Blogs: August 2022

In a new Second Reading Podcast, James Henson & Joshua Blank talk about President Biden's new offensive on the threat to democracy posed by forces in the Republican Party – and how much it will resonate in GOP-dominated Texas.

There are Democratic votes to be had in rural Texas. Looking back at polling between 2015 and June 2022, on average over that time span, 61.75% of rural Texas voters have identified as Republicans and 25.61% as Democrats. The data don’t demonstrate significant fluctuations in the party identification patterns of Texas’ rural voters over time, though the Republican share has not been less than 64% in 6 UT/Texas Politics Project polls conducted between June 2021 and June 2022. Democratic identification among rural voters has stood at 22% in each of three surveys conducted so far in 2022. The remainder of the rural registered voter pool, 12.57% on average, identify as independent, by which we mean voters who neither identify with, nor consistently lean toward, either party. So while a non-trivial share of Democrats appear to remain in Texas’ rural areas, in the recent term, the GOP advantage does seem to be slightly on the increase — consistent with broader trends in party system dynamics.

In a new Second Reading Podcast, James Henson & Joshua Blank assess the potential impact of Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke's campaign efforts in rural parts of the state.

In a new Second Reading Podcast, James Henson & Joshua Blank talk about the politics of Republican responses to the aftermath of the Mar-a-Lago search, and the broader context of the decay of democratic norms and institutions.

In a new Second Reading Podcast, James Henson & Joshua Blank talk about some political developments in Texas this week, and the nasty reactions to the execution of a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago.

The Conservative Political Action Conference, meeting in Dallas August 4-7, bills itself as “the largest and most influential gathering of conservatives in the world.” Marketing aside, the marquee speakers at this years Dallas confab – former U.S. president Donald Trump and Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban – testify to how powerful currents of authoritarianism and nativism are bringing to the surface a unabashedly reactionary resurgence within mainstream conservatism in the U.S. and Europe.