Blog
Second Reading Podcast: In the Opaque Texas Speaker’s Race, we don’t know more than we know
In a podcast recording hours before strong indications that Dade Phelan is withdrawing from consideration, Jim Henson and Josh Blank join the ongoing speculation about whether Dade Phelan will remain Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.
Second Reading Podcast: Understanding Texas Latinos‘ swing to Trump in 2024
Jim Henson & Joshua Blank look at what UT/Texas Politics Project polling data can (and can’t) tell us about the big Latino vote for Donald Trump in Texas.
Second Reading Podcast: Early thoughts on how the GOP surge washed over Texas
Jim Henson and Joshua Blank take a morning-after look at the outcome of the 2024 election in Texas.
The Republican emphasis on the border and immigration in the 2024 election is about more than migrant flows
Article after article covering the prominence of immigration and border security in the Republican campaigns for U.S. Senate and president in Texas have rightly noted the long-established salience of immigration and the border to Republican voters, and the central role of these issues in the “closing arguments” of GOP candidates at the top of the ballot in Texas, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
But clear as this pattern is, it doesn’t explain why the issue maintains salience in the face of clear policy changes by the Biden administration, or the subsequent near-term decline in migrant traffic at the U.S.-Mexico border from historic highs in the last 11 months to the fewest encounters in the last four years. It can easily be made to seem like a puzzle: if the problem has been addressed and has abated, why is it still so important to Republican voters?
Second Reading Podcast: A final pre-election look at Texas attitudes on key campaign issues
Jim Henson and Joshua Blank review Texas attitudes on the issues being promoted to attempted comparative advantage by the presidential and U.S. Senate campaigns in Texas: immigration & the border, abortion, and transgender rights.
Texas 2024 Presidential Poll Tracker
Check back for updates on all non-partisan polling of the presidential race in Texas.
Texas 2024 U.S. Senate Poll Tracker
Check back for updates on all non-partisan polling of the US Senate race race between incumbent U.S. Senator Ted Cruz and Democratic challenger Colin Allred.
The political center is having a moment in the U.S. Senate race in Texas, but it's not likely to last
In both the Presidential and U.S. Senate races, efforts by the candidates to portray their opponents as extremists while presenting themselves as comparatively moderate and bipartisan has had mixed effects. Overall, this messaging is resonating more with candidates’ partisans in the state than with their opponents’ base voters, making these tactics likely to be more successful at mobilizing partisans than at persuading the opposition's voters that their own candidate is too radical. Nor do the ostensible efforts to scare independents with claims of ideological extremism seem to be having the effects the campaigns desire.
A closer look at the University of Texas / Texas Politics illuminates how the efforts at contrasting moderation with extremism have fared – but also suggests that the surprising attraction of the middle in Texas politics is likely to be fleeting once the U.S. Senate race is settled and behind us.
Focusing on the track, not just the horses, as the 2024 race enters the final stretch in Texas
The closer we get to Election Day, the more attention gets paid to horse race results in polling – often at the expense of a deeper look into what polling can tell us about the context of that election. Much of University of Texas/Texas Politics Project polling conducted during the election season aims to illuminate the context of the election and, maybe even more important now that our polling project is well into its second decade, the arc of the ongoing developments in Texas politics.We’ve gathered some of the results from the recently released October poll (conducted from the 2nd through the 10th) to give some more depth to the trial ballots – and to capture some of the contextual elements of the political universe in Texas as the 2024 election enters its final days. (And, to be as gentle as possible, to start thinking about the upcoming legislative session and what promises to be a very active and interesting round of elections for statewide offices in 2026.)
Second Reading Podcast: Down to the wire: results from the final UT/Texas Politics Project Poll before Election Day
The UT/Texas Politics Project Poll team talk about what the October 2024 UT/TxPP poll tells us about the election in Texas and the broader trajectory of Texas electoral politics.