New poll shows Dallas mayoral race coming down to a photo-finish

by Mike Orren

DALLAS — A new DMN/WFAA poll shows Tom Leppert with a thin 2% lead over Ed Oakley.

Maybe I've been spending too much time in "white North Dallas" (in the part near I-30 and Buckner) and we don't have the resources to hire fancy highfallutin pollsters who know what a "standard derivation" is, but that's obviously not the way I've called it.

I wouldn't go so far as to say the poll is flawed, but I wonder if it is possible to get a reliable poll with such sparse turnout predicted:

"The error margin of 5.8 percentage points is higher than usual for a candidate survey, a reflection of the difficulty in finding likely voters in what is expected to be a poor turnout on Saturday."

In any event, the candidates have a sparse few days to blow the rest of their warchests tearing each other apart. I got two (2!) flyers from Oakley yesterday. One was a door hanger with the "Scary Tom" picture, and one was a mailer featuring a really-pissed-off-looking John Wiley Price.

And Leppert's finally taken the gloves off with a radio ad featuring Hollywood Doors' Jack Pierce.

I can't wait to do the capital efficiency analysis on the runoff. How much hock am I going to be in when Mrs. Peg discovers that these two men have BOTH spent more money wooing her this year than I have?

Mike feels pretty tepid about both mayoral candidates, but loves voting. Sad, innit?