Release on University of Texas-Austin Poll

John McCain leads Barack Obama by a 51 to 40 percent margin among registered voters in Texas, with 8 percent still undecided, according to the latest statewide poll conducted by the Texas Politics Project and Department of Government at The University of Texas at Austin.  In the US Senate contest, Senator John Cornyn leads challenger Rick Noriega by nine points, 45% to 36%, with 14% still undecided.  The election matchup results were drawn from a sample of 550 registered voters in Texas Oct. 15-22, and had a margin of error of 4.2 percent.

Results can be viewed now at the Texas Politics site — http://texaspolitics.laits.utexas.edu.

Other highlights of the poll results include:

* When asked who they would choose for President if asked to vote for either Joe Biden or Sarah Palin, 50.5% of registered voters chose Sarah Palin and 42.5% chose Joe Biden, with 7% unsure

* The approval rating for how George W. Bush has been handling his job as president is 36%.
* When asked to identify Obama's religion, 45 percent of respondents accurately identified him as Protestant; however 23 percent erroneously identified him as Muslim.

* The approval/disapproval numbers for Governor Rick Perry have 38% approving of how he has been handling his job as governor, 33% disapproving, and 29% choosing neither.

See these and other results in the poll summary document that can be downloaded on the polling page at the Texas Politics website — got to http://texaspolitics.laits.utexas.edu and follow the polling links.  You'll find the summary document at the site now.  There is also a copy of a press release issued by the UT – Austin Office of Public Affairs.

The survey, which sampled 613 Texans statewide using the latest in Internet polling techniques, is the latest in a planned series of regular statewide surveys that will be made available to researchers and the general public at UT-Austin's Texas Politics website (http://texaspolitics.laits.utexas.edu).