Jim Henson and Joshua Blank review Texas attitudes on the issues being promoted to attempted comparative advantage  by the presidential and U.S. Senate campaigns in Texas: immigration & the border, abortion, and transgender rights.

With early voting about to kick off in Texas, the latest 2024 University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll finds former president Donald Trump leading Vice-President Kamala Harris 51% to 46% among likely voters in the presidential race in Texas. Green Party candidate Jill Stein was the choice of 2%, while Libertarian Party candidate Chase Oliver received 1%. In the U.S. Senate race, incumbent Republican Ted Cruz holds a 7-point lead among likely voters over his Democratic challenger, Congressman Colin Allred, 51% to 44%, with Libertarian Ted Brown the choice of 4%.

A battery of questions in the latest University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll, and years of data on abortion attitudes in the state, suggest that voters view access to legal abortion with much more nuance than either our inherited labels or the monolithic positions adopted by the two parties admit. While this nuance is bipartisan, the lack of absolutist views is most notable, and most consequential, among Republican voters whose candidates must claim credit, or take blame, for engineering the rollback in abortion rights that is the new political reality in the U.S. – especially in Texas.

Jim Henson and Josh Blank take a deep dive into new UT/Texas Politics Project Poll data revealing nuances in Texans' views of abortion not captured in broad labels like "pro-life" and "pro-choice."

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.

Policy questions included in the February 2024 University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll focused mostly on subjects that previous polls and observation of the campaigns have suggested are issues most likely to be salient in the 2024 election campaigns.

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 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 the latest Second Reading Podcast, Jim Henson and Josh Blank discuss how the attitudes of different elements of the majority Republcan coalition are likely to impact the movement of legislation, or lack thereof,  in hot-button areas as the legislature heats up.

In the latest Second Reading podcast, Jim Henson and Josh Blank look at issues at the intersection of business and state government likely to get attention in the Texas Legislature in 2023.