Jim Henson

The latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll, conducted immediately after a New York jury convicted former President Donald Trump on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records, finds more than half of Texas Republican voters saying his conviction makes them more likely to vote for him in November.

The convictions have had only a small impact on the overall shape of the Presidential race in Texas less than five months before Election Day. The poll finds Donald Trump maintaining a 7-point lead over Joe Biden, 46% to 39%, in a head-to-head match-up in Texas, while maintaining a 9-point lead, 43% to 34%, in a trial ballot including independent and third-party candidates. In the expanded trial ballot, 8% chose Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, along with 2% for Jill Stein, 2% for Cornel West, less than 1% for Chase Oliver, and 10% had no opinion.

The independent presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has had operatives in both the Trump and Biden camps worried at various times about Kennedy’s potential for siphoning votes from their candidates. National and state-level polling has generally demonstrated that as Kennedy’s candidacy attracts more public attention (certainly relative to other non-major party aspirants to the presidency), he tends to be viewed more favorably by Republicans than by Democrats – which as of the April 2024 University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll seems to be the case in Texas, too.

A battery of questions in the latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll, and years of data on abortion attitudes in the state, suggest that voters view access to legal abortion with much more nuance than either our inherited labels or the monolithic positions adopted by the two parties admit. While this nuance is bipartisan, the lack of absolutist views is most notable, and most consequential, among Republican voters whose candidates must claim credit, or take blame, for engineering the rollback in abortion rights that is the new political reality in the U.S. – especially in Texas.

UT/Texas Politics Project polling suggests some weakness in Biden’s support when compared to this stage of the 2020 campaign among some key groups of Texas voters, akin to similar, widely-noted signs of erosion in support for Biden in some national polling data. At the same time, there are no signs of an immediate collapse in support for Biden even as he fights the gravity of presidential incumbency amidst an economy plagued by persistent rising prices, a dour mood among voters, and yet another unpredictable overall election environment.

The latest University of Texas / Texas Politics Project Poll finds Donald Trump maintaining a comfortable lead over President Joe Biden in Texas as the legally embattled former president seeks to replace the man who defeated him four years ago. In a five-way trial ballot, Trump leads Biden by 9 points, 45% to 36%, followed by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. with 8%, and Cornel West and Jill Stein with 2% each. In a hypothetical head-to-head contest between the former and current residents of the White House, Trump leads by 8 points, 48% to 40%. 

However contingent the outcome of the presidential election, with the primaries behind us and the summer and fall campaigns yet to unfold, the Texas Politics Project offers a deep archive of data to assess the public opinion context as the current presidential election moves to center stage. 

National and state politics converge this week with the simultaneous visits of President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump to the Texas-Mexico border on Thursday. Trump will appear in Eagle Pass, the site of ongoing tension between state and federal law enforcement agencies deployed to manage the increased flow of migrants into the U.S., while Biden will visit Brownsville. 

For the first time in a decade of polling, more Texans in the February 2024 UT/Texas Politics Project Poll agreed than disagreed that “This country would be better off if we just stayed home and did not concern ourselves with problems in other parts of the world." The poll found 48% of Texas voters agreeing with the statement as legislation that would provide military, economic, and humanitarian aid to countries including Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan remains stalled in Congress amidst divisions in both parties about U.S. spending priorities, particularly Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives. Divergent attitudes among Texas partisans on the general idea of U.S. foreign policy and toward the countries involved largely align with the bitter divisions paralyzing Congress and pushing foreign policy issues into the 2024 presidential campaign.

This post focuses on results from an extensive battery of immigration and border security results, then presents an overview of highlights from the February 2024 University of Texas / Texas Politics Project Poll. A majority of Texas voters support making it harder for migrants fleeing violence in their home countries to seek asylum in the U.S., while majorities also support many of the controversial measures undertaken by Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Legislature in response to the situation at the southern border that have received significant national attention this winter, according to the February 2024 University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll. The 59% of Texas voters who favor making it harder for migrants fleeing violence in their home countries to seek asylum in the U.S. includes nearly three quarters of Republicans (71%) and nearly half of Democratic voters (48%). 

The 2024 primary elections in Texas are among the most contested and the most heated of any legislative primaries since the establishment of the near-monopoly of state government after the Republican sweep of the 2002 elections. Governor Greg Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick have all waded into GOP primary contests with endorsements, campaign resources, and very hot rhetoric in multiple House races, opposing an unprecedented number of Republican incumbents.