Joshua Blank

Where are key groups in the Texas electorate on 2022 campaign issues?

October 3, 2022
By: 
Jim Henson
Joshua Blank

In this election cycle in Texas, suburbanites, self-described ideological moderates, Hispanics, and political independents have emerged as important to the final electoral outcome and thus, to the campaigns because of their relative size and the fact that, as we show below, each includes substantial numbers of members of both parties. One consequence of this combination of size and partisan mixture is that even if targeted messages fail to persuade voters to cross party lines, these messages still have the effect of resonating with a campaign's own voters, amplifying the overall effort to increase their turnout.

Public Opinion Context for the One and Only Texas Gubernatorial Debate

September 30, 2022
By: 
Jim Henson
Joshua Blank

The gubernatorial debate between incumbent Republican Governor Greg Abbott and Democratic challenger Beto ORourke in McAllen, Texas is likely to be the only time the two candidates will share a stage in the 2022 campaign. The University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll has been exploring Texas attitudes related to the candidates and the broader context of the election over the last year, and got into extensive detail in our most recent poll, which was conducted from August 26-September 6. To provide context for tonight’s debate, we’ve gathered several results that illustrate how Texans view each of the candidates, their comparative levels of trust on the major issues emerging in the campaign, and more. This post is built for browsing 

New UT/Texas Politics Project Poll: Abbott maintains 45%-40% lead over O’Rourke; 52% support busing migrants out of Texas

September 14, 2022
By: 
Jim Henson
Joshua Blank

The latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll finds Gov. Greg Abbott sustaining a polling lead over Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke, 45%-40%, albeit one that has narrowed as the gubernatorial campaign enters its final and most public phase. Beyond the top lines of the gubernatorial trial ballot, the poll results illuminate an election environment in which the gubernatorial contest between Abbott and O’Rourke is the most competitive race for the office Texas has seen in decades. Yet the results also reveal the advantages Abbott still enjoys among the Texas electorate, and the significant obstacles O’Rourke still faces in putting together a coalition of voters capable of overcoming the advantages, political and structural, that Abbott enjoys.

Can country roads take Beto O'Rourke home?

August 29, 2022
By: 
Jim Henson
Joshua Blank

There are Democratic votes to be had in rural Texas. Looking back at polling between 2015 and June 2022, on average over that time span, 61.75% of rural Texas voters have identified as Republicans and 25.61% as Democrats. The data don’t demonstrate significant fluctuations in the party identification patterns of Texas’ rural voters over time, though the Republican share has not been less than 64% in 6 UT/Texas Politics Project polls conducted between June 2021 and June 2022. Democratic identification among rural voters has stood at 22% in each of three surveys conducted so far in 2022. The remainder of the rural registered voter pool, 12.57% on average, identify as independent, by which we mean voters who neither identify with, nor consistently lean toward, either party. So while a non-trivial share of Democrats appear to remain in Texas’ rural areas, in the recent term, the GOP advantage does seem to be slightly on the increase — consistent with broader trends in party system dynamics.

New UT/Texas Politics Project Poll: Share of Texans Saying State is on the Wrong Track Reaches New High, while majority still oppose banning abortion

July 6, 2022
By: 
Jim Henson
Joshua Blank

A new University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll finds 15% of Texans expressing support for a complete ban on abortion access in polling conducted primarily in the week prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s announcement of its landmark opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. While 37% of Texas voters say that they support "trigger law" that would ban abortion in most cases in Texas in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling, no more than 36% would foreclose all access to legal abortion across a range of circumstances. 

The survey also found Texans expressing overwhelmingly negative views of the economy: 53% said that their personal economic situation is worse than a year ago; 58% said the Texas economy is worse than a year ago; and 73% said the national economy is worse than it was a year ago. All three represented the highest negative assessments since the poll began tracking these attitudes. With elections for statewide offices and the Texas legislature just over four months away, 59% said the state was on the wrong track — the largest share of negative responses in the poll’s history.

Job approval trends for Texas statewide incumbents and other trend data from the Texas Politics Project poll data archive (June 2022 UT/Texas Politics Project Poll update)

July 6, 2022
By: 
Jim Henson
Joshua Blank

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 June 2022 University of Texas / Texas Politics Project Poll.

No longer just a product of the fringe, the proposed platform of the Republican party of Texas signals the anti-democratic turn in Texas politics

June 24, 2022
By: 
Jim Henson
Joshua Blank

As in years past, the party platform committee report adopted at the Republican Party of Texas’ state convention last week is a Frankenstein assemblage of up-to-the-minute GOP hot topics, from namechecking the threat of “Drag Queen Story Hour” to “parental rights” to critical race theory to vaccinations, sewn together with well-worn fringe politics – plank 273 contains 14 positions related to threats posed by the United Nations. (There is also much more in the platform committee report, which runs to 40 single-spaced pages of small type that bolt on the preoccupations of a wide range of causes.) To anyone who has paid attention to past party platforms, or, more proximately, has watched Republican politics in Texas for even the last year, none of this will come as a surprise. The activist factions that have long dominated the organs of the state party have always been able to insert their pet obsessions into the party platform. But a look at even the headlined features in conjunction with available public opinion polling illustrates that they now have more influence than ever on the party’s actual, public agenda, as the output of the 2021 legislative session demonstrated in stark terms.

John Cornyn’s effort to provide GOP with political cover on gun violence is a reminder that he is the last Bush Republican standing in Texas

June 16, 2022
By: 
Jim Henson
Joshua Blank

With Ken Paxton's defeat of George P. Bush, Cornyn remains the last artifact of Bush era Texas Republicanism — if not a member of the dynasty by blood, he may well nevertheless be the last elected Bushie still standing.

Five Aspects of Texas Public Opinion on Mass Shootings, Guns, Gun Control, and the state’s rightward shift in the wake of the Uvalde Tragedy

May 25, 2022
By: 
Joshua Blank

In the aftermath of a tragedy as horrific as the one in Uvalde, Texas this week, many will wonder aloud whether Texas, and Texans, will have a reckoning with guns, its gun culture, and/or the recent laws that have made it increasingly easier to buy and own a gun in Texas?

Why immigration and border security endure as the central axis of Texas Republican politics

May 19, 2022
By: 
Jim Henson
Joshua Blank

For the last decade, no issues have more consistently occupied the consciousness of Texas Republican voters than immigration and border security. Evidence provided by multiple polls, considered in the context of politics and policies pursued by a generation of Texas Republican leadership, illustrates how nativism has become a major animating force in Republican politics in the state. While the term “nativism” carries negative connotations, nearly a decade of public polling data illustrate the pervasiveness of such attitudes among Republican voters, even if the term is likely to be hotly refuted by those whose attitudes and (in the case of public figures) rhetoric and policies make the description demonstrably apt.

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