Austin-based IVR Polls is fairly new to the political polling industry, so perhaps this should be taken with a grain of salt, but the company released numbers yesterday showing Democrat Larry Joe Doherty in a decent position to unseat Republican incumbent Michael McCaul from the Congressional District 10 seat. In a June 2 automated phone poll of 528 likely voters, 51.7% said they favored McCaul versus 46.3% for Doherty, with 2% undecided. The poll’s margin of error is 4.3%.
If accurate, those numbers would confirm the conventional wisdom: that ever since the Bush administration’s popularity started going south, it’s dragged down Bush’s allies as well, and McCaul is regularly painted by critics as a Bush rubber stamp.
For historical comparison: After Tom DeLay reshaped CD 10 to favor the GOP in his infamous 2003 re-redistricting, McCaul didn’t even draw an on-ballot Democratic challenger (a Dem eventually entered the race as a write-in) and he coasted with 79% of the vote. In 2006, when the GOP lost control of Congress, he faced poorly funded political novice Ted Ankrum and saw his support drop to 55%. Doherty, a trial lawyer, is considered the first serious challenger McCaul has faced, with an actual campaign war chest that includes $100,000 of his own money.
This article appears in May 30 • 2008.