Texas Senate Poll Puts Cruz Ahead of Dewhurst, 49%-44%

Texas lawyer Ted Cruz leads
Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst among Republican voters in a
survey before a runoff election to pick the party’s candidate to
replace Kay Bailey Hutchison in the U.S. Senate

Cruz topped Dewhurst 49 percent to 44 percent, according to
the automated telephone survey by Public Policy Polling in
Raleigh, North Carolina. Almost three weeks remain before the
vote on July 31.

“The race is one of the most stark examples of the Tea
Party movement propelling a candidate that we’ve seen to date,”
the polling company said today in a statement on its website.

In a bid to become the first Latino senator from Texas,
Cruz, 41, has courted the same political forces that helped
Indiana Treasurer Richard Mourdock defeat six-term Republican
Senator Richard Lugar in a May primary. Dewhurst, who leads the
Republican-dominated state Senate and has the support of
Governor Rick Perry, has spent millions of his own fortune to
defeat the former state solicitor general.

Cruz has been helped by the Club for Growth, a Washington-
based group aligned with Tea Party supporters that said today it
will spend $1.5 million on advertisements backing him in the
runoff. The group spent almost $2 million on ads targeting
Dewhurst, 66, in a May election that narrowed the field to two.

Public Policy Polling said support for Cruz grew to 59
percent while Dewhurst’s fell to 36 percent among voters who
said they were “very excited” about casting ballots at the end
of the month, a sign that low turnout probably will help Cruz.

Matt Hirsch, a spokesman for Dewhurst, said the campaign
had no comment.

“The people are rallying behind him because they know that
he will fight to reduce the size of government and defend the
Constitution,” a Cruz spokesman, James Bernsen, said by e-mail.

The poll of 468 likely voters was conducted July 10-11 and
had a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Kathy Warbelow in Austin at
kwarbelow@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Stephen Merelman at
smerelman@bloomberg.net

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