Jim Henson

A look back at Texas attitudes toward matters related to Russia during the Trump presidency suggests how Donald Trump’s strange relations with Vladimir Putin and Russia influenced a reshaping of partisan views of the U.S.’s Cold War enemy – and provides a glimpse into the uncertainty around Republican voters’ views of the U.S. response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

This data also provides an opportunity to note the continuity between Russian efforts to weaken civil society in the U.S. by amplifying domestic political hostilities, and Putin’s larger cultural and geopolitical ambitions – now on clear display in Ukraine. 

In a new Second Reading Podcast, Jim Henson and Josh Blank look at GOP efforts to refocus the public education debate in Texas.

It is commonly understood, based on observation of the actions of legislators and other elected officials, that primary voters tend to be more extreme versions of the party overall – but with little data brought to bear on this observation other than the actions of the officials this process produces. The most recent University of Texas / Texas Politics Project poll, and its oversample of primary voters, allow us to examine the ways in which the Republican and Democratic Primary electorates compare to the overall electorates.

The February 2022 UT/Texas Politics Project Poll adds a ninth assessment of Texans’ attitudes about the coronavirus pandemic to the Texas Politics Project polling data archive, adding to data collected in batteries from polls conducted in April, June, and October of 2020, and February, April, June, August and October of 2021. The time series allows reporters, researchers, elected leaders, public health officials, and the public a view of how Texans’ concerns about COVID, behaviors during the pandemic, and evaluations of the official responses have changed throughout a year of pandemic conditions in Texas.

In a new Second Reading Podcast, Jim Henson talks with co-director of the University of Texas / Texas Politics Project poll and UT Government Department professor Daron Shaw and Texas Politics Project research director Josh Blank about the primary and general election results in the latest UT / TXP Survey.

The release of the February 2022 University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll coincides with the beginning of early voting in the Texas primaries, so trial ballots and all things election-related in the poll are likely to attract the most interest. Incumbent governor Greg Abbott leads former Congressman Beto O’Rourke 47% to 37% in a hypothetical match-up in the November General Election. In their primary races, Abbott remains above the run-off threshold, while O’Rourke is unsurprisingly a virtual consensus candidate among Democrats. Beyond the horse races, the poll paints a picture of a state experiencing strong political crosswinds in several policy areas. In some familiar issue areas, public opinion appears closely divided as a result of sharp and intense differences among partisans. In others, majorities (albeit often slim ones) oppose the direction state policy headed in the last legislative session, frequently as a result of broad Democratic opposition supplemented by divisions among Republicans. 

This page compiles graphics for trends in job approval ratings of the current incumbents (President, Governor, Lt. Governor, U.S. Senators, U.S. President) that Texans assess on every poll. Bookmark the page for easy reference – we’ve also added similar graphics for trends in Texans’ assessment of conditions in Texas and the U.S., and some archival results for comparison with leaders no longer in office. This version updates the ratings with data from the Februrary 2022 University of Texas / Texas Politics Project Poll.

In a new Second Reading Podcast, Jim Henson and Josh Blank take a close look Latino voting patterns in Texas – and what common media narratives miss about the subject.

As the first serious winter storm descends on their state, Texans’ pervasive anxiety about the reliability of the state’s go-it-alone power grid has floated to the surface of public discussion like a North Atlantic iceberg. Weather forecasters and energy mavens assure us that the weather hitting a large swath of the state lacks the severity, duration, or geographic impact of the February 2021 disaster that left hundreds dead, millions of Texas without power in sub-freezing temperatures, and caused billions in damage. Polling we conducted both shortly after the 2021 outages and in the intervening months suggest that the seemingly widespread anxiety about the return of cold weather reflects the pervasive impact of the last storm, as well as a lack of confidence in the state leadership’s measures to ensure the reliability of the grid in the wake of last year’s failures. 

In a new Second Reading Podcast, Jim Henson talks with Harvey Kronberg about races and issues in the 2022 Texasprimary elections.