Joshua Blank

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?

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.

The closer we get to Election Day, the more attention gets paid to horse race results in polling – often at the expense of a deeper look into what polling can tell us about the context of that election. Much of University of Texas/Texas Politics Project polling conducted during the election season aims to illuminate the context of the election and, maybe even more important now that our polling project is well into its second decade, the arc of the ongoing developments in Texas politics.We’ve gathered some of the results from the recently released October poll (conducted from the 2nd through the 10th) to give some more depth to the trial ballots – and to capture some of the contextual elements of the political universe in Texas as the 2024 election enters its final days. (And, to be as gentle as possible, to start thinking about the upcoming legislative session and what promises to be a very active and interesting round of elections for statewide offices in 2026.)

With early voting about to kick off in Texas, the latest 2024 University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll finds former president Donald Trump leading Vice-President Kamala Harris 51% to 46% among likely voters in the presidential race in Texas. Green Party candidate Jill Stein was the choice of 2%, while Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver received 1%. In the U.S. Senate race, incumbent Republican Ted Cruz holds a 7-point lead among likely voters over his Democratic challenger, Congressman Colin Allred, 51% to 44%, with Libertarian Ted Brown the choice of 4%.

The vice presidential candidates – Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Tim Walz – will get their evening to shine next week as they participate in what is likely to be their only debate of the 2024 campaign at 8:00 PM Central Time on Tuesday evening, October 1. The August 2024 University of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll was fielded after the announcement of both vice presidential picks, and included items assessing the extent to which Texas voters hold favorable, or unfavorable opinions of each. 

A new round of interventions in the voting process by Texas state officials coincides with the reemergence of widespread doubts about elections and voting among Republican voters in the most recent statewide polling by the Texas Politics Project. The latest actions of state officials and new evidence of the persistence of doubts about the conduct of elections among Republican voters emerge from the rhetoric and policy of elected officials that have shaped public attitudes since the turn of the 21st century. These latest manifestations of declining trust in the electoral process, inflamed by Donald Trump's insistent propagation of the fiction that elections are being corrupted by the votes of undocumented immigrants, suggest that Texans are approaching the Rubicon in terms of their ability to maintain shared trust in the state's deployment of democracy.

The much-anticipated, lone presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump is one of the rare occasions where the breathless coverage leading up to the Tuesday evening event probably isn’t grossly over-hyped. It’s a lot, to be sure; but given the impact of the first presidential debate, it’s hard to argue that the stakes aren’t high, whether or not the debate lives up to the anticipation

The latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll finds former president Donald Trump leading Vice-President Kamala Harris 49% to 44% in a head-to-head match-up in the presidential race in Texas. Nine percent chose an unspecified “someone else,” and 6% were undecided. This result follows a June UT/Texas Politics Project Poll in which then-candidate Joe Biden trailed Trump by 7 points, 46% to 39%. 

Whatever the mix of factors — a lack of awareness of the specifics of what the legislature has tried to do, the extreme complexity of the issues involved, or a general lack of trust in political institutions — polling throughout the two sessions has shown a consistent a lack of confidence in what the state’s political leadership is doing to increase the reliability and resilience of the grid.

While not the current nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as the clear front-runner for the nomination as Democrats look to coalesce around an alternative to President Biden now that he's ended his 2024 campaign.