Breaking news: Chris Bell within 5 points of Rick Perry *UPDATE*

Houstonist loves breaking news, but sometimes news on blogs exists in an echo chamber. Earlier we reported that a poll commissioned by KBH showed Bell within 5 points, which is what was reported on other blogs and confirmed by someone who said they were sure of the same thing and was in a position to know.

Well, here's the real scoop from Kuff, who heard the same thing:

Burka had heard the poll in question was a Bell poll, whereas I had heard it was a Hutchison poll. (Why would Hutchison also poll in the Governor's race? As a sanity check. Quite a few of the State Rep and Congressional polls of which I'm aware have done similar things.) The fact that Bryan Eppstein would be reluctant to release such a poll doesn't mean it didn't happen, but I've since heard from another person, whom I trust, who says that he didn't conduct any such poll. So, that's all there is to it. I ran with a rumor and it bit me. My apologies for the confusion. I will update the earlier post to reflect this.

Of course, the reason why I was willing to believe this is that this mythical poll was in fairly close agreement with polls that we do know about, one from SurveyUSA and now another from Rasmussen. SUSA has Bell at 26, and Rasmussen has him at 25, in each case in second. They have Perry higher, at 36, but a third result pegging him at 32 would not have been ridiculous. It was believable and I believed it, but it didn't exist. Sucks to be me, but there you have it.

There you have it indeed.