In my Sunday Washington Examiner column I wrote that candidates’ performances at the Thursday Fox News/Google debate “gave primary voters and cacusgoers at least one good reason to reject every candidate on the stage.” Today I had the further thought that none of these candidates has shown great strength at the polls in his or her home state. They have tended to underperform rather than overperform the base Republican vote in seriously contested races. The numbers:

Rick Perry has been elected governor of Texas three times, beating Democrat Tony Sanchez 58%-40% in 2002, winning a four-way race against Democrat Chris Bell and Independents Carole Keeton Strayhorn (who had been elected to statewide office as a Republican) and Kinky Friedman by a 39%-30%-18%-12% in 2007 and beating Democrat Bill White 55%-42% in 2010. That 55% is the same as John McCain’s percentage in Texas in 2008 and Senator John Cornyn’s percentages in 2002 and 2008. It is lower than the 61% to 67% Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison won in four elections from 1993 to 2006 and below the 59% to 64% that Republicans facing Democrats for other statewide offices won in 2010. It should be added that, although Texas is a strongly Republican state, Perry has had significant opposition in all three gubernatorial races. Tony Sanchez outspent him enormously in 2002, he had (as noted) three significant opponents in 2006 and in 2010 Bill White, who had left office as mayor of Houston with a very high job rating, was about as strong a candidate as Democrats could have had.