The Texas Politics Project is a hub of non-partisan activities designed to cultivate informed understanding of and engagement with Texas government and politics. These efforts combine research, educational, and public affairs activities.

Tracking Texas public opinion. The Texas Politics Project conducts multiple statewide public opinion polls in Texas every year. The polling enterprise began in 2008, and led to the creation of the longest-running and most extensive public archive of Texas public opinion polling. The poll is a uniquely transparent, accessible source of Texas public opinion data, providing access to hundreds of thousands of free graphics files of all the results, as well as full documentation, including the poll questionnaire, extensive crosstabs, and data files, for every poll. Find results from the latest poll on our latest poll page, interpretation and and analysis in the Texas Politics Project blog, and a search tool to find data from the thousands of results gathered over more than 60 surveys.

Supporting political and governmental internships. The Texas Politics Project maintains the internship bulletin board, which for a decade has provided an open-access, public clearing house for governmental and political internships. The bulletin board enables political and governmental internship hosts to post their opportunities and potential interns to look for internships, without any cost to either. Texas Politics Project executive director James Henson supervises the political and governmental internship program in UT Austin’s Department of Government, which is attached to an upper-division course for majors (GOV 374N). The Texas Politics Project also collaborates with other UT entities to produce the Texas Legislative Internship Seminar each legislative session.

Producing low-cost educational resources. We partner with Soomo Learning to produce and maintain one of the first native-to-digital online textbook for introductory government, Texas Politics, now in its 13th edition. The webtext incorporates the Texas Politics Project’s on-the-ground perspective on Texas politics and government, as well as using up-to-date public opinion data to engage students in interactive exercises and investigations that enable instructors to meet core requirements in state-mandated courses. We also provide a host of legacy instructional resources, which supplement the hundreds of thousands of free downloadable graphics in multiple file formats in our searchable polling archive.

Public affairs outreach. As part of our mission to provide non-partisan public resources to inform an evidence-based discussion of Texas politics and government, Texas Politics Project principals participate in public events, record the Second Reading podcast, and serve as a resource for news media and both public and private groups. 

 

Texas Politics is a project of Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services (LAITS), a unit of the College of Liberal Arts, and the Department of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. 

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External channels

The Texas Politics Project maintains a presence on social media.  You can follow our accounts on the following platforms:

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Listen to the Second Reading Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, LAITS Podcasting, or on the Texas Politics Project blog.