Obama Climbs in the Texas Polls

It’s kind of fun watching my fellow Texans, Republican Texans, coming around to line up behind the presumptive nominee, Mitt Romney, as their last best hope for a “True Conservative,” Rick Santorum regained his sanity and realized he had neither a hope nor a prayer of beating the Romney political machine.

It’s funny and it’s a little sad.

Sad because as a political animal, I know what kind of boost it gives you when you aren’t settling for your second or even third choice, when the person who comes out on top is not only your choice, but the best choice.

But alas, such is not the case with the Texas GOP this year. This year they are going to nominate The Mormon. Mr. Richie Rich. The guy who makes you yawn with abounding enthusiasm.

That and the fact that there’s this guy who says that when people vote for Mitt Romney, they are consigning at least a million more people to the eternal fires of H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks.

So how does this correlate to the headline? How has Barack Obama climbed in the Texas polls?

History.

Look at the polling in 2008. In 2008 John McCain, even with a disaster like Sarah Palin on the ticket as his running mate, out-polled Barack Obama by nearly 12 points. The McCain/Palin ticket got 55.45% of the vote compared to the Obama/Biden ticket which received 43.68% of the Texas vote.

But according to a recent poll by Public Policy Polling Romney leads Barack Obama in Texas by only 7%. That’s a net gain of 5 points for President Obama.

So the question is, in the past 4 years, has Texas been tipping more and more blue? I doubt it. I think that this is the phenomenon known as “election indifference.” Lots and lots of Republicans are not jazzed by their candidate. Maybe even some of them don’t want to consign a million people to the infernal regions.

What ever. It works for me.