The Texas Public Opinion Context for the Trump-Harris Presidential Debate

The much-anticipated, lone presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is one of the rare occasions where the breathless coverage leading up to the Tuesday evening event probably isn’t grossly over-hyped. It’s a lot, to be sure; but given the impact of the first presidential debate, it’s hard to argue that the stakes aren’t high, whether or not the debate lives up to the anticipation.

The massive amount of anticipatory coverage of the run-up to the debate in recent days has generated an exhaustive (and exhausting) body of coverage based on speculative analyses of the dynamics of the debate, ranging from tactical handicapping to the psychology of the two principals. There’s not a lot of point in rehearsing all of that here. The recently released University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll, conducted less than two weeks ago (August 23 to 31, among 1200 registered voters), provides a lot of fresh context about the public opinions likely to shape voters’ reactions to the debate in Texas. The post that accompanied the publication of the poll results last Friday focused primarily on results related to the election. Instead, we’ve focused below on presenting very recent data that provides context for how the candidates’ debate performances might land among Texas voters, and, where appropriate, connecting the data to some of the prevailing questions and speculation about the candidates’ strategies, their strengths and weaknesses, and the contingencies that might affect the trajectory of the race in Texas.

Trial ballots: Trump remains the frontrunner, but the presidential race looks more in line with the trajectory of the the last few presidential races in Texas.

Harris’ performance in the trial ballots in the August UT/TxPP Poll demonstrated notable improvements on Biden’s June polling performance in Texas. This improvement in Democratic performance was likely a result of increased Democratic enthusiasm about the election following Harris’ ascension to the top of the ticket, and even more proximately, Biden’s low baseline. The bar Harris had to clear in order to show improvement over Biden — especially after his June debate performance — was fairly low. The sum total of what has been one of the most dynamic summer’s in presidential campaign politics appears now to be a race in Texas that looks much more in line with the trajectory of the last few presidential election cycles that have seen Trump win by margins of 8.98% in 2016 and 5.58% in 2020.

National polling and polling in battleground states released in the last few days suggest that the surge Harris has been riding after replacing Biden and her joyfully coordinated nomination at the Democratic National Convention has stabilized nationally, which is consistent with a Texas race that appears, at least at this stage, to have reverted to trend rather than becoming a whole new race.

Within this framework of thinking about what trends in polling suggest about Texas, a decisively strong performance in the debate by Harris, or a Trump meltdown, could aid efforts by the Harris campaign to continue bending the Texas race in a more competitive direction.

The stakes are particularly high for Harris, who remains comparatively less well-defined than Trump among Texas voters. Views of Harris, whatever happens on the debate stage, are much more malleable than are views of Trump. The August poll reveals traces of a mixture of lingering reservations and a lack of solidified views of her among some Democrats and a larger share of independents. This is not surprising given the background role played by most vice-presidents and her very late ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket. By contrast, views of Trump, after a decade of consistent efforts to remain in the political spotlight and three presidential campaigns, are pretty baked in. This is particularly evident in the favorability ratings of the two candidates.

Favorability ratings: Many Texas voters are still developing opinions about Kamala Harris, who,  prior to the recent few months, has not made a huge impression on most Texas voters.

The good news for the Vice-President is the extent to which her favorability ratings improved among Democrats and independents between June and August.

Improvements in her standing among Democrats notwithstanding, there remains some evidence of reservations, or at least lack of familiarity, with Harris, among less committed and less attentive Democrats — which, to be fair, might be expected with both a new candidate (as opposed to the expected 2020 rematch) and one who did not capture the nomination through the regular, long, grueling process of the state-led, party primary system. Harris will need to speak to and mobilize less strongly attached Democratic voters — voters likely not as attentive to the love fest in Chicago and the overwhelmingly positive introduction it provided — who view her either less positively than the party die-hards, neutrally or even worse.

However much Harris has improved on Biden’s position in state polling, her campaign remains subject to the structural disadvantage Democrats’ have consistently displayed in the Texas electorate for the last two decades, and the weaknesses of Democratic Party infrastructure in the state. As always, Democratic mobilization is one of the keys to success. But winning a presidential election, or even coming close, will require finding independent votes to append to the beleaguered and hard-to-reach Democratic base.

While Harris remained underwater with the state’s independent voters (37% favorable; 42% unfavorable) in August, these results represent a marked improvement over June (18% favorable; 58% unfavorable) as well as her historical results; and provides a notable advantage over Trump’s own standing with the same group (34% favorable; 57% unfavorable).

This movement is in the right direction, though Harris is far from sealing the deal with independents, who will be crucial components of any efforts by the Harris campaign to overcome the Republican advantage in Texas that is the foundation of Trump’s favorable positioning. Independents as a group are less attentive to the details of politics and campaigns, and, untethered by partisan attachments, are more likely to shift positions in relation to events in the news. This makes them more likely to be swayed by what happens on the debate stage and the messages that end up propagated through their social circles and the media outlets they pay attention to.

Favorability ratings: Trump remains a known quantity in Texas, where the question hanging over Tuesday night’s debate remains whether his performance could possibly impact voters’ views of him at this late stage.

August polling found only 4% of Texas voters unable to offer an opinion of the former president, with the remaining 96% nearly evenly split between those holding a favorable view (49%) and those holding an unfavorable view (48%).

The August results in many ways demonstrate some of the key dynamics of Trump’s appeal and hold over the party, but also his limitations as a candidate. In the wake of the failed assassination attempt against the former president and the opportunity for the campaign to control the narrative during the Republican National Convention, Texas Republicans expressed their highest favorability ratings of the former president going back over two-dozen surveys beginning nearly a decade ago in November of 2015. Overall, 88% of Texas Republicans said that they held a favorable view of Trump, up 9 points over June results, including 62% holding a “very favorable” view, also the highest recorded across the 24 surveys.

At the same time, this swell in GOP support did little to change his overall favorability numbers. Independents maintained broadly negative views (34% favorable; 57% unfavorable — a slight improvement over June 31/59), while Democratic attitudes became slightly more negative (90% unfavorable, up 5 points from June; 86% “very unfavorable”).

While it might be tempting, especially for GOP voters and opinion leaders, to paint Democrats as beset with “Trump derangement syndrome”, especially in the wake of the assassination attempt, the depth of partisan polarization, negative partisanship, and, in particular, deeply rooted attitudes about Trump make this outcome more likely than not. The inverse here is useful: asked in June whether Trump’s felony convictions impacts their potential support for his candidacy, 62% of Texas Republicans said it affirmatively made them more likely to support him in 2024.

In many ways, this dynamic likely plays to Trump’s advantage in the debate on Tuesday evening, as many voters will likely be more open to developing, refining, or even changing their view of Harris while Trump remains a known quantity. Trump’s difficulty expanding his appeal far beyond (or even beyond) 50% of the electorate has been a perpetual challenge for Trump and for other Republican candidates nationally and in swing states – and helps explain why Trump lost the popular vote in both 2016 and 2020. This is less of a fatal threat in Texas, but also explains why Trump has been routinely outperformed by statewide counterparts in Texas and even by many legislative and congressional candidates. It would probably take a disastrous performance on the scale of Biden’s failure in the first 2024 debate to seriously redefine him among his base in Texas. Not likely, but, as we found out earlier this summer, not entirely out of the realm of possibility.

Issues: Public opinion largely favors Trump when considering the issues Texas voters say are most important to them, both generally, and specifically in this presidential election.

Looking at the issues Texans say are important to them in the election and Texans’ trust in the candidates illustrates where each candidate’s comparative advantage lay, and where they are most vulnerable. As in the national debate, the public opinion landscape largely favors Trump, who voters trust more on the issues they say the presidential candidates should be most focussed on.

Data in Texas aligns with expectations of the candidate’s respective approaches to debating the issues Tuesday night. 

Trump will surely attempt to direct widespread discontent and anxiety about the economy toward Harris. In the August Poll, 49% of Texans said the economy is performing worse than one year ago, in line with polling in April and June, while 44% rate their own family’s condition worse off, a steady uptick since the beginning of this year when 39% said the same in February. Prices will be a big part of this attack, with 69% of Texans “very concerned” about the price of food and consumer goods — an issue for which there are few good political answers available to either party. Not surprisingly then, a plurality of voters (37%) said that either inflation/rising prices (22%) or the economy (15%) are the most important issues facing the country in August polling, while 32% said that either the economy (18%) or inflation, prices, and the cost of living (14%) were the issues that the presidential candidates should be talking about in an open-ended item in the August poll. And on these issues, Texas voters currently express more trust in Trump’s ability to address these specific problems.

Also expect Trump to hammer Harris on immigration and the border — an issue where Harris is clearly on the defensive, particularly given Texas voters’ focus on these issues. In both their general estimation of the most important problems facing the state and in more focused views of what is important in this presidential election, immigration, the border, and the economy rank highly, especially but by no means exclusively among Republicans. 

Harris has attempted to deploy countermeasures on these issues — pointing toward the decline in illegal border crossings in recent months, following the Biden administration’s tougher policies, and deflecting blame back on Trump for his blunt force bullying of Republicans in order to defeat a congressional compromise on immigration and the border earlier in the year. But voters in Texas clearly express more trust in Trump’s ability to handle border issues, and the debate will be a chance to demonstrate the gap in each’s willingness to enforce border and immigration laws, real or imagined. Trump displays an uncanny ability to connect any issue under discussion to the threat of illegal immigration, as with recent comments by him and his running mate on housing. Expect to see this at the debate, and expect it to land well among Texas Republicans.

Expect Harris to go on the offense on abortion and women’s health. This is an important issue to Democratic constituencies and puts Trump in something of a bind as he continually tries to navigate the preferences of a vocal, but also important, minority of his supporters who favor more, or more widely applied, restrictions on abortion access and the reality of a public opinion environment in which majorities oppose the type and/or extent of restrictions put in place in states like Texas. It might be surprising to find Harris leading in any head-to-head match-up with Trump in Texas, but on who they trust more on the issue of abortion access, a majority of Texas voters, 55%, said they trusted Harris, compared to only 27% who said the same of Trump. This reflects prior and current polling on attitudes toward abortion access in Texas.

The broader lens of women’s health is likely to be an effort on Harris’ part to open up an already existing partisan gender gap, and most consequentially for Texas Democrats, plays into efforts to make the party more competitive in suburbs and in particular among suburban women.

Candidate traits.

As with issue areas, Trump and Harris will both be trying to accentuate areas of each’s personality/persona where they may see advantages in drawing a contrast with the other in an effort to protect their strengths, or maybe even try to remedy their weaknesses.

Trump’s greatest advantage in terms of character traits comes from the perception that he is a strong leader (57% say this about Trump compared to 43% who say the same of Harris). While Harris’ advantages, where they exist, tend to be smaller (on temperament, 49% vs. 47%; honesty, 42% vs. 39%; and empathy, 46% vs. 45%), one area where her entrance into the race has fundamentally changed the point of comparison is age. With Biden’s exit, concerns about Trump’s being “too old to be president in 2025” have increased, with 46% seeing this as the case in August, up 13 points since the question was last asked in June.

THE STAKES: Despite many potential outcomes, the overall impact of the debate is likely to be limited and driven at least as much (if not more) by efforts to mobilize the already converted than by efforts to persuade the undecided.

Most voters know who they intend to vote for (4-6% of all registered voters say that they’re undecided as of August polling), and the vast majority of voters won’t tune into the debate, with the remainder exposed to variously selected (and potentially edited) clips viewed through an increasingly expanding array of media diets. This, combined with the durability in attitudes towards Trump, makes it unlikely that the debate would cause a huge shift in perceptions, because there just aren’t that many people open to being significantly moved.

So debate efforts are likely to be more focused on shoring up partisan support among key constituencies in both parties than at persuading the thin slice of undecided voters on balance. This is not to say that Trump and Harris aren’t both competing aggressively for the votes of suburban voters, Latinos, blue-collar workers, and various subsets of women, but if the recent polling data indicates anything, it’s that both candidates are competing over these groups within more normal bounds than polling conducted much earlier (too early?) in the election season had generally indicated.

Given the closeness of recent elections, and the key role that mobilization has played in determining the outcomes, Harris will be looking to maintain the recently acquired mojo apparent among Democratic voters that her entrance into the race manifested. In August, 52% of Democrats said they were “extremely enthusiastic” about voting in 2024, up 13 points from when the question was asked in June (before Joe Biden’s debate performance). At the same time, 70% of Harris voters say that their support is because they want Harris to be elected president, while only 53% said the same about Biden in June (the alternative is to say that their support is more contingent on not wanting Donald Trump elected president). It’s this increased enthusiasm that Harris will want to maintain and expand upon with her debate performance Tuesday night — and at the very least, do as little as possible to dent.

While Trump has certainly had less issue maintaining the electoral fealty of his base, the last few months have resulted in a notable decline in Republican enthusiasm. Whether or not that remains a blip on the trendline based on the substantial change in the nature of the presidential race or a potential weak spot for the top of the GOP ticket remains to be seen, but Trump will want to deliver a performance that brings Republicans, if not all the way back, somewhere on the way back to how they felt after the first presidential debate.

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