Blogs: 2020 Election

This post focuses on results from an extensive battery of immigration and border security results, then presents an overview of highlights from the February 2024 University of Texas / Texas Politics Project Poll. A majority of Texas voters support making it harder for migrants fleeing violence in their home countries to seek asylum in the U.S., while majorities also support many of the controversial measures undertaken by Governor Greg Abbott and the Texas Legislature in response to the situation at the southern border that have received significant national attention this winter, according to the February 2024 University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll. The 59% of Texas voters who favor making it harder for migrants fleeing violence in their home countries to seek asylum in the U.S. includes nearly three quarters of Republicans (71%) and nearly half of Democratic voters (48%).

The 2024 primary elections in Texas are among the most contested and the most heated of any legislative primaries since the establishment of the near-monopoly of state government after the Republican sweep of the 2002 elections. Governor Greg Abbott, Attorney General Ken Paxton, and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick have all waded into GOP primary contests with endorsements, campaign resources, and very hot rhetoric in multiple House races, opposing an unprecedented number of Republican incumbents.

Three years after rioters violently overran the U.S. Capitol and disrupted the counting of electoral college votes to ratify Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, the deep divisions and decay in institutional trust that fueled the riot remain starkly apparent in Texas public opinion.

In advance of Trump’s planned campaign kick-off in Waco, Texas, we have gathered some polling data to provide context for how Texans – most importantly Texas Republicans and independents – view the former president before his high profile visit. Overall, Trump appears to have retained the high regard of Texas Republicans, albeit amidst signs of some dampening enthusiasm. But large swathes of GOP voters remain not just positively inclined toward him; they also continue to believe the mythology surrounding his loss in 2020, and remain focused on the grievances that fed his takeover of the Republican Party in the 2016 election.

The House Select Committee investigating the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 kicked off a series of televised public hearings Thursday night with a prime time event intended to reignite interest in the subject of their work and provide some teasers of what’s yet to come in future public hearings. Data in the Texas Politics Project polling archive provides some context for how the resumed discussion of January 6 and related matters are likely to land among different groups of Texas voters.

In a new Second Reading Podcast, Jim Henson and Josh Blank take a close look Latino voting patterns in Texas – and what common media narratives miss about the subject.

As campaigns and observers attempt to figure out where the most competitive congressional races will be in 2022, we can assess the change in competitiveness in electoral districts after redistricting by comparing the change in top-of-the-ticket 2020 vote shares won by major party candidates with the same results calculated using the new district lines.

As campaigns and observers attempt to figure out where the most competitive legislative races will be in 2022, we can assess the change in competitiveness in electoral districts after redistricting by comparing the change in top-of-the-ticket 2020 vote shares won by major party candidates with the same results calculated using the new district lines.

As campaigns and observers attempt to figure out where the most competitive legislative races will be in 2022, we can assess the change in competitiveness in electoral districts after redistricting by comparing the change in top-of-the-ticket 2020 vote shares won by major party candidates with the same results calculated using the new district lines.

Public opinion polling in the aftermath of the election, and after a legislative session blown up by the intensive debate over GOP-sponsored election legislation, shows that trust in Texas’ official election results were not strengthened by the legislation pushed with deep determination by Republican legislators and signed with great fanfare by Governor Greg Abbott. In fact, both Democrats and Republicans showed a slight decrease in the intensity with which they believe in the validity of Texas elections. Only among independents – a generally less attentive and political engaged group – did belief in the accuracy of state elections increase.