Joshua Blank

It’s natural to look for patterns in legislators' decisions to not seek re-election to the offices they hold, especially retirements, and to view each as yet another factor in handicapping upcoming primary and general elections. This intuition finds some support in evidence that congressional retirements appear responsive to short-term electoral forces. Expectations that Democrats will face a tough election cycle this coming Fall with a Democrat in the White House and the majority of electoral maps constructed by Republican legislatures certainly inform the conventional wisdom as we prepare to ring in 2022.

But how well does this apply to the current slate of retirements and expected electoral turnover in the Texas Legislature?

While there are other conceivable mobilization scenarios in which the policy output of 2021 might endanger GOP incumbents in 2022, public opinion polling in Texas strongly suggest that unpopular policy, even extremely unpopular policy, whether coming from the left or the right, is unlikely to spur many partisans to vote for a candidate of the opposing party.

One of the interesting steps in the choreography of Beto O’Rourke’s long-awaited entrance as the presumptive Democratic candidate in the 2022 Texas governor’s race was a clear and early move to put some distance between himself and Democratic President Joe Biden on border security and immigration, signature issues for his almost-as-presumptive opponent, two-term incumbent Greg Abbott.

Beto O'Rourke makes his long-anticpated entry into the 2022 Texas gubernatorial election as the presumptive Democratic candidate, setting up a bruising general election contest with Gov. Greg Abbott in the general election as Abbott seeks re-election to a third term. On O'Rourke's first official day in the race, we've compiled highlights from polling in the Texas Politics Project polling data archive, dating from his losing challenge to Senator Ted Cruz in 2018 to results for the October 2021 University of Texas / Texas Tribune Poll. 

The October 2021 University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll adds a eighth 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 and August 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.

The second batch of results from the October 2021 UT/Texas Tribune Poll were released by The Texas Tribune Monday in stories by James Barragan on Texans’ judgments of their elected officials actions on issues discussed during the legislative session as well as other policy questions, and a piece by Abby Livingston on Texans’ views of the jobs Texas’ U.S. Senators are doing as well as chief executives’ handling of key political issues (COVID-19, the economy, and immigration and border security). 

The first wave of October, 2021 UT/Texas Tribune Poll results released by The Texas Tribune today focus on the 2022 election, covered in a story by Patrick Svitek, and Texans’ general attitudes toward elections, voting, and a little on redistricting, covered in a story by Cassandra Pollock. Look for more results early next week in the Tribune. On the whole, the results paint an interesting portrait of the public opinion terrain in the state a year out from the 2022 election. We’ll follow up with more analysis of the results in the coming weeks when we can connect different strands of material that won’t be rolled out until early next week. For today, here are a few first-takes on today’s results.

One of the final acts of the third special session of the 87th Texas Legislature was the negotiation of SJR 2, a measure that, if approved by voters in May, would increase the homestead exemption from $25,000 to $40,000 beginning with the 2022 tax year. Property taxes have been a perennial source of griping, especially in areas of Texas experiencing rapid population growth, rapidly rising home values, and the corresponding increase in property tax bills. Of course, as policy makers have been frequently reminded during the long real estate boom in Texas, in Texas’ growth obsessed but revenue-constricted political economy, efforts to reduce property taxes enough for voters’ to actually feel the effects of legislative action are severely constrained. 

While the primary driver of that constraint is fiscal, another major constraint is public opinion. A decade of polling on property taxes illustrate that many voters notice those rising property tax bills, but are likely to be unimpressed with what ultimately amounts to legislative tinkering in efforts to validate some sort of claim that the incumbent government is addressing voters’ concerns.

Abbott’s ratcheting-up of COVID-19 policies that are demonstratively more attentive to limiting the autonomy of organizations (particularly businesses) to set health policies in the context of COVID than they are to public health writ large seems to be rankling some of the business-friendly groups allied with Texas Republican governance. But public opinion polling throughout the pandemic suggests that there remains a strong audience for Abbott’s approach among the Republican rank and file, even as independents can be expected to have mixed responses, and Democrats are widely and deeply opposed.

The reasons for the Texas GOP’s leap forward on abortion restirctions after a decade of chipping away at access are likely many, and worthy of their own piece of analysis, but looking ahead to the next set of Texas elections in 2022, the sudden change in the reproductive health landscape begs the question: where do Texas voters stand on abortion?