Post Date: August 2021

Updated trend data reveals impact of Delta variant on Texas attitudes toward COVID-19 pandemic and efforts to curb its impact

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

The August 2021 University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll adds a seventh assessment of Texans’ attitudes about the coronavirus pandemic to the Texas Politics Project polling data archive, adding to attitudes collected in batteries from polls conducted in April, June, and October of 2020, and February, April, June and now August of 2021. The time series allows reporters, researchers, elected leaders, public health officials, and the public a view of how Texans’ concerns about COVID, behaviors during the pandemic, and evaluations of the official responses have changed throughout a year of pandemic conditions in Texas.

Read more...

Keywords: Coronavirus

Be the first to hear about new Texas Politics Project polling

Texas Efforts to Curtail Abortion Access May Soon Test Public Tolerance

| By: Joshua Blank and Jim Henson

If the repeated results on proposals like banning abortion after 6-weeks suggest a high tolerance for regulating abortion, voluminous and long-standing results are even more clear in illustrating that a majority of Texans do not want to ban abortion outright.

Read more...

Keywords: Abortion

Second Reading Podcast: The House returns to business + data on partisanship and ideology

Partisan perceptions of COVID-19 danger to school kids persisted through the pandemic — and are fueling back-to-school fights over school policies

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

The political conflicts over the authority to protect public health (or not) that have roiled the Texas political system since the earliest days of the pandemic are boiling over as school officials' efforts to protect children, teachers, and staff from a reinvigorated coronavirus now requires defying Gov. Abbott and his allies in all three branches of state government.

Read more...

Texas Public Opinion and the Agenda for the Second Special Session of the Legislature

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

The uncertain date of the return of the renegade House Democrats to Austin make the fate of this agenda unclear at the moment, but we do have a lot of polling data to give us a sense of public opinion on most, though not all, of the agenda proffered by the Governor.

Read more...