Blogs: September 2017

The Texas Tribune Festival runs this weekend (September 22-24) right here at The University of Texas at Austin with 10 tracks in addition to special events spread out over all three days. To provide additional context to those of you attending, watching online, or reading about it afterwards, we've annotated some of the panels with relevant University of Texas/Texas Tribune polling results. We've also provided links to get more information like additional cross tabs and question wording, but if you want to look for more, we have a good search tool and lots of tags on our polling search page. Enjoy the festival, and if you find a result to share via social media, the tag for the festival is #Tribfest2017.

Eventually politics will return to discussions of how much money to spend on disaster recovery in the wake of Hurricane Harvey -- where it comes from, how it’s distributed, and who gets how much (some might simply call this politics). In thinking about that eventuality, we’ve produced some maps that combine the counties designated as disaster areas by Governor Greg Abbott with district boundaries for the Texas House and Senate, as well as the party affiliation of the legislators and members in those areas. (This meant jamming a lot in these maps and we’re not cartographers – we’re happy to receive suggestions and corrections – and if you would like to use any of the maps, feel free to download and distribute.) (And also, read on, there's more after the maps.)

The public responses among Texas’ political leadership and in the interest group universe toward Donald Trumps zig-zag moves on DACA largely reflect the sharp cleavage between Democratic and Republican voters on issues related to immigration, as well as conveying the more subtle divisions among different groups in the GOP coalition.