From Donald Trump’s three wins of Texas’ electoral votes to his extended riffing on the virtues of Gov. Greg Abbott’s like-minded border policy at one of the Inauguration after-parties, Texas looms large in the MAGAverse. It’s not news that Trump holds sway over the lion’s share of Texas Republicans, and polling by the Texas Politics Project in the aftermath of the 2024 election finds Texas Republicans’ continuing enthusiasm for the returning president. However, the poll also reveals tensions in the mishmash of policies, priorities, and grievances Trump offered during the campaign and is now actively pursuing as president.
Given the magnitude of Trump’s 14-point victory in the last election, it’s not surprising that the first post-election University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll found Trump earning his highest favorability ratings since the poll started testing voters’ views of Trump in 2015 – 56% favorable versus 39% unfavorable. Perhaps even more striking (especially for those following the factional fighting among both national and Texas Republicans in recent years), 93% of Texas’ GOP voters had a favorable view of Trump — also an all-time high going back to 2015.
Republicans also remain broadly supportive of many of the Trump administration’s promises. But the relative priorities they assign to specific elements of Trump’s agenda reveal tensions — some inherent, some self-made — present in a body of promises that Trump made during the heat of a presidential campaign. The potential policy collisions emerge in part from the Trump campaign’s strategic efforts to attract the support of swing voters and dissatisfied Democrats, and in part from some of Trump’s longtime hobby horses – especially his embrace of tariffs and his hostility toward immigration.
Views of Trump’s apparent policy priorities
The December UT/TxPP poll asked Texas voters to assess the priority the Trump administration should give to each of 10 policy goals highlighted during the campaign and the subsequent transition, as well as a follow-up asking each respondent which goal among those 10 should be the administration’s top priority. Respondents were given the option of rating each a “very high priority”, a “high priority”, a “medium priority”, a “low priority”, or “not a priority.”
Not surprisingly, Trump’s agenda received little support from Texas Democrats, among whom only three goals found a third or more of Democrats saying each should be a “very high priority”, with lowering the price of goods and services leading the pack (55% of Democrats saying this should be a “very high priority” of the Trump administration), followed at some distance by reducing the flow of fentanyl into the country (39%), and cutting taxes for individual taxpayers (33%).
Trump’s agenda finds significantly more support among Texas Republicans, with 4 of the 10 goals rated as a “very high priority” by a majority of Republicans: Reducing the flow of fentanyl into the country (60%); strengthening the national defense (59%); lowering the prices of goods and services (56%); and deporting immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally (55%).
These focal points come as no surprise and match what GOP voters had been telling us throughout 2024 (and in some cases much earlier).
The economy looms large among Texas voters, as it does in the rest of the country. Throughout 2024, voters of all stripes indicated their concern about prices, with 77% of Republicans and 70% of all Texas voters saying that they were “very concerned” about prices in December 2024 polling.
More familiar concerns echoing more historically familiar conservative worries were also evident in 2024 polling. Asked in June of last year about threats facing the United States, 65% of Texas Republicans cited immigration as an “extremely serious” threat, along with 45% who said the power of the federal government and 42% who said restrictions on free speech rights.
While initial thrusts by the Trump administration reflect these priorities, like the DOGE project, the administration's apparent freeze on federal grants and aid, and the issuance of anti-DEI measures, the plurality told us in the run-up to the election that the economy and/or prices were the major issues driving their vote in 2024.
The combination of this perpetual concern over the economy and the likely effects of the implementation of some of Trump’s banner economic promises continues to raise serious questions about how voters will respond if mass deportations and tariffs come at the expense of continuing increases in prices and the cost of living for most Texans.
This tension is apparent in the data: while at least 40% of Texas Republicans said that 7 of the 10 Trump Administration goals were “very high priorities”, only 15% said the same about increasing tariffs on imported goods, while only 13% said the same about cutting taxes for large businesses — another tension that becomes apparent when acknowledging significant GOP concerns about the national debt and budget deficit.
Priority ratings for the Trump Administration among Texas Republicans (December 2024 University of Texas / Texas Politics Project Poll)
|
|
A “very high priority”
|
Top Priority |
Deport immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally |
55% |
32% |
Lower the prices of goods and services |
56% |
25% |
Reduce the size of the federal government |
45% |
11% |
Strengthen national defense |
59% |
9% |
Reduce the flow of fentanyl in the country |
60% |
6% |
Cut taxes for individual taxpayers |
40% |
5% |
Limit U.S. aid to foreign allies |
28% |
3% |
End government diversity, equity, and inclusion programs |
44% |
2% |
Increase tariffs on imported goods |
15% |
1% |
Cut taxes for large businesses |
13% |
1% |
The tension between punitive tariffs on foreign countries in order to spur American investment and continued concerns about prices is apparent when asking what should be the Trump administration’s top priority, with only 1% of GOP voters saying it should be tariffs, compared to a quarter saying lowering the price of goods and services, and even 11% who say reducing the size of the federal government.
The top priority of Republican voters remains the deportation programs that Trump repeatedly promised on the campaign trail. Those promises remain at center stage in the opening weeks of Trump’s second presidency, with multiple executive orders related to immigration and the border, and the opening salvos of ICE raids, including this past weekend in Texas.
But these programs also pose the potential for economic disruption, depending on their scale. The conflict Trump supporters might experience between supporting the deportation of immigrants and disliking second or third order economic effects is likely to be politically manageable for the Trump Administration, at least in the short run. Such is the duration and intensity of anti-immigrant impulses among Trump’s base, in contrast with their much softer interest in tariffs.
But contradictory impulses lurk in other priorities as well. Strengthening the national defense is likely to run headlong into conflict with decreasing the budget deficit and or the national debt. DOGE and abrupt decrees halting spending present as ways to create resources for a new burst of military spending, but as deficit-hawk Republicans like Chip Roy are already suggesting, the math is unlikely to add up without deeper, politically difficult cuts.
Nor is Trump’s steadfast, presumably legacy-minded dedication to tax cuts likely to help either the budgetary or the political calculus. Another clear point of friction with reupping Trump’s soon-to-expire 2017 tax cuts is the relative priority Texas voters place cutting taxes for individual taxpayers – a very high priority of 40% of Texas’ GOP voters – compared to the much smaller share who express the same level of urgency for cutting taxes for large business, a meager 13%.
While all newly-elected presidents find themselves reconciling competing campaign promises with governing priorities once in office, the powerful contradictory forces within the Trump agenda for governing go beyond the usual need to choose priorities and navigate trade-offs. Trump’s lack of an organized philosophical or ideological orientation, combined with his erratic, personalistic political style, guarantee an overall policy approach likely to veer into contradiction, if not incoherence, if they guide governance. The volume and velocity of Trump’s first days in office seem designed to throw his opponents off-balance, overwhelming them and any institutional checks that might get in the way with the quantity and scope of a self-consciously disruptive approach. Less than a month into the new administration, this seems to be working in the short-term: the political opposition to Trump’s various measures is scattered, and the institutional response seems either disoriented or simply submissive.
While the mixture of hair-on-fire and bending of the knee suggest that the strategy is working as intended, the chaos of these early days masks the longer term dangers – it doesn’t resolve the contradictions. The initial burst of MAGA greatest hits – the anti-DEI crusades, the ICE raids, the January 6 pardons, the daily doses of the general Strongman Vibes – provides a short term burst of energy that will continue to propel the administration through its early months. But polling data in Texas, a MAGA stronghold, suggest that in the longer term, Trump’s efforts to meet the core economic expectations of his voters will be the more meaningful test – particularly those for whom Trumpian chaos was secondary to the festering economic dissatisfaction and skepticism about Democratic stewardship that drove the 2024 campaign.
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