Texas Politics Project Resources for Moving Your Texas Government Class Online in the Wake of COVID-19

The large scale transition to online instruction in Texas higher education institutions has many government and political science teachers scrambling to migrate in-person courses into entirely online formats on a very short timeline. To help out with these efforts, we’ve gathered results from the last few years of the University of Texas / Texas Tribune Poll, and sorted them by common topics covered in introductory Texas government courses. The idea is that teachers trying to build online lecture presentations, exercises, or even assessments for their newly-translated online courses might find ready-made graphics useful -- and save time in a situation in which time is in short supply. 

Roam around on this page and use our search page to find material you can use throughout your course. Though the data is all based on public opinion polling, the topics vary widely beyond the election polling that's so prominent in even-numbered years.  Our data encompasses the last dozen years of Texas politics, and contains results on many major policy areas of interest to you and your students, as well as job approval and/or favorability ratings for all major elected officials in the state. Click on the subjects in the table below to jump to topics of interest, or just scroll down to experience the thrill of discovery.

Executive	Voting/elections/campaigns	Public opinion
Legislative	Political parties	Political culture
Judicial	Federalism/IGR	Rights/liberties
Criminal justice	Interest groups	Public policy
US government

All of the links to results (bold font) will take you to a graphic. Our poll result graphics all have a link in the upper right hand corner on the word "share" that opens up a menu that allows you to download the graphic you're looking at in multiple common file formats (i.e. jpg, pdf, svg, png). For comprehensive information and results from the polls of origing, see the files in our polling data archive. 

The suggestions below are far from exhaustive - there is some riffing here, as we wanted to get something up relatively quickly as we know that many people have to move fast in response to changes as a result of COVID-19 triggered migrations to online delivery.  So a disclaimer: this is not a course outline or teaching plan. We've just tried to gather some interesting results, in many cases simply as ideas or for illustration of what else one might find looking through our resources. Nor have I tried to be particularly comprehensive in scope.  I urge you to use our excellent search tool or the search box at the top of each page to look for other results, and to click through the tabs of the individual results. And if you have other ideas or examples (or corrections/suggestions), please share them - you can email us at texaspolitics@mail.laits.utexas.edu. We’ll keep adding resources to the page as much as time allows.  Let’s face it: we’re probably looking at a summer of online instruction in higher education, too – so it will be back to the drawing board sooner than later for many of us.

Executive branch

Governor Greg Abbott job approval, Feb 2020

Abbott job approval trend (Nov 2015-Feb 2020)

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick job approval 

Patrick job approval trend

Legislative branch

Our polling data acriver has more than 40 results tagged with "Texas Legislature," with graphics for multiple cross tabs for each results.

Texas legislature job approval

Job approval of Speaker of the House Dennis Bonnen.

Judicial branch

We’ve done little polling related directly to the judicial branch.  This is a broad favorability rating of the courts and criminatl justice system from June 2017.

 

Criminal justice system

We have several results on attitudes toward the death penalty (also useful for looking at partisan differences toward policy).  

The most recent result of assessing support for the death penalty is from June 2018:

We also have a test of a proposal to decriminalize marijuana from June 2018 (on of several marijuna-related results from the last few years).

 

Voting/election/campaigns

The February 2019 UT/TT poll included a battery of questions focused on different concerns about the administration, integrity, and fairness of elections that is useful for illustrating how different partisan frames inform attitues about the electoral system.

Our election battery in October 2016 captured some of the same patterns evident in attitudes, with some items pegged to the rhetoric of the 2016 campaign.

This link takes you to 47 results tagged with "voting and elections" in the poll results archive.

Political Parties

These trend graphics presenting ideological identification among partisans are useful for talking about both ideological sorting and partisan polarization.

Almost all of our poll item graphics have tabs responses broken down by party identification. Remember that we combine leaners with their respective partisans, which usually results in independents making up 9% - 11% of the sample. These tabs tend to be useful for showing different degrees of polarization in attitudes on different issues, or toward different public figures. Find a few examples below.

Most important problem facing the country 

Most important problem facing Texas

Agreement or disagreement with the statement that all undocumented immigrants in the U.S. should be deported immediately.

(For more examples, see the public policy section)

 

Federalism/intergovernmental  relations

Views of various institutions in the U.S.

 

Interest groups

We don’t have a lot of polling results on this topic, but this blog post from 2015 took a look at how public opinion intersected with interest group preferences in the embrace of early childhood education (pre-k) during the 2015 legislative session. But find some results from some selected interest groups below.

National Rifle Association (NRA) favorability (October 2019)

Black Lives Matter movement favorability (October 2016)

 

Public opinion 

Our polling archive is, of course, one big exercise in exploring public opinion.

One thing that makes public opinion is watching it change. Texas attitudes toward gay marriage is one of the best examples. Here is the entire body of results, including a trendline from June 2009 to October 2014, for our item including the now more or less obsolete policy option of civil unions, then two results separated by two and a half years (October 2014- june 2017) that saw support for gay marriage increase from 42% to 54% - with party identification breakdowns that add dimension to the story.

Political culture

There are lots of poll results on issues here that might be helpful in illustrating the state's political culture.  But one interesting theme that recurs in a lot of intro course discussions of political culture is the impact of the ongoing patterns of urbanization in the state. Almost all of our poll item graphics have tabs responses broken down by self identification as urban, suburban, or rural. A few example follow.

Our item on whether more people owning guns makes the country more safe or less safe.

How much should the government do about climate change (from February 2020)?

Is Texas state government doing enough to protect the rights of LGTBQ Texans?

Another tidbit for considering political culture in the state: attitudes toward confederate monuments.

 

Civil rights / voting rights / civil liberties

The UT/TT poll has asked a wide range of questions about various aspects of discrimination. This search result using the disrimination tag yields 48 items. A few interesting examples follow.

In February 2018, the UT/TT poll asked respondents to assess how much discrimination they thought particular social groups experienced in the U.S.. They were then asked:  "In your opinion, which of the following groups faces the MOST discrimination in the United States today?"

Favorability rating of the #metoo movement from June 2019.

 

Does the election system discriminate against ethnic and racial minorities

"Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: a sincerely held religious belief is a legitimate reason to exempt someone from laws designed to prevent discrimination?"

 

Public policy

One of our broader recurring questions that provides lots of grist for discussion asks whether Texas government provides a good model for other states. 

There are numerous public policy results, several of which are shared in other sections of this post. The best way to find what interests you is to use our search tool - you can search by a long list of “topic” tags. Find just a couple of more results of current interest below.

On universal health care versus the current system (February 2020).

 

On the legal status of mariujuana (February 2019):

Click the links below to find search compliations on the following tags for more policy areas (including older results for the examples above):

Healthcare	Education	Border security
Budget and taxation	Abortion	Gun safety/ gun violence
Marijuana	Transportation	Climate change
Water	International issues	Discrimination / civil rights

 

Some Texas Attitudes about U.S. government

Which branch of government do you trust the most? (February 2020 and, for comparison, June 2016)

 

President Trump approval trend

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz job approval (February 2020)

U.S. Senator John Cornyn job approval (February 2020)

Trend:

US Congress job approval (February 2020)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell job approval (February 2020)

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi job approval (February 2020)

Several results related to the federal government are also in our poll data archive.

For those of you who find you'll be continuing to teach online, consider the online textbook that we produce in conjunction with our partners at Soomo Learning, Texas Politics, currently in it's 8th edition. It was developed exculsively for online use, and integrates well with all major learning management systems (e.g. Canvas) and incorporates much of our public opinion data into its accessible introduction to Texas government and politics. If you are particularly interested in trends in policy, you should also explore the tool at the Comparative Agendas website, which is based in part at UT Austin. Their trends tool allows you to bulid cool customized graphics comparing multiple measures, including public opinion and legislative actions.

There are also a couple of other resources you can use, too. We have a YouTube archive with many video clips of interviews and events with Texas political figures. We haven’t paid as much attention to events and interviews in the last couple of years, but there are still some useful clips that are easy to embed in most learning management systems (e.g. Canvas, Blackboard, Moodle).  If you're looking to add more on-demand/asyncrhonous content to your course to make the transistion easier to manage for students, these clips can be helpful. We also have a blog page at the Texas Politics Project site that you can treat as an open educational resource. You can link to these pages for reading assignments or exercises in interpretation for your students. For example, the most recent post (prior to this one) discusses partisan attitudes towards elections in Texas pegged to recent problems with elections (e.g. the most recent Texas primaries).

Finally, stay safe and well.