Houston Chronicle Poll: Bill White beats Perry and Hutchison for Governor (in Harris County)

My hometown paper recently commissioned a poll in which they found that Houston Mayor Bill White would beat Perry and Hutchison in 2010 among voters in Harris County. He beats Perry 61-28 and Hutchison 53-33. White, a former Clinton appointee and head of the Texas Democratic Party, is currently serving in a non-partisan capacity.

I see a few problems with this poll right off the bat:

1. It's a poll taken outside of cycle - Zogby's trying to poll the outcome of a race that hasn't even begun yet, even in the stages of candidates publicly denying that they're considering becoming candidates. This leads to:
2. The universe is skewed - They're polling people in the final weeks of a Presidential race, when partisanship, party identification and support for downticket races are at their highest. There's no guarantee that the same composition of people will be voting in the gubernatorial race two years from now, nor is there any guarantee that those voting will have the same intensity for partisanship, party identification and support for downticket races.

I am not the only person to say that Texas is ripe for a takeover, and has been for a long time, though Zogby's numbers aren't providing me the data I'd need to convince others of it. That doesn't mean that the data aren't out there. (Oh, to get my hands on Noriega's internal polling.)

Still, it's nice to have hope.