Blogs: Democratic Party

James Henson and Joshua Blank talk over some of the political and institutional implications of the mid-decade redistricting in Texas In the wake of Texas House Democrats' return to the Capitol and the passage of the hotly contested new Congressional map by the reconvened House.

James Henson talks with veteran political reporter Gromer Jeffers, Jr., about his recent reporting on national Democrats' struggles after the 2024 election, and Texas Democrats position in the state House of Representatives.

Daron Shaw, Josh Blank, and James Henson discuss news highs for Donald Trump amidst persistent economic concerns along with other new findings from the just-released February 2025 University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll.

In a special Second Reading Podcast, listen to a panel recorded at the 2022 Texas Tribune Festival last weekend with reporters covering the 2022 elections in four of the most competitive states in the country – Georgia, Nevada, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Jim Henson talked with Jon Ralston of The Nevada Independent, Greg Bluestein of The Atlanta Journal-Constituiton, Andy Chow, Statehouse correspondent for Ohio's NPR and PBS stations, and Angela Couloumbis of Spotlight PA about the dynamics in these four key states in a panel recorded Saturday September 24 at this year's Tribfest in Austin.

As the Texas Democratic Party holds its election-year convention in Dallas, we’ve compiled a selection of public opinion results among Texas Democrats from our extensive polling data archive.

In a new Second Reading Podcast, Jim Henson and Josh Blank consider the broader context of immigration and border security politics _ and why those politics are so persistent.

While there are other conceivable mobilization scenarios in which the policy output of 2021 might endanger GOP incumbents in 2022, public opinion polling in Texas strongly suggest that unpopular policy, even extremely unpopular policy, whether coming from the left or the right, is unlikely to spur many partisans to vote for a candidate of the opposing party.

For those who focus on the historical arc of partisan competition in Texas politics, it’s hard not to cast independents as somewhere between the ultimate anti-heroes and a group of extras and bit players suddenly thrust into the spotlight in the drama of 2020. For the better part of the last two decades of Texas elections, political independents were, if not irrelevant, at least a pretty distant thought in handicapping election outcomes. The increased level of competition in races, both statewide, but especially down ballot in 2018, the consistently tight margins in polling on the presidential race in Texas, and the inherent unpredictability of independents as a group have suddenly made them the focus of both campaigns and those who prognosticate about them. That unpredictability makes it very tough to anticipate their impact on this, or any, election. But as polling shows a large group of them soured on Donald Trump, the preferences of independents now loom large over the 2020 contests in Texas.

With at least some Texans going to the polls to vote in primary elections, it's a good time to take a look at the ideological orientation of Texas partisans. In a piece in the Texas Tribune yesterday, we looked at the ideological dispositions of Texas Democrats in the context of the Democratic presidential nominating contest. That exercise informed (some of) the selection of the particular data snapshots presented below (like the perhaps suprising results from Democrats by location and age). But with the related processes of ideological sorting and increased polarization taking place in Texas (as in much of the rest of the US) and a number of contested primary races in Congressional and state legislative seats taking place, it's worth revisiting the state of ideological play in both parties – particularly given that judgements about the liberalism of Democratic voters and the conservatism of Repulican voters in the state will be part of the unfolding punditry and post-election analysis over the next 48 hours.

Pete Buttigieg's suspension of his presidential nomination campaign has drawn attention from Texas observers and reporters to the second choices of Buttigieg resopndents in Texas polling, which tend not to be included in default cross tab files. Rice University's Mark Jones is a principal in the team that conducted the the Hobby School of Public Affairs poll (along with Renée Cross, Jim Granato, and Agustín Vallejo), and tweeted their Buttigieg second choices a bit ago. To save everybody some time, here are Buttigieg second choices from that poll and the February University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll. Per the table, field dates overlapped some in February, with the usual noise of ongoing events to be taken into consideration. (And if you're involved with any of the other polls that have come out in the intervening period, feel free to email us and we'll add your data with a link to you poll, too.)