Blog
Second Reading Podcast: Hurricane politics in Texas as the storm around Biden's reelection bid continues
Jim Henson and Joshua Blank talk over the politics of Texas response to Hurricane Beryl and mounting uncertainty around Joe Biden's reelection campaign.
Where Joe Biden and Donald Trump stand in Texas Heading into First Presidential Debate
With the 2024 presidential candidates preparing to take the stage Thursday evening for an unprecedented June debate in what is already shaping up to be an unprecedented election, the University of Texas/Texas Politics Project polling archive provides key insights into where each candidate stands in Texas, and where each candidate stands among the key voting blocs that will determine the outcome of the election.
Second Reading Podcast: Untangling views of Trump's felony convictions and the 2024 election in the new UT/Texas Politics Project Poll
Daron Shaw, Josh Blank, and Jim Henson talk over what results from the just-released June 2024 University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll can and can't tell us about the impact of Donald Trump's felony convictions on the 2024 election, and some of the considerations that going into polling on Trump, the election, and questions of democracy and potential political violence in response to the election.
Most GOP voters say the former president didn’t get a fair trial in New York as Trump maintains 46%-39% lead over Biden in Texas
The latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll, conducted immediately after a New York jury convicted former President Donald Trump on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records, finds more than half of Texas Republican voters saying his conviction makes them more likely to vote for him in November.
The convictions have had only a small impact on the overall shape of the Presidential race in Texas less than five months before Election Day. The poll finds Donald Trump maintaining a 7-point lead over Joe Biden, 46% to 39%, in a head-to-head match-up in Texas, while maintaining a 9-point lead, 43% to 34%, in a trial ballot including independent and third-party candidates. In the expanded trial ballot, 8% chose Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, along with 2% for Jill Stein, 2% for Cornel West, less than 1% for Chase Oliver, and 10% had no opinion.
Job approval trends for Texas statewide incumbents and other trend data from the Texas Politics Project poll data archive (June 2024 UT/Texas Politics Project Poll update)
This page compiles graphics for trends in job approval ratings of the current statewide incumbents (Governor, Lt. Governor, U.S. Senators) that Texans rate 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.
Where Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. injects uncertainty in Texas
The independent presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has had operatives in both the Trump and Biden camps worried at various times about Kennedy’s potential for siphoning votes from their candidates. National and state-level polling has generally demonstrated that as Kennedy’s candidacy attracts more public attention (certainly relative to other non-major party aspirants to the presidency), he tends to be viewed more favorably by Republicans than by Democrats – which as of the April 2024 University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll seems to be the case in Texas, too.
Second Reading Podcast: More Than a Phelan
Jim Henson and Josh Blank look at the results of the primary run-offs in Texas, the politics of the long primary season, and the implications of the results.
Texans’ nuanced views on abortion access are at odds with binary political labels – and with the state’s ban on abortion
A battery of questions in the latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll, and years of data on abortion attitudes in the state, suggest that voters view access to legal abortion with much more nuance than either our inherited labels or the monolithic positions adopted by the two parties admit. While this nuance is bipartisan, the lack of absolutist views is most notable, and most consequential, among Republican voters whose candidates must claim credit, or take blame, for engineering the rollback in abortion rights that is the new political reality in the U.S. – especially in Texas.
Second Reading Podcast: Why broad labels fail to capture nuances in Texans' views about abortion access
Jim Henson and Josh Blank take a deep dive into new UT/Texas Politics Project Poll data revealing nuances in Texans' views of abortion not captured in broad labels like "pro-life" and "pro-choice."
Assessing the competitiveness of the Trump-Biden rematch in Texas
UT/Texas Politics Project polling suggests some weakness in Biden’s support when compared to this stage of the 2020 campaign among some key groups of Texas voters, akin to similar, widely-noted signs of erosion in support for Biden in some national polling data. At the same time, there are no signs of an immediate collapse in support for Biden even as he fights the gravity of presidential incumbency amidst an economy plagued by persistent rising prices, a dour mood among voters, and yet another unpredictable overall election environment.