Blogs: State Government

The Texas Politics Project has released the results of the first University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll conducted in the interim between the general election and the kickoff of a Texas legislative session. The poll included a variety of questions about institutions, groups, and actors in Texas as the newly-elected 88th Texas Legislature considers their agenda at a critical time in the state’s history, while also continuing to track trends in Texans’ views of the job performance of elected officials and important problems and issues in the state and country.

The latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll focused on attitudes toward the COVID-19 pandemic and the responses to it, and lands amidst widespread speculation about Governor Greg Abbott’s promised updates on modifications to the statewide stay-at-home orders he issued less than a month ago on April 2. That speculation is intense among Texans subject to it, but is also being anticipated at the national level given Texas’ role as a conservative policy bellwether as well as the criticism of other state’s seemingly premature loosening of their own stay at home measures (see Georgia). With Abbott in the spotlight in the state and the nation Monday, we’ve gathered several results focused on attitudes toward the governor and the policies implemented in Texas by both Abbott and localities — and presumably subject to change.

It’s not lost on participants in the legislative process, from members to their staffs, from the lobby to the state agencies, that the maneuvering to shape the agenda of the 85th Texas Legislature is well underway. While the 2016 presidential election dominates political coverage even more than usual, outside the spotlight the pace and volume of efforts to get issues on the state legislature's agenda increase daily. The Texas Tribune’s annual festival at UT Austin weekend before last generated lots of clues about what issues might rise to the surface -- and glimpses of how the friction between the chambers, as well as within and between the parties, is shaping the jockeying for position in Austin.