Blog Posts

Jim Henson and Josh Blank consider the ascension of Dustin Burrows as Houses Speaker, and revisit UT/Texas Politics polling on Texans' attitudes toward the emerging Trump agenda as the president issues a flurry of executive orders.

The UT/Texas Politics Project Poll Team discuss what their December polling in Texas tells us about public opinion and potential cross-currents buffeting the Trump administration & Congressional Republicans in 2025 - with James Henson, Daron Shaw, and Joshua Blank.

As the Texas Legislature convenes for its 89th session, a University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll reveals that the concerns that prevailed during the 2024 election continue to shape Texas voters’ views of what lawmakers should prioritize in 2025.

A review of extensive data on Latino attitudes in the Texas Politics Project polling archive in conjunction with election returns and exit polling suggests that the signs of Trump’s success in 2024 were hiding in plain sight, albeit amidst fluctuations in the data attributable to both methodological and empirical factors.

In a podcast recording hours before strong indications that Dade Phelan is withdrawing from consideration, Jim Henson and Josh Blank join the ongoing speculation about whether Dade Phelan will remain Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.

Jim Henson & Joshua Blank look at what UT/Texas Politics Project polling data can (and can’t) tell us about the big Latino vote for Donald Trump in Texas.

Jim Henson and Joshua Blank take a morning-after look at the outcome of the 2024 election in Texas.

Article after article covering the prominence of immigration and border security in the Republican campaigns for U.S. Senate and president in Texas have rightly noted the long-established salience of immigration and the border to Republican voters, and the central role of these issues in the “closing arguments” of GOP candidates at the top of the ballot in Texas, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. But clear as this pattern is, it doesn’t explain why the issue maintains salience in the face of clear policy changes by the Biden administration, or the subsequent near-term decline in migrant traffic at the U.S.-Mexico border from historic highs in the last 11 months to the fewest encounters in the last four years. It can easily be made to seem like a puzzle: if the problem has been addressed and has abated, why is it still so important to Republican voters?

Jim Henson and Joshua Blank review Texas attitudes on the issues being promoted to attempted comparative advantage by the presidential and U.S. Senate campaigns in Texas: immigration & the border, abortion, and transgender rights.

In both the Presidential and U.S. Senate races, efforts by the candidates to portray their opponents as extremists while presenting themselves as comparatively moderate and bipartisan has had mixed effects. Overall, this messaging is resonating more with candidates’ partisans in the state than with their opponents’ base voters, making these tactics likely to be more successful at mobilizing partisans than at persuading the opposition's voters that their own candidate is too radical. Nor do the ostensible efforts to scare independents with claims of ideological extremism seem to be having the effects the campaigns desire. A closer look at the University of Texas / Texas Politics illuminates how the efforts at contrasting moderation with extremism have fared – but also suggests that the surprising attraction of the middle in Texas politics is likely to be fleeting once the U.S. Senate race is settled and behind us.