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A pre-4th of July preview of a new UT/Texas Politics Project Poll

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

Going into a grim July 4 weekend defined by a resurgent COVID-19 in Texas, a new University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll finds most Texans acutely aware of the hobbled economy and a country limping along on the wrong track. Yet amidst this dark view of the trajectory of the country, Republican partisans continue to view President Trump with the same devotion given him prior to the eruption of the country's multiple current crises, with Trump holding onto a 4-point lead in the presidential race with Joe Biden. This post previews Texans’ views of the President and their assessments of the overall state of the country captured in the poll, which was conducted June 19-29. More results covering a range of topics including the coronavirus pandemic, race, policing, and assessment of the states elected leaders will be released after the holiday weekend. 

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Texas Attitudes Toward Donald Trump as the President Returns to Texas for a Roundtable and More Fundraising

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

Recent polls showing a close contest between Trump and former vice president Joe Biden in Texas have been getting a lot of play in news media coverage. While there’s little doubt that the parties are getting more competitive in Texas, there’s also little doubt that early summer polling is a poor predictor of the final outcome.  There will be lots of time to mull this as polling accumulates here.  For now, we’ve gathered University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll results that illustrate Trump’s standing in Texas, with particular attention to cross tabs for subgroups that add dimension to the overall numbers. (For those who want to dig still deeper, there are 132 items tagged with Donald Trump's name in our poll archive.)

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Texas Republicans' Resistance to Mail-In Voting Has Strong Roots in Pre-Pandemic Politics

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

The thorough politicization of the laws governing the voting process is deeply rooted in attitudes in the electorate among both Republican and Democratic voters. The result is that an opportunity to find common cause at the crossroads of public health and civic aspiration has instead devolved into endless trips to court amidst a dispiriting replay of the long history of turning the franchise into something more akin to extracting back pay from a stingy boss than exercising a constitutional right.

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A Boxful of Letters: Most Texas Churchgoers Don't Share Attorney General's Complaints About Cities' COVID-19 Containment

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

A trio of letters sent from the Texas Attorney General’s office to the leaders of three of the state’s major metropolitan areas again raised the public tension between the limits on religious practices contained in public health measures undertaken to contain the spread of coronavirus and the protection of religious liberties. That tension, however, may be more acutely felt by elected officials navigating party politics and personal rivalries than it is by most voters.

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Analysis: The coronavirus hits Texans of color harder. You can see it in public opinion polling

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

The coronavirus disproportionately affects people of color. And judging by what voters said in the last University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll, it's evident that Texans of color express greater concern about it.

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As Governor Abbott visits President Trump at the White House, Abbott's job approval ratings are better than Trump's in Texas

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

Texas Governor Greg Abbott met briefly with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office today to talk about COVID-19 in front of a sign titled “Provided to Texas.” While the White House seems to want to convey to Texans that Trump and the federal government have done things right by the state, Texans’ have already formed some attitudes on the matter. In the recently released April 2020 University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll, Texas assessments of how the two chief executives and the different branches are performing during the intertwined public health and economic crises facing the state are consistently higher for Abbott, and Texas state and local governments compared to Trump and the federal government.

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Speaker Bonnen bangs the big boxes - but who's listening?

| By: Jim Henson

Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives Dennis Bonnen Tweeted himself back onto the radar screens of the Texas political class today with an 11-part thread attacking “our largest home improvement superstores.” There’s no payoff in paraphrasing just how sharp his attack on esteemed institutions in GOP strongholds across the state was today; only direct quotes will do.

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Sheltering in Plain Sight: Some Data Points from the April 2020 University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

The latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll focused almost exclusively on Texans’ attitudes about the Coronavirus, its impact (including the economy), and the response of government and elected officials to the pandemic. We’ve already written about Texans’ struggle to reconcile powerful economic concerns with the widely (if not quite universally) acknowledged seriousness of the public health hazard confronting the country and the state, and provided a compendium of poll results related Texans’ views of Governor Greg Abbott as the twin crises wrack Texas. And, of course, Ross Ramsey and Brandon Formby wrote five stories about the poll in The Texas Tribune last Friday and Saturday (link, link, link, link, link). We pulled out several data points that might have gotten missed in the wealth of results from the first public poll in the state to focus on the coronavirus —  and one point that no one should forget.

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A governor balancing noisy resistance to staying at home with the rest of his political base

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

Gov. Greg Abbott faces pushback toward stay-at-home policy within his own party, but a larger number of Republicans are willing to take measures to protect public health. 

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Texans' views of Governor Greg Abbott and his handling of COVID-19 as Texas contemplates "opening up"

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

The latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll focused on attitudes toward the COVID-19 pandemic and the responses to it, and lands amidst widespread speculation about Governor Greg Abbott’s promised updates on modifications to the statewide stay-at-home orders he issued less than a month ago on April 2. That speculation is intense among Texans subject to it, but is also being anticipated at the national level given Texas’ role as a conservative policy bellwether as well as the criticism of other state’s seemingly premature loosening of their own stay at home measures (see Georgia). 

With Abbott in the spotlight in the state and the nation Monday, we’ve gathered several results focused on attitudes toward the governor and the policies implemented in Texas by both Abbott and localities  — and presumably subject to change.

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