Annise Parker
A poll recently conducted by LRP shows former Houston Mayor Annise Parker in strong position to win the March 2026 Democratic primary for Harris County Judge. Voters know and like Parker, which earns her majority support and a commanding lead over Houston City Councilwoman Dr. Leticia Plummer. If Parker can create and maintain a fundraising advantage to communicate these political advantages, she will secure the Democratic nomination and enter the general election for Harris County Judge with strong momentum.
Here are the key findings from the poll:
1. Parker is firmly ahead in the Democratic primary race for Harris County Judge. Currently, 53% of Democratic primary voters vote for Parker, 15% vote for Plummer, and 20% are undecided. In addition to earning majority support and an almost 40-point lead, Parker has twice as much strong support than Plummer has in total support.
2. Parker leads among every measurable demographic group by double digits, including men (+33 points over Plummer) and women (+41); white (+45), Black (+30), and Latino/a (+37) voters; and in every Harris County Commissioner precinct (+44 Precinct 1; +29 Precinct 2; +43 Precinct 3, +29 Precinct 4).
3. Nearly a decade after she served as mayor, Parker’s image and brand remain strong. Sixty-four percent of Democratic primary voters have a favorable impression of Parker; only 16% of voters cannot rate Parker. Comparatively, 37% of voters have a favorable impression of Plummer, and 57% cannot rate her. And as with the ballot, Parker has stronger favorable ratings than Plummer among every measurable demographic group.
The poll was conducted in the first week of August, with 500 modeled likely 2026 Democratic primary voters. There are of course multiple caveats to apply here: It’s an internal poll, we have no further data or the wording on any of the questions, it’s anybody’s guess what the primary electorate will look like, and so on. You also don’t know that the field is set, which might make this a theoretical exercise more than anything else. Another footnote on the memo said that “Former Congresswoman Erica Lee Carter was also included in the survey ballot”, and that she got nine percent of the vote. Who knows what another candidate or two might mean.
With all that said, any poll that shows your candidate with over fifty percent of the vote is a strong one. I’m sure there will be public polls of this race in the coming months – neither candidate has really started campaigning yet, another caveat to this – and I will be very interested to see how those compare to this result. I also would have been very curious to see what the polling of a Lina Hidalgo-Annise Parker matchup, with or without other candidates, would have looked like. Early on, I’d have made Judge Hidalgo a strong favorite. More recently, not so much. We’ll never know, and honestly I’m fine with that as things turned out. You shouldn’t take this poll too seriously, but thinking about what might have been and what is yet to come is still worthwhile.