Joshua Blank

After an active legislative session fueled by a historic budget surplus, the latest University of Texas/Texas Politics project poll finds Texans giving legislative policy efforts mixed reviews amidst complex cross-currents in attitudes about policies, politics, and government.

After a regular legislative session that found lawmakers attempting to use a historic budget surplus to address major fiscal issues and infrastructure needs while also pushing some cultural hot buttons, the latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll found Texas voters with low expectations of the impact of their actions, and dim views of the legislature’s responsiveness.

When asked in general terms about their confidence in legislative efforts to address areas deemed critical by voters in Texas Politics Project polling conducted earlier in the session, most Texas voters lacked confidence in lawmakers’ efforts. Fewer than one in five voters was willing to say they were ‘very’ or ‘extremely’ confident that the legislature had increased the reliability of the electric grid or the water supply, improved the safety of Texas’ public schools, or improved security along the Texas-Mexico border.

As the Texas Senate begins the historically unprecedented process of trying the suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton on 31 articles of impeachment, a majority of Texas’ registered voters think the House was justified in impeaching the three-term incumbent, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll.

Asked whether they thought the Texas House of Representatives was justified in impeaching Attorney General Ken Paxton, 50% said it was justified, 17% said it was not, and a third (33%) had no opinion.

With the Texas House of Representatives poised to consider 20 articles of impeachment against Attorney General Ken Paxton, we’ve pulled several looks at voters’ views of the Attorney General from the Texas Politics Project archives.

Any issue that finds partisans on one side in overwhelming agreement over the fundamentals of an issue pitted against a divided opposition is one that provides major political advantages for the unified side. Legislating the lives of transgender people is one of those issues. 

With the flare-up of heated hostilities in the House over their version of a state border police proposal (which eventually passed in diluted form after the Speaker-endorsed HB 20 went down onto a point of order), and the renewed crisis underway at the border, we have compiled an updated set of results from the Texas Politics Project archive to illustrate patterns of public opinion on the subject in Texas – and how aggressive enforcement policies on the border align with the attitudes of Republican voters in Texas. 

The latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll found a striking degree of aggregate, bi-partisan support for the more fundamental policy proposals that are currently mired in various parts of the legislative process. Texas voters expressed their strongest and most widespread support for legislative action in response to problems that have affected many Texans’ daily lives in recent years: reliable power in their homes and businesses, access to clean water, the safety of students and teachers in Texas schools, and relief from property taxes driven up by steep, consistent growth in real estate values.

The latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll finds large majorities of Texans saying that it’s important for the legislature to improve the reliability of the state’s energy grid and water supply while reducing property taxes – even as disagreements among the state’s Republican leadership about how to accomplish some of these goals, particularly property tax reduction, but also grid reliability, continue to boil over in public.

The poll reveals much less agreement and more partisan division in opinions about what the legislature needs to accomplish, and in response to specific policy proposals, especially on social and cultural issues that continue to roil politics across the nation, including abortion, transgender rights, and education.

In December 2022, we asked which media they used as a source for news in the previous week. Then in February 2023, we followed up with more specific questions about use of different social media platforms, and voters’ views of them. Below, we break down those results, and look into the different media ecosystems of the state’s Republican and Democratic voters.

With the public education agenda packed during this year’s legislative session, below are some general observations about Texas voters’ attitudes toward and about the state’s public education system from over 10 years of University of Texas Polling.