From the inbox:

With the crowded field now narrowed to two, a new internal poll shows Dr. Eliz Markowitz (D) in a dead heat — 42 to 42 —with her Republican challenger, perennial candidate Gary Gates, in the race to replace retiring State Representative John Zerwas in Texas House District 28. “Dr. Eliz Markowitz has a big opportunity to flip the 28th,” noted lead pollster, Terrance Woodbury with HIT Strategies. Markowitz starts off in a dead heat, but with less name ID, simply “introducing likely voters to Dr. Markowitz moves them to vote for her in a big way,” Woodbury added. “After just hearing a short bio on her, 58 percent of voters say they are more likely to vote for her.” House District 28 lies in the heart of Fort Bend County, a rapidly growing community the Houston Chronicle calls, “the model of diversity.” Fort Bend has also experienced increasingly competitive elections, including the 2018 election of Brian Middleton, the county’s first Democratic District Attorney in 26 years. Woodbury notes of their recent poll, “a plurality of voters in this district (43 percent) believe that we need to send Democrats to the Texas legislature that can work across the aisle and fix the hyper-partisanship that is stagnating our politics.” “The poll reflects what we’re seeing on the ground,” noted Odus Evbagharu, Campaign Manager for Markowitz. “Eliz’s personal story of fighting for education and accessible health care speaks to the issue priorities of our community and the problem-solving leadership voters are looking for.” The poll, conducted by HIT Strategies and commissioned by The Texas House Democratic Campaign Committee, surveyed 500 likely runoff voters in Texas’ 28th State House between December 10-16, 2019 with a +/- 4.4% margin of error.

You can see the polling memo, which doesn’t actually tell you anything about the poll, here. You should of course take this with several grains of salt – there’s no details about the poll, which was done by the campaign in question, it’s one data point, no one has any idea how to model “likely voters” in a January special election runoff, etc etc etc. That doesn’t mean there’s no value in this, or that a media/academic poll would be more accurate, just a reminder to keep some perspective. It’s also a reminder that this runoff, as well as the one in HD148, is still out there, and early voting will be upon us for it before you know it, which is to say on Tuesday the 21st; the election is the following Tuesday, the 28th. There will only be four days of early voting, as Monday the 20th is MLK Day. We’re all very focused on the primaries now, but let’s not lose sight of the business we already have.

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