A couple of days ago, I posted about the Texas Lyceum Poll that showed Wendy Davis is trailing her Republican opponent by 9 points in the race for governor. Now there is a second poll showing she has a substantial deficit. It is the Rasmussen Poll, conducted on October 1st and 2nd of a random sample of 840 likely Texas voters, with a margin of error of 3.5 points.
The poll shows Greg Abbott leading among Texas voters by 11 points (51% to 40%). But there was an even more troubling aspect to this poll. It showed (like the Texas Lyceum Poll) that Abbott has a lead among women in Texas. This is very bad news, if true. Democrats in Texas, like in many other states, must carry a significant majority of women to stand a chance on election day.
Why is this happening? Don't Texas women understand that the Republicans, controlled by teabaggers and evangelicals, want to keep women in a second-class status of citizenship? Evidently not, because Rasmussen asked Texans if they believed there was a "war on women" -- and 61% (including far too many women) said no. It seems that Texans are OK with denying women the easy access to contraception, denying women the right to control their own bodies, denying women equal pay for equal work, etc.
Frankly, I'm shocked by this. Women all over the country are fighting for equality, but a large segment of Texas women don't seem to care about equality. Is it because evangelicals dominate the landscape in Texas, and evangelical women have accepted their religious teaching that says god wants them to submit to the desires of men (and be happy with their second-class status)?
Texas is one of those states where minorities will be the majority one day -- but that could take a decade or two. If Texas Democrats want to win before that, they need to find a way to convince more Texas women that they deserve to be equal to men.