Keyword: Independents

The Second Reading Podcast: Medium-Cool Takes on the 2020 Election in Texas

Some Texas Notes for Election Day 2020

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

A dramatic increase in competition between the two parties amidst an early voting surge that has seen Texas leading the country in turnout so far has thrust the state closer to center stage in the fateful final days of the 2020 election. We thought it might be useful to flag some aspects of data from polling and historical voting records that prove useful context for reporting on the 2020 election in Texas. 

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After years in the wings, independent voters take center stage in Texas in 2020

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

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.

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As the Democratic old guard frets, Bernie Sanders finds a Texas foothold

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

Sanders' success in Texas is an expression of a real change that, given the very demographics Democrats have been anticipating for years, will continue to shape the party’s electoral fortunes.

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Impeachment of Donald Trump Might Give Texas Independents a Role to Play in 2020

| By: Jim Henson and Joshua Blank

As the 2020 election campaign gets underway in Texas, independents have become more important -- and more interesting. They are more important because Texas elections appear to be more politically competitive than they’ve been since before the turn of the century. They are more interesting both because their votes have the possibility of determining some election outcomes, and because their responses to the most powerful political figure shaping the 2020 election, Donald Trump, are much more divided and less fixed than are those of traditional partisans, most noticeably on the subject of Trump’s impeachment. This combination of factors makes independent voters more consequential in Texas elections than at anytime in recent memory, yet harder to handicap when it comes to their voting behavior.

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How Independent Are Texas Independents?

| By: Adam Myers

Do the majority of Texans who call themselves independents actually behave that way at the polls? The inaugural UT/TT poll provides a decisive answer to that question: No.

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Keywords: Independents