Blogs: 2014 Election

Greg Abbott has always been more comfortable making this campaign about Wendy Davis than about the issues that Davis wants to discuss. The timing of Davis’ book release may have inadvertently helped him do just that.

The ongoing CBS News/NYT The Upshot/YouGov Battleground Tracker released the results of their second wave of polling in the 2014 US Senate races today (in what seems like something of a soft launch). Results from the Texas Senate race find incumbent John Cornyn still holding a 20-percentage point lead over Democrat David Alameel (51-31).

In the June 2014 University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll, we asked registered voters under what circumstances a woman should be able to obtain an abortion.

The loud and public back-and-forth among Texas Republicans this year has given them something Democrats are sorely lacking: an honest conversation about their party's future.

Partisan charges of political corruption have flared around the edges of the 2014 Texas elections, yet they haven’t become the focus of media coverage in the marquee races or fundamentally changed their dynamics or our expectations of the outcomes in November. Why is it that intimations of corruption and political malfeasance stay in our peripheral vision while rarely coming into the kind of Sharpstown-like spotlight that defines an election?

Both Wendy Davis and Greg Abbott have been reluctant to make abortion a major campaign issue, but as polling shows, Abbott's hesitance likely benefits him more than Davis' benefits her.

Education policy is usually a winner for Democratic candidates, but in Texas, things are more nuanced, especially when it comes to education spending. This year's race for governor race is a great example.

In several races, Tuesday's election results didn't match the findings of the University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll two weeks earlier. What happened?

Reporting of this week’s UT/TT Poll can’t help but present a simple story: Davis is down, Abbott is up. But these latest results reflect factors that are much more deeply rooted than the low-hanging fruit making headlines and feeding campaign emails.

In the short run, the GOP appears to be embarking on a winning strategy to mobilize a reliable and larger electorate using the rhetoric that motivates its voters.