New Poll: Noriega Takes All That Want Cornyn Replaced

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 9/24-26. Likely voters. MoE 4%

If the 2008 election for U.S. Senate were held today, would you to reelect John Cornyn, would you consider voting for another candidate, or would you vote to replace Cornyn?

Reelect 40
Consider 15
Replace 35

If 2008 election for U.S. Senate were held today, for whom would you vote for if the choices were between Rick Noriega, the Democrat, and John Cornyn, the Republican?

Cornyn (R) 51
Noriega (D) 35

So we're taking the same percentage that want change in Washington for Texas. The difference falls in that fact that middle ground where most are still leaning towards Cornyn.

Also, Cornyn polls poorly among senior citizens - a strong voting population. We'll have to keep an eye on this, and swing more of the "cosnder" and "reelect" votes over to our side.

Note that in January 2006, a Rasmussen poll said this:

TEXAS SURVEY of 500 likely voters

Thursday, January 5, 2006

1* Now... If the election for Senator were held today, would you vote for Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison or for Democrat Barbara Ann Radnofsky?

65% Hutchison
24% Radnofsky
4% some other candidate
6% not sure

So we're 11 points up with three months to get to that same point in the election cycle. Let's keep that momentum!

Rick Noriega Takes 78.4% In Poll

Democracy for America poll last week was completely and unquestionably pwned by Rick Noriega.

This week, democrats from across Texas joined the members of Democracy for Texas in their first endorsement poll in the organization's history.

Here's an email from Democracy for Texas:

Subject line: And the DFT endorsement goes to….

You have spoken loud and clear. With overwhelming support from all over the State, Rick Noriega is the stand-out choice of the grassroots to face John Cornyn in the race for the U.S. Senate. The final results are:

All Voters DFT Members Before Poll
Noriega 78.4% 86.2%
Watts 21.6 13.8

Total votes cast: 1,931 *

We're excited that our first endorsement is for such a terrific candidate, one who drew comments such as these:

"I am extremely impressed with Rick Noriega's clarity of thought and purpose as well as his passion and organization."

"Rick is the right man at the right time."

"Rick Noriega is the candidate supported by grassroots Texans all across our State because he is the candidate who has the integrity to represent all Texans…"

"…Rick is tough enough to stand toe to toe with any Republican…"

"Rick Noriega has "walked the walk" and has a progressive voting record to show for it!"

Over the coming months, we'll give you ideas of how you can help Rick in his campaign. Right now, the best way you can help is to sign up on his website and make a contribution before the end of the quarter on September 30.

Join the Noriega for Senate campaign here.

Make a donation here.

We appreciate the thoughtful answers of both candidates to our questionnaire. And many thanks to all of you who took the time to read their answers and vote, especially those who made a contribution to help us defray the cost of the poll.

We look forward to an exciting primary season and to sending John Cornyn home in November!

Your DFT Steering Committee –

Erik Azulay, Glen Maxey, Mark McCulloch, Karl-Thomas Musselman, and Fran Vincent

P.S. Marla Camp, one of the founders of Democracy for Texas, is on sabbatical from the Steering Committee while she focuses on her successful new magazine, Edible Austin. Marla will continue to be involved in DFT, and we look forward to having her back in a leadership position as soon as possible.

* In order to address concerns expressed by some participants about the elimination of questionable votes, we have counted all (including those in question) votes except those that were clearly duplicates, those cast after the deadline, and a handful from out of state.

Noriega Expected To Win DFT Poll

Formal results won't be released until Monday (here), but with the trends that have been released, NoriegaBlog is confident in calling this poll for Rick Noriega, who has had a significant lead over Mikal Watts since the polling began. Here are the official tallies (percents only, to avoid ballot stuffing).

Wednesday Noon Update:
Rick Noriega- 78%
Mikal Watts- 22%

Thursday Noon Update:
Rick Noriega- 82%
Mikal Watts- 18%

Friday Noon Update:
Rick Noriega- 74%
Mikal Watts- 26%

Saturday Noon Update:
Rick Noriega- 77%
Mikal Watts- 23%

We'll wait for the official word Monday! Thanks Democracy for Texas!

Watts Supporters Caught Stuffing Ballot Box

That's right. Over 100 Mikal Watts' votes from two IP addresses, one of them verified to be from the San Antonio area, has been stuffing the Democracy For America Senate Endorsement Poll. None of them had physical addresses (respondents are required to live in Texas), or comments to verify they were actual people.

From Karl-Thomas Musselman, DFT Webguru on BOR:

I don't know who you are but you are doing a disservice to your candidate and the integrity of the poll. All of your votes will be thrown out. As the operator of the poll (in my role as DFT's webmaster), I've implemented additional measures on our recently upgraded account to preemptively block this behavior on behalf of either candidate.

The Democracy for Texas steering committee is taking this poll seriously and we have been impressed by the response to date- both in number and in the passion of the canddiates' supporters. We look forward to hearing from more of our members and other legitimate Texas voters.

More from Burnt Orange Report

Noriega or Watts Would Have a Tough Time Against Cornyn

This according to a new Rasmussen poll released by Fox-7 in Austin. The poll used automated calling among 500 likely voters, and found that Noriega would do just slightly better than Watts at this point in the race, but Cornyn is currently favored.

Cornyn 53% Rick Noriega 30%
Cornyn 52% Mikal Watts 28%

So what does this mean? We've still got quite a battle ahead of us! At this stage in the Ned Lamont race, he wasn't a candidate, and came out to beat Lieberman in the primary, so it's not an hopeless battle!

In the mean time, check out Rick's Website for what you can do to help, information to print out and distribute, or how to get signatures to support our candidate!

We Want YOU... To Vote!

In case you thought I was joking the first time around, we SERIOUSLY want you to vote in the Democracy for Texas Poll. DFT wants an accurate gauge of Democrats in Texas. Who would you want as your next Democratic nominee for the US Senate from Texas? You have until Saturday, but why wait?

VOTE NOW!

Introducing: Rick Noriega, Frontrunner.

Thats right. Rick leads the a new IVR poll in general, but also in every demographic subset of gender and ethnicity (note: before Reichstadt's withdrawal). Over half polled are undecided, but of those with an opinion, Noriega takes 58% (Watts 30%, Richstadt 12%). (graphic from Burnt Orange Report). This from IVR:

Noriega was the clear leader among those who had a preference, with 27% to Watts' 14% and Reichstadt's 6%. The Houston area was strong for Noriega with about 50% of the vote despite 38% undecided. The Corpus Christi area had similar numbers, but with Watts in the lead. San Antonio and DFW were about 2/3 undecided, with Watts and Noriega about even. Austin was also 2/3 undecided, but with a 7-1 lead for Noriega. El Paso was close to the state average, while the LRGV gave Noriega a 40% to 23% lead with 34% undecided.

Excluding undecided and breaking the results into subsets by combination of gender and ethnicity, and then comparing Noriega's percentage to Watts' percentage, Noriega led in every category. His strongest showing was among Latino women, who gave him 2.9 'votes' for every one of Watts'. The closest subset was white women, who gave Noriega 1.2 times as many 'votes.' This was also the subset with the highest undecided - 58%. The lowest undecided was among Latino men, with 39%, who gave Noriega his second smallest lead with 1.6x. Many of these slices contain very small samples, so take them with a grain of salt.

8/29-30, 489 polled, 4.5% MoE

Combine that with ActBlue's Activity Report for August:

August is over so it's time for a monthly stats round-up of what's been happening in Democratic online fundraising over ActBlue. Let's dive into some data- (change from prior month in parentheses).

Total Amount Contributed: $1,039,376.72 (+$396,938)
Total # of Contributions: 14,648 (+5,004)
Average Contribution Size: $70.96 (+$4.35)

Total # of Recipient Campaigns & Committees: 419 (+ 67)

Here are the Top 10 Recipients by amounts received through ActBlue in August.

	Name	Amount	Office
	John Edwards	$214,180.51	President
	Darcy Burner	$105,202.18	WA-08
	Niki Tsongas	$48,616.00	MA-05
	Rick Noriega	$39,696.13	TX-Sen
	Jamie Eldridge	$30,122.35	MA-05
	Jeff Merkley	$27,581.67	OR-Sen
	Jared Polis	$25,153.00	CO-02
	Russ Warner	$21,118.87	CA-26
	San Diego Democratic Party	$18,119.00	County
	Joe Alioto Veronese	$16,505.00	CA-SD-03

Here are the Top 10 Recipients by # of donors through ActBlue in August.

Name	Donors	Office
John Edwards	3,182	President
Darcy Burner	2,950	WA-08
Rick Noriega	539	TX-Sen
Daniel Biss	358	IL-HD-17
Dennis Kucinich	274	President
Jamie Eldridge	270	MA-05
San Diego Democratic Party	251	County
Jeff Merkley	245	OR-Sen
Al Franken	241	MN-Sen
BlogPAC	216	PAC

And here are the Top 5 fundraising pages by number of donors (excluding pages used by candidates solely to collect contributions directly from campaign websites).

	Fundraising Page	Raised	Donors	Avg.
	Burn Bush for Burner	$87,682.54	2429	$36.09
	Blue America '08	$24,525.30	372	$20.00
	Blue Majority	$16,265.42	349	$23.07
	Netroots for Rick Noriega for Senate	$30,849.16	324	$95.21
	Brotherhood 2.0 for Daniel Biss	$1,673.00	210	$7.96

So, There you have it. Rick is scoring in the top four spots in each category. Check out the average donation amount at the Netroots for Rick page: $95.21. That's nearly three times larger than any other average on that top list. Rick's making appearances, sharing his story, and working to make a change. I'm happy to introduce: Rick Noriega, Frontrunner.

NoriegaBlog Straw Poll...

I guess it's a bit of a slow news day, compared to Watts' judicial contributions story from yesterday, so let's talk about the NoriegaBlog Straw Poll (no, it's not really official, but what the hey..)

Right now, it stands at: Obama: 7, Edwards and Richardson tied at 5 each, Clinton with 4, and Gore rounding out the Democrats with 1. We even have one Republican vote so far.

Feel free to join the fun at www.noriegablog.com!

Cornyn refuses Bush for Campaign Appearances

According to The Carpetbagger Report, Texas Junior Senator John Cornyn was answering questions this week, when someone sprung one on whether he would be making campaign appearances with G.W. Of course, one of Lieberman's downfalls was his continual appearances with Bush (only in photography and memory, but still harmed him either way), but I digress.

The Austin American Statesman asked Cornyn, “Will you ask the president to appear with you on the campaign trail?” the paper asked.

Cornyn answered, “I will probably ask the president to help me do some fundraising, but probably not on the campaign trail, we’ve talked about his poll numbers.”

Apparently, Cornyn has not noticed his own dismal approval ratings. Although higher than Bush's 30-to-60 approval to disapproval rate, Cornyn's rating is still...well, not the greatest.



Cornyn himself has not had above a 50% approval rating since 2005, and according to SurveyUSA, currently stands at about a 42% Approval/43% Disapproval rate. Hutchison, on the other hand, stands at a 58% Approval/ 34% Disapproval rate. Cornyn places in the bottom 10% of all Senators by approval rating (in 2005), placing him with the likes of Conrad Burns, Jon Corzine, and Rick Santorum, none of whom are currently serving.

Apparently John McCain isn't the only one who has had enough of John Cornyn," DSCC spokesman Matthew Miller said. "This poll shows Texans look at John Cornyn like the neighbor who shows up uninvited at a backyard BBQ. No one invited him, they don't know why he's there, and they can't wait for him to leave."