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

by Mike Orren

Who's right? The pollsters or my gut?

Who will be the big cheese?

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?

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Anonymous

noleman, says:

The prevailing wisdom is that contested races in southern Dallas will boost turnout for Oakley. But that wisdom is mostly coming from Lakewood liberals who don't care that Oakley is gay. Black voters in south Dallas do care and probably will just not vote instead of choosing between a gay and a Republican. So Oakley will need serious turnout from Lake Highlands Republicans who hate apartments more than liberals.

I think LH will split for Oakley, but that district will need to turnout more voters than the other districts north of Northwest Highway combined to beat Leppert. I don't see that happening. Leppert by 6.