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

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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.

Three quarters of Republicans say the former president did not receive a fair trial, compared to 87% of Democrats who think his trial was fair. Among independents, 44% said the trial was fair while 34% thought it was not.

The poll was conducted among 1200 registered voters in Texas from May 31 to June 9, 2024, and has a margin of error of +/- 2.83% for the full sample. Data collection was conducted over the internet by YouGov.

Texans’ views of Trump shifted only slightly when compared to polling conducted prior to his conviction. While Trump’s favorability ratings in Texas declined somewhat after the conclusion of his trial, changes in Texans’ ratings of the former president compared to UT/Texas Politics Project polling conducted one year ago were only slightly outside the polls’ margin of error. Overall, 44% viewed him unfavorably and 48% unfavorably in June, 2023. One year later, and after his felony convictions, 45% view him favorably and 49% view him unfavorably. As the table below illustrates, over the same period, Republicans grew slightly more favorable toward the former president, while the views of Democratic and independent voters grew slightly less favorable.

When asked to assess the traits of both presidential candidates, 36% judged Trump to be honest and trustworthy, while 55% said he was not, identical to responses collected in October 2023. Biden is viewed as being honest among only a slightly larger share of Texas voters, with 40% saying the current president is honest and trustworthy, compared to 52% who say he is not — a slight improvement over October 2023 results that found 36% rating Biden as honest and trustworthy and 55% disagreeing.

The U.S. Senate

In the other major 2024 race in Texas, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz led Democratic challenger Colin Allred 45% to 34%, with 6% choosing “someone else” and 14% undecided. 

Allred, who is running for statewide office for the first time, has yet to make an impression on a large share of the Texas electorate: 41% either expressed no opinion (17%) or a neutral view (24%) of him when asked whether they have a favorable or unfavorable impression of the Democratic congressman from Dallas in the latest poll, only a slight improvement from the preceding poll in April. Nearly a third of Democrats (30%) are similarly uncommitted in their views of him so far.

Texans’ views of Cruz were evenly divided, with 44% viewing the two-term incumbent favorably, and 44% viewing him unfavorably. Among Republicans, views were significantly more favorable, with 77% holding a positive view of the state’s junior senator and 12% holding unfavorable views.

Voters' views of election year issues

Asked what issues the presidential candidates should be talking about during the 2024 presidential election in an open-ended item, the plurality of Texas voters mentioned either the economy (18%) or inflation (14%), highlighting the centrality of the economy to both campaigns in 2024 given a public consistently expressing economic dissatisfaction. A little more than a fifth of voters (22%) mentioned immigration or border security related issues, while 6% mentioned issues related to abortion or, more broadly, women’s rights.

Some of the differences in the magnitude of the issues mentioned most frequently by partisans reflect the efforts of the major candidates and parties to frame the issue terrain of the 2024 election. Border security or immigration related responses were raised by 39% of Republicans, their most common response and not a surprise given the persistence of the issue in Republican state politics, including the recently concluded state legislative primary elections.

The most frequently mentioned issues among Democratic voters included the economy and inflation, raised by a combined 27% of Democrat – bad news for the incumbent Democratic president – along with 33% of Republicans, making it the second most mentioned issue area among GOP voters. As Democrats in Texas and nationwide attempt to make abortion and reproductive health central to their 2024 campaigns, 13% of Texas Democrats mentioned such issues, the second most frequently mentioned issue cluster – only about half the share of those Democrats who highlighted economic issues (including inflation) as  subjects most important for the presidential candidates to be discussing.

These different priorities provide key context for understanding which policy issues candidates and parties will continue attempting to keep on the agenda in the presidential election as well as in legislative and congressional races in the state in 2024.

POLICY RESULTS

The poll explored Texans’ attitudes in several key issue areas related to the 2024 elections in Texas. Highlights are discussed below. For complete results, see the poll summary and crosstab documents.

Abortion and reproductive health. The poll explored Texans' response to reproductive health policy questions that have arisen at the state level in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in the context of the state’s own highly restrictive abortion laws.

• 88% of Texas voters agreed that “women who want to avoid becoming pregnant should have access to birth control,” while only 6% said they should not have access and the remaining 6% holding no opinion. Those supporting birth control access included 94% of Democrats and 84% of Republicans.
• 68% opposed preventing women from using in-vitro fertilization (IVF), while 16% supported limiting access to a procedure used by couples who are having difficulty conceiving a child.
• 63% opposed preventing women from accessing abortion in states where the procedure remains legal; while 24% supported limiting women’s ability to travel in order to obtain an abortion.
• 62% opposed restricting access to medicated abortion pills, while 28% said they would support restrictions.

As in previous polling, closely divided opinions on abortion and reproductive health issues were much more evident among Republican than among Democratic voters. While at least 74% of Texas Democrats opposed each of the four policy proposals that would further limit access to abortion in the state and beyond, Texas Republicans were largely divided. Nearly equal shares were supportive of preventing women from obtaining medicated abortion pills, 41%, as were opposed, 45%. Similarly, 43% said they supported penalizing companies that pay for abortion related travel expenses, while 42% were opposed. Pluralities of Republicans also opposed preventing women from traveling out of state to obtain a legal abortion (48% opposed; 35% support) and preventing the use of in-vitro fertilization (65% opposed; 17% support).

(For more information on attitudes about abortion, see results from an extensive set of questions in the April 2024 UT/Texas Politics Project Poll.)

The border and immigration. The touchstone issues for state Republicans remain central to GOP politics as the 2024 election nears: 61% of Republican voters say that one or the other is the most important problem facing the state, the fifth consecutive poll since August 2023 in which at least 60% of Republicans were focused on these related issues.

The direction of Republican attitudes on immigration, both illegal and legal, also remain fixed in the latest poll. More than four-fifths of Republicans (85%) agreed that “undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States should be deported immediately,” including more than half (54%) who strongly agreed. Almost two-thirds of Republicans, 65%, think the U.S. allows too many people to immigrate into the country legally.

The salience of immigration and border security, and the restrictive attitudes Republican voters almost universally share, align with their responses to the dramatic increases in state spending on border security over the last decade, which surpassed $6 billion dollars in the budget signed into law for the 2024-2025 biennium.

Overall, a third of Texas voters (33%) said the state spends too little on border security, while 29% said the state spends about the right amount and a quarter (25%) said the state was spending too much. The overall share of those who say the state still spends too little on border security was made up primarily of Republican voters, half of whom (50%) say the state isn’t spending enough, compared to 16% of Democrats and 26% of independents. A plurality of Democrats, 44%, say the state spends too much, though nearly a quarter (24%) say the state is spending the right amount – the latest in a series of data points suggesting that the share of Democrats open to more proactive border policy in Texas, while a clear minority, is not insignificant.

These attitudes don’t translate into good news for President Joe Biden. With both national and Texas Republicans demonstrably attempting to keep immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border central to the 2024 election, only 26% of Texas voters approve of the current president's handling of immigration and border security, with a majority, 54%, disapproving. Barely half of Democrats, 51%, approve of how Biden is handling the issue, with only 16% strongly approving (the rest only approved somewhat), and nearly a quarter disapproving, with the remainder either neutral (22%) or undecided (3%).

Republican voters are, unsurprisingly, deeply disapproving of Biden’s handling of the issue that is most important to most of them: only 6% registered approval, while 86% disapproved – 79% strongly. Independent assessments look more like those of Republicans than Democrats, though their attitudes are not as intense as their Republican neighbors: Only 14% approve, with 62% disapproving – 53% strongly.

(The April 2024 UT/Texas Politics Project Poll also contained an extensive set of questions about national and state immigration policy that provide more context for the June results.)

Democracy and the 2024 election. Concerns about democracy and the 2024 election remain widespread among Texas voters. A slim plurality, 48%, are confident that Americans will trust the result of the presidential election – but only 14% say that they’re “very confident.” Asked whether they personally expect to trust the results of the 2024 presidential election, regardless of who wins, a slight majority, 55%, say that they will trust the results, with 12% saying that they won’t, and a third of voters, 33%, saying that they aren’t currently sure whether they will trust the results of the 2024 election. Partisan differences are extreme: while 84% of Democrats say that they will trust the results of the upcoming election regardless of who wins, only 33% of Republicans were willing to express a similar commitment, with the majority, 51%, saying that they don’t know or are unsure about whether they will be able to trust the 2024 election results.

In addition to following the lead of their presumptive nominee, who has already begun planting doubts about the veracity of the upcoming election, the majority of Republican voters, 60%, also continue to say that Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election, largely unchanged over the last year. Nearly one in four Texas Republicans, 24%, say that ineligible voters “frequently” vote in Texas elections, in addition to 39% who say this happens “sometimes.”

Majorities of both Republican and Democratic voters say that political violence is either “very likely” (19% overall; 18% of Republicans; 19% of Democrats) or “somewhat likely” (29% overall; 38% of Republicans; 41% of Democrats) in response to the 2024 election results. Fewer than one in ten voters believe it is “not at all likely” that there will be political violence in 2024.

While Republican voters continue to express concern about the accuracy of elections and the security of the election process, Democrats continue to express concerns about election access. Nearly one in five Texas Democrats, 18%, say that eligible voters are “frequently” prevented from voting in Texas, with another 35% saying that this happens sometimes. In contrast, only 5% of Republicans say that eligible voters are prevented from voting frequently.

Democrats express slightly more confidence than Republicans when it comes to their belief that the American public will trust the results of the presidential election, with 63% of Democrats either “very confident” (21%) or “somewhat confident” (42%) compared to 41% of Republicans who are either “very confident” (11%) or “somewhat confident” (30%).

Institutional ratings. Asked to evaluate 14 different institutions and entities, local businesses received the highest overall ratings, with 71% of Texas voters holding a favorable opinion and only 6% saying that they hold an unfavorable opinion. At the other end of the spectrum were major companies and corporations located outside of the U.S., which received favorable impressions from only 18% of voters and unfavorable impressions from 40%. Major corporations based in the U.S. fared only slightly better, with 36% of voters saying they hold a favorable impression and 30% saying they hold an unfavorable impression.

In a continuation of a trend consistently found in Texas public opinion, local governments received the highest net favorability rating when compared to Texas state government and the federal government. Overall, 46% of voters said that they held a favorable view of both local and state government, but only 24% held an unfavorable view of their local government compared to 36% who said they held an unfavorable view of state government. Views of the federal government were significantly worse, with only 27% of Texans holding a favorable view compared to a majority, 53%, holding unfavorable views.

A look at other major institutions finds Texans’ views of the U.S. military (68% favorable, 14% unfavorable), the police (58% favorable, 22% unfavorable), churches and other faith organizations (50% favorable, 24% unfavorable), public schools (43% favorable, 33% unfavorable), universities and colleges (41% favorable, 36% unfavorable), and labor unions (39% favorable, 29% unfavorable) all in net positive territory, while views of the news media (28% favorable, 51% unfavorable) and the criminal justice system (27% favorable, 49% unfavorable) remain in net negative territory.

While these institutional evaluations are replete with partisan differences, some of the most notable come in response to education institutions, with a majority of Democrats holding favorable views of both public schools (59%) and colleges and universities (61%) and pluralities or majorities of Republicans holding negative views of each (43% for public schools and 56% for colleges and universities).

Economic Evaluations. Half of Texas voters (50%) say that the national economy is worse compared to last year, with only 28% rating it better — largely unchanged from April polling. Asked to rate the Texas economy, a plurality of voters, 38%, say that Texas’ economy is worse than last year, with only 22% rating the state economy as improving. The 38% rating the economy worse than last year represents a 5 point increase over April polling.

Asked to rate their own, personal economic situation, 42% said that they’re doing worse than last year compared to only 22% who say that they’re doing better — largely unchanged from April polling, but the 24th straight UT/TxPP poll in which more voters have rated their economic condition poorly than have said their situation is improving.

Despite these widespread, negative evaluations, a slight plurality of Texas voters, 36%, expect the national economy to be better one year from now, with 28% expecting the economy to worsen.

Texas grid reliability. With the onset of soaring summer temperatures, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) warning of rolling blackouts, and a jolt of grid reliability politics in a recent Senate hearing on the grid, Texans are primed for another season of concern. Slightly more than half of Texans think it’s very likely (17%) or somewhat likely (34%) that there will be a widespread failure of the grid this summer.

Less catastrophically, Texans appear responsive to ERCOT’s recent setting of expectations: 84% think it is very likely (52%) or somewhat likely (32%) that they will be asked to conserve power this summer, while 63% expect to experience rolling, or temporary blackouts (25% very likely; 38% somewhat likely).

Threats to the United States. Asked to rate the seriousness of nine different threats to the United States and to assess which among those threats is most serious, 20% of Texas voters selected “immigration,” with 17% each selecting a “declining commitment to democracy” and “the power of the federal government.” Fewer, though still significant shares said that misinformation (13%) and climate change (10%) pose the biggest threats to the U.S., with the remaining threats chosen by fewer than 7% of voters.

A majority of Republicans said that either immigration (33%) or the power of the federal government (25%) were the biggest threats facing the United States, while among Democrats, a declining commitment to democracy (28%), misinformation (21%), and climate change (17%) topped the list.

Foreign policy issues. There has been little change in Texas voters' views of how the U.S. should respond to the current conflict between Israel and Hamas following the latter’s attacks in Israel last October 7. As in two previous surveys in December 2023 and April 2024, a modest plurality, 34%, favor an approach “working to balance support for Israeli military efforts and the preventions of Palestinian civilian casualties,” while just shy of a quarter (23%) say U.S. policy should “primarily be working to support Israeli military efforts,” and 13% saying U.S. policy should “primarily be working to prevent Palestinian civilian casualties.” Notably, given evidence of growing isolationism in the national Republican Party, 16% said the U.S. should not be involved in the conflict, and another 13% had no opinion.

Republicans lean toward supporting Israeli efforts, though not overwhelmingly: 38% say the primary focus should be supporting Israeli military efforts, while 27% favor a balanced option, and only 7% say the U.S. should primarily be working to prevent Palestinian civilian casualties (18% think the U.S. should not be involved). Democrats lean more decisively toward balancing the two priorities (45%), with more than a fifth (22%) wanting the U.S. to primarily work to avoid Palestinian casualties, and only 9% favoring a U.S. policy focused on primarily supporting the Israeli military response.

In the wake of the long-delayed resumption of U.S. spending in support of Ukraine's efforts to repel the Russian invasion, Texas voters remain closely divided in their views of the scale of U.S. support for Ukraine. A slim plurality, 32%, say the U.S. is doing too much, followed closely by 30% who say the US. is doing the right amount. Slightly less than a quarter, 24%, say the U.S is doing too little.

The stark partisan differences evident in the sustained fight over funding in the U.S. Congress are evident in Texas voters' views. Nearly half of Republicans, 48%, say the U.S. is doing too much to support Ukraine, with 27% saying the U.S. is doing the right amount, and only 14% saying the U.S. is doing “too little.” The share of Democrats who think the U.S. is doing too little, 38%, is well more than twice the Republican share while only 13% say the U.S. is doing too much; 35% think the U.S. is supporting the former Soviet republic the right amount. Here, too, Texas independents look more like Republicans than like Democrats: A clear plurality, 44%, think the U.S. is providing too much support, 11% too little, and 30%, the right amount.

With the Biden administration attempting to balance the competing goals set out in the question on U.S. policy in the Israeli-Hamas conflict, and while rallying Congress to provide U.S. financial and material support to Ukraine, the president’s approval ratings are underwater in response to his handling of foreign policy: 31% approve, while 50% disapprove — his lowest net approval rating in this area since February 2022 (30% approve; 51% disapprove).

Job approvals. Overall, Texans’ assessments of the job performance of incumbents dipped compared to recent polls, though the data are too limited at this point to tell how this fits into the longer-term trajectory of public opinion in the state. (For trend data, see our updated page that tracks trends in ratings of elected officials and the economy.)

• Gov. Greg Abbott: 50% approve, 39% disapprove (net +11)
• Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick: 39% approve, 34% disapprove (net +5)
• Speaker of the House Dade Phelan: 24% approve, 30% disapprove (net -6)
• Attorney General Ken Paxton: 36% approve, 38% disapprove (net -2)
• Senator John Cornyn: 32% approve, 38% disapprove (net -6)
• Senator Ted Cruz: 46% approve, 42% disapprove (net +4)
• President Joe Biden: 39% approve, 52% disapprove (-13)
• U.S. Congress approval: 20% approve, 57% disapprove (-37)
• U.S. Supreme Court: 36% approve, 42% disapprove (-6)

Assessment of the direction of the country deteriorated slightly between April and June: 25% said the country was headed in the right direction (down from 29% in April), while 66% said it was on the wrong track (up from 62% in April).

Views of Texas were more positive but still dipped narrowly in June: 41% judged the state as heading in the right direction, while 48% said it was on the wrong track.