a competitive primary there. But, I suppose this is the year.

The polling has generally given Senator Clinton a fairly large lead. However, that seems to be changing, with the race tightening. You can see in the graph from Pollster.com that the orange line (Obama) is gaining on the purple line (Clinton) in the last few weeks. To be sure, Clinton has some advantages in the state, but Obama is rapidly gaining. In fact, from Ralph Bordie at IVR polls (who, incidentally has been tremendously helpful on the 50-state Blog Roundups), we see that Obama has moved the spread from 18 down to 10 in about three weeks from 1/10->1/30.  All bets are off if Obama wins Wisconsin big.  

By the way, the polling in Texas has been very scant. So scant, in fact, that Burnt Orange Report commissioned most of the polls that are in the pollster.com graph.

Texas is an open primary, anybody can vote in any primary. In fact, I'm 99% sure from my days when I was a TX precinct chair (Go Fighting 1806!) that there is no party registration. Another thing to note about Texas is they have a very handy early voting system, where you can basically go to your local library or school anytime within a few weeks of the election and vote. It's all quite convenient. I'm not sure of the early voting rate in Texas, but I imagine it's slightly lower than our own Vote by mail.

One last thing, it seems much of the leadership of the Democratic Party in Texas is breaking for Obama. Or so I'm told by Matt Glazer.

I'll be trying to produce regular dispatches from Austin when I'm there, and for between now and then, I highly recommend BOR.