Post Date: April 2018

Governor Abbott (Still) Tops Texans' Evaluations of Elected Officials*

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

In addition to its focus on Texans’ views of the issues facing the state a, the University of Texas / Texas Politics Project Poll regularly gages Texans' assessments of the state’s exclusively Republican leadership. As the political class in the state readies itself for the 2018 Elections and the 2019 legislative session, there have been small but notable shifts in voters’ estimations of their elected leaders’ job performance over the last few years.

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A look at Spring Polling vs. Fall Voting in Texas

| By: Joshua Blank and Jim Henson

 we've compiled statewide polling results from April through July for elections going back to 2010 for President, Senator, and Governor. While it's certainly fair to say that Cruz's lead over O'Rourke is not as stout as one might expect given historical polling (in the polling data below, the lead for the GOP candidate at this point in the election cycle is 9 points on average), there's little evidence from the eventual election results that Cruz's lead isn't likely to grow as the campaign season begins in earnest, let alone when voters actually begin to cast their ballots. This is, of course, dependent on how much past patterns hold in the present and near future.

 

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Texas Republican Women’s Support for Donald Trump Persists Even in Stormy Times

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

Texas Republican women's support of Donald Trump coexists with their tepid reaction to the ongoing attention to both everyday and high-profile cases of sexual harassment and violence. The gender politics triggered by Trump’s record with at least some of the women he encountered on the road from celebrity to the White House didn’t prevent millions of women from doing their part to vote him into office. And evidence from Texas offers little indication that the often explosive gender politics in the wake of Trump’s election have altered the fundamentals of Trump’s wellspring of support among Republican women.

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What are #TxLege Members Doing on Facebook?

| By: Lindsay Dun and Joshua Blank and Jim Henson

As the national and international discussion of the larger role of Facebook and other social media applications rages in the wake of Russian subversion, the ongoing Cambridge Analytica revelations, and Mark Zuckerberg's appearances on Capitol Hill, attention has shifted away from the more mundane uses of Facebook by real live elected officials. 

Even with all the current angst about Facebook data as a backdrop, we are interested in how members of the #TXLege use the social media platform given its nearly ubiquitous use by elected officials in the state. One-hundred-forty-one members of the Texas House and 28 Texas Senators posted on public campaign Facebook pages where they designated themselves as a “politician” or a “public official” during the 2017 Session. This makes Facebook a venue for interactions with constituents as well as a forum for public interaction with the legislature as a whole.

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