James Henson

The latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll finds former president Donald Trump leading Vice-President Kamala Harris 49% to 44% in a head-to-head match-up in the presidential race in Texas. Nine percent chose an unspecified “someone else,” and 6% were undecided. This result follows a June UT/Texas Politics Project Poll in which then-candidate Joe Biden trailed Trump by 7 points, 46% to 39%. 

As the grim particulars of the Sutherland Springs shooting have become known in the days since the incident, the fact that a bystander armed with a rifle of his own shot the perpetrator and gave chase crucially transforms the terrain of the political interpretation of the shootings. The presence of an armed citizen "shooting in the opposite direction," as President Donald Trump put it hours after the killings, activates partisan attitudes about guns in Texas that can be effectively mobilized by advocates and political leaders to stifle discussion of adding even the most mild restrictions on access to, or ownership, of guns. The trope that the best antidote to gun violence by bad (or even sick) people is good people with guns resonates sufficiently with the right audience of Republicans so as to effectively seal off discussions outside the status quo.

The traditional post-Labor Day intensification of the presidential campaign didn’t disappoint, as the week began with the release of a massive 50-state poll from the Washington Post and Survey Monkey that put Texas in the national discussion of presidential polling (if you’re into that sort of thing). Donald Trump dominated campaign news at week’s-end with another round of praise for Vladimir Putin. Closer to home, several education issues heated up: the State Board of Education debated the textbook Mexican American Heritage and, well, Mexican-American heritage, Lt. Governor Patrick renewed his call to end in-state tuition for the children of undocumented immigrants, and the Texas Education Agency called for class size limits in pre-kindergarten. Read on for polling data and comment...​

The second wave results of the CBS/NYT/YouGov Battleground Tracker was released today, and shows Abbott leading Davis by a 18-point margin.  Cross tabs and more detail at the YouGov page for the Texas Governor's race.

The ongoing CBS News/NYT The Upshot/YouGov Battleground Tracker released the results of their second wave of polling in the 2014 US Senate races today (in what seems like something of a soft launch). Results from the Texas Senate race find incumbent John Cornyn still holding a 20-percentage point lead over Democrat David Alameel (51-31).