Poll: Perry has votes, but where's the confidence?

So there's good news and bad news for Gov. Rick Perry. The good news: According to a new poll, he should easily win re-election in November if things keep going like they are. The bad news: According to the same poll, a lot of Texans think he's kind of a sucky governor. Ah, politics.

The poll, conducted by The Dallas Morning News (check out the results here), found that Perry leads the pack of five candidates with 38 percent of likely voters. Independent candidate Carole Keeton Strayhorn follows with 18 percent, Democrat Chris Bell comes in third with 15 percent, independent Kinky Friedman ranks fourth with 14 percent and Libertarian James Werner is carrying 0 percent of potential voters. (The other 14 percent of respondents either didn't know or refused to say who they planned to vote for.) And people seem pretty resolute about their decisions: 84 percent of people polled said they would stick with the candidate they've chosen even if he or she had "little or no chance of winning."

For Perry, the interesting part is this: Though the poll shows he has a 48 percent approval rating, only 24 percent of respondents said the Perry-backed school finance plan will do anything to solve the state's education funding problem, and just 19 percent said Perry's tax cuts will result in actual savings. "It does also show a tremendous dissatisfaction with the governor as a candidate, great dissatisfaction with the governor in the performance of his job duties," political scientist Bob Stein told KHOU. Even so, it doesn't seem anyone will knock Perry out of first place in the coming weeks: Bell has the best chance to do so, pollsters say, but 66 percent of people who responded to the DMN poll said they don't know enough about Bell to decide whether they like him. Doesn't sound too promising for Bell.

So what do the poll results mean? Are the voters complacent? Are the candidates for governor just a bunch of uninspiring people? Has Perry hypnotized Texans with his magnificent head of hair? Decide for yourself tonight: Channel 11 and Texas Cable News will both broadcast a gubernatorial debate at 7 p.m. Whoever you support, you still have a few weeks to form your opinions — take advantage of all the info you can get.