Poll Puts Cain, Perry in Virtual Dead Heat
Texas Gov. Rick Perry (center of TV screen) and former pizza executive Herman Cain (far left of screen) are in a virtual dead heat in a Texas Tribune/University of Texas poll. Photo by Ben Philpott for KUT News.Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Herman Cain and Rick Perry are in a statistical dead heat among Texas voters who say they’ll cast ballots in the Republican primary next spring. A new University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll of 400 likely voters put Cain at 27 percent, one point ahead of Governor Perry.
UT Government Professor Daron Shaw, who co-authored the poll, spoke with us from his campus office. He says the fact that—on his home turf—Perry is in a statistical dead-heat with Cain is the biggest news to come out of the survey.
Perry is certainly up from where he was, I think, in our May survey. When he wasn’t a declared candidate, we had him about 14 percent. But he hasn’t pulled away and dominated Cain the way you might have expected, especially given where he was six weeks or two months ago, when he burst on the scene. It looked like he was going to run away with the thing.
You can hear the entire interview by clicking the audio player above.
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