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With both campaigns ramping up spending before Election Day, supporters of Houston's contentious equal rights ordinance are leading opponents by 6 percentage points, a new poll shows.
Overall, 43 percent of respondents to the KHOU/KUHF poll released Sunday supported the ordinance, 37 percent opposed it, and 18 percent were unsure of their stance. The poll offers some empirical heft to the prediction in many political circles that the fate of the ordinance will turn on a relatively small number of votes.
Broken out by race, black residents were the most evenly divided on the issue, with 40 percent in support, 39 percent opposed and another 20 percent undecided. Rice University political scientist Bob Stein, who helped run the poll, said black voters may be the most malleable on the issue leading up to Election Day.
"The largest proportion of undecided voters are African-American," Stein said.
"Otherwise, generally, we tended to see that people had staked out their positions on this issue and felt very strongly one way or the other."
Proponents of the law heralded the poll as a sign the ordinance is picking up broad support. The campaign Houston Unites reported about $1.3 million in donations during the most recent fundraising period, more than doubling critics' haul. "Yet another poll shows the momentum is on the side of the treating everyone fairly and equally under the law," campaign manager Richard Carlbom said in a written statement.
Opponents, however, viewed the poll as evidence that the race will be close and that there's opportunity to sway the bloc of undecided voters. "We're going to be very aggressive and expose this ordinance for what it really is," said Jared Woodfill, the group's campaign spokesman. "What this race will really prove is who has the better turnout model."
Political scientists have said they expect the embattled law's presence on the ballot to drive up the usually low voter turnout in November, potentially a factor in the open mayor's race.
