On Monday President Bush flies into Houston to campaign for a congressional candidate who — at one point — looked like a long shot.

But an exclusive poll indicates that Shelley Sekula-Gibbs may pull off a political upset and win her write-in campaign for Congress.

When Tom DeLay walked out of his job in Congress, leaving no Republican to replace him on the ballot, Democrats thought Nick Lampson would stroll to victory.

But Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, a write-in candidate, just might save DeLay’s seat for the Republicans, an 11 News and Houston Chronicle poll indicates.

“She has a good chance of winning—a very good chance of winning.” said Jim Granato, who heads the University of Houston’s Center for Public Policy.

A blitzkrieg of political ads has shown voters how to cast write-in ballots for Sekula-Gibbs.

AP/smither4congress.com

Shelley Sekula-Gibbs, Bob Smither and Nick Lampson

Now, the poll indicates 62 percent of likely voters are aware there’s a write-in candidate.

And 61 percent say they know how to cast a write in vote.

Thirty-six percent said they’d vote for Lampson and 4 percent for Libertarian Bob Smither, who’s also on the ballot.

But 35 percent said they’d vote for a write-in candidate.

“That tells me that they’ve been reading the papers,” Granato said. “They’re up on that.  And of course, the next step is, ‘Who’s the write-in candidate you want that’s closest to your preference?’”

The answer: 79 percent of surveyed voters who said they’d write in a candidate said they’d write in Sekula-Gibbs.

“So this barrier of writing her name in is minimized by the fact that they are aware,” Granato said. “So if they even get confused working this machine, they probably can go to a poll worker and try and get it right.  And they know who to pick.”

The poll also indicates that Sekula-Gibbs has higher name recognition than Lampson and that in a normal head-to-head competition with her name on the ballot, she would win by double-digits. 

But of course, Sekula-Gibbs is not on the ballot, and that’s the tricky part of the poll.  KHOU and the Chronicle tried to structure the questions to simulate what voters would see at the polling places.

The poll was conducted from Oct. 23 to 25 by Zogby International and has a margin of error of 4.5 percent.