Former Houston Mayor Annise Parker holds an 18-point lead over Letitia Plummer, a former Houston City Council member, in the Democratic runoff for Harris County judge, according to a poll published Thursday by the University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs.
Pollsters asked 1,200 likely voters who they supported in the May 26 runoffs for county judge and district clerk.
The poll found Parker ahead 54% to 36%, with 10% undecided. Parker led among white and Latino voters, while Plummer polled higher among Black voters.
The results suggested both candidates maintained their support from the March primary, which saw Parker finish with 46.6% of the vote to Plummer’s 37.3%.
Despite third-place finisher Matt Salazar taking more than 16% of the March vote, just 3% of respondents said they voted for him. But 15% of those surveyed said they did not remember who they voted for in March, and the poll said it was “quite possible” that many of those were Salazar voters.
For district clerk, the poll found former county misdemeanor court judge Darryl Jordan held a 3-point lead over 23-year-old UH graduate student Alex Maldonado, who, if elected, would be the youngest person to hold the position in recent history.
More than half of respondents said they were unsure about who planned to support for district clerk.
See here for more on the primary poll, and here for the landing page for this poll. The February poll nailed Parker’s final level of support, and if you divided the Undecided number more or less in half and gave it to each of Plummer and Salazar, you’d have the final result. If you take Matt Salazar out of the picture from March, Annise Parker won about 55.6% of the total remaining votes, so if what we get in May is a proportional number of Parker and Plummer supporters turning out while the Salazar voters stay home, this poll will have likely gotten Parker’s share right as well.
It’s never quite that easy, and as noted with the CD18 poll and elsewhere, getting a representative sample for primaries and runoffs is tricky. The CD18 runoff is likely to increase Black turnout at least a little, which will help Plummer. The District Clerk race is basically a tossup, as not many people know much about that low-profile office or the candidates running for it. You can be ahead of the game by listening to my interviews with Darrell Jordan and Alex Maldonado (and also Annise Parker and Letitia Plummer, from the primaries).
The same poll also had Rep. Vikki Goodwin leading Marcos Vélez by a 41-19 margin in Harris County, with Nathan Johnson and Joe Jaworski in a coin flip for the county. I think those are probably representative of the state as a whole as well. Early voting starts Monday, we’ll get some clarity soon.