Five Medium-Hot Takes from the First Wave of October 2020 UT/Texas Tribune Poll Results

The Texas Tribune rolled out three Ross Ramsey stories on the first wave of results from the October University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll early Friday morning. The release included results of the trial ballots in the presidential and U.S. Senate races, as well as job approval numbers for the candidates and several state elected officials.  Here are five first-cut takeaways from the day one results – much more analysis to come, and many more results focused on matters such as race and policing, attitudes and behaviors related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and expectations of how smoothly the election and its afternmath will go coming next week. (Find a summary of day one results in pdf form here.) Below are some early impressions of the first group of results, with much more drilldown to come between now and Election Day.

1. In 2020, the Republican Party of Texas is Trump Country. Republicans in Texas have consolidated behind President Trump. In the first day results, this is evident in his job approval ratings among Republicans, which crept back up to 90% approve and only 8 percent disapprove in the latest poll. These data were gathered during what was arguably one of the worst weeks of any modern presidency, encompassing Trump’s conduct and performance in the first debate with Joe Biden, his subsequent infection with Coronavirus, and his hospital jailbreak despite almost certainly still having an active infection. And those were just some of the low points (the president also walked away from stimulus talks until after the election, and threw a tantrum about the possibility of the second debate taking place virtually, because, you know, people still have the coronavirus). The Trump/Pence ticket was the choice of 92% of Republicans in the trial ballot, with 88% of likely Republican voters rating him favorably – and only 9% rating him unfavorably. These results propelled Trump’s overall job approval into net-positive territory, albeit narrowly. Among this same group of Republican likely voters, 80% said that they were voting for Trump because they wanted him to be elected, with 20% saying it was because they didn’t want Biden to be elected. By comparison, in 2016, 46% said they were casting an affirmative vote for Trump, while 54% said they were voting against Hillary Clinton.

2. Democrats have coalesced around Joe Biden, though they are still VERY Motivated by Donald Trump. Biden’s favorability ratings among Democrats increased notably between the summer and fall. In the April University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll, 68% of Texas Democrats viewed Biden favorably — 38% very favorably —  and 19% viewed him unfavorably. In late September and early October, 80% viewed him favorably, 45% very favorably, and only 10% viewed him unfavorably. Dumping Trump remains a major motivator for Democrats, but more Democrats still say that their vote is primarily about wanting Biden to be elected (57%) than about NOT wanting Trump to be elected (43%). Among the subgroups in the sample large enough to reasonably draw inferences from, Black Biden supports are most likely to say they affirmatively want Biden to be elected president (77%). Preventing Trump’s re-election is most motivating to Democrats in the 18-29 cohort (57%) and to White Democrats (55%).

3. Independents appear more engaged with the presidential election in 2020 than they were at this stage in 2016...and less supportive of Donald Trump.  The trend in Trump’s job approval among independents went into net-negative territory a year ago in the October 2019 UT/Texas Tribune Poll, when it was 41% approve, 51% disapprove (net -10). In our October 2020 poll, his rating among independents has descended to 31% approve, 54% disapprove, 41% strongly (net -23%). Among the independents in the likely voter pool, 37% preferred Trump, 45% Biden, and 7% an unspecified “someone else.” At this stage in 2016, the October 2016 UT/TT poll showed Trump with 47% of independents and Clinton with only 19%. When Republicans enjoyed a 10%-12% baseline advantage not so long ago (Mitt Romney won the state in 2012 by 14 points), independents could be expected to translate a broadly conservative orientation into a small supplemental advantage for Republicans, but their impact on the election, given the Republican baseline, was to pile onto the inevitable outcome, not necessarily to have much of a say in the election as a group. With Trump fairly consistently leading in statewide polling but only (on average) in the mid-single digits, and a few dozen legislative and congressional races looking very competitive after being decided by 10 points or less in 2018, targeting and persuading independents is going to matter a lot more to candidates of both parties in 2020. We’ll have a lot more analysis of the dynamics around independents soon.

4. Flying too close to the sun.  While it would be hyperbolic and simply empirically wrong to say that Greg Abbott has fallen from Republican graces, negative assessments of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic have certainly suppressed his once singular standing among Texas elected officials. Abbott’s job approval rating has declined from 52% approval and 32% disapproval overall (net +20) on the eve of his re-election by 14 points in October 2018 to 47% approval (20% strong approval) and 40% disapproval (24% strong disapproval) (net +7) in October 2020. Among Republicans, he earned 89% approval (69% strongly) and 4% disapproval in 2018, which dropped to 81% approval (38% strongly) and 13% disapproval two year later. That 31-point decline in strong approval is the sign that while Abbott has not suffered anything like a total collapse in support, he is no longer the transcendent figure among Republican voters he was prior to the pandemic. The data strongly suggest it is the pandemic that has brought him back to earth. It’s been a rough landing.

5. For voters, the election isn't about a policy or a problem – it's about Donald Trump. While the first three items in this post make it clear just how large Donald Trump's personal presence looms over this election, we should also note what his outsized presence is excluding. If the 2016 elections were about Supreme Court appointments and the 2018 elections were about healthcare, the 2020 elections lack a  comparable specific policy focus, despite, or maybe even because of, the multiple policy crises besetting the country. Even the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic fallout from fighting the virus fail to dominate voters’ focus in the election. Instead, the focus of this election for voters in large part appears to be a referendum on the temperaments and political careers of the two nominees for president — despite the different lengths of their tenures in public office. In the most recent UT/TT polling, asked in an open-ended item to provide the one issue that is most important to their vote choice in the 2020 election, no single issue clearly rose to the surface, with the economy leading the pack, but only selected by 11% of voters. The second most cited issue was COVID (7%), followed by health care (6%), and the threat of socialism and/or communism (5%) (a threat, one has to suspect, driven by policy only in a very abstract way). Mentions of the candidates, their parties, or the traits associated with them, when combined, loom larger than any single issue or even any cluster of issues. Removing Trump from office (8%), trait considerations about honesty, ethics, morals, or decency (4%), returning Trump to office (3%) keeping Democrats out of power (2%), competence (1%), keeping Biden out of office (1%), unity (1%), and a return to normalcy (1%) together combined to make up the primary consideration of more than 1 in 5 likely voters in this election (21%). To the extent that voters are focused on Trump, it creates a powerful tendency for the election to be in the end a referendum on Trump’s performance, and thus Biden’s fitness to replace him. Most voters are not unified in viewing this election through the prism of the major policy problems plaguing the country. The most common and powerful focus is on problems they have with one or the other of the two men seeking office – and with their associations of the partisan labels attached to them.