Proyecto Latino and the lead up to the Texas Midterms

LatinXperts – Proyecto Latino – 2026-10-26
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Dr. Angela X Ocampo: All right. Hi, everyone. Welcome back for another episode of LatinXperts. My name is Angela Ocampo, and I’m an assistant professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. And we are really excited to be here with Proyecto Latino. We are a collaborative of social scientists, researchers, scholars students, faculty, and folks who are really interested in disseminating social science evidence about the growing Texas Latino community and the most important needs that they have.

Um, Today, we are extremely excited because we’re gonna be talking about some recent findings from our pre-election [00:01:00] survey. We have with us, two of our members of Proyecto Latino. we have Dr. Angie Gutierrez, and we have Dr. Michael. and so we’re gonna, let them introduce themselves and talk a little bit about um, who they are, and then we’ll dive into the details about the poll.

Dr. Michael Hendon: Hi, I’m Michael Herndon. I’m a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. I’m here at UT Austin to research state and local differences in vote-by-mail, and I’m particularly interested in ballot rejection and all the different ways that, a person who votes by mail can ultimately get their ballot rejected.

and the most popular reason in the past few years is signature discrepancies. A lot of states require their voters to sign their name on their ballot, and it’s up to, a member of election staff to decide whether or not that signature matches the one they have on file. And so I’m doing research to see, you know, those kind of strengths and weaknesses, uh, of that process [00:02:00] and trying to come up with, uh, scientifically backed solutions to really improve the process to make sure that everyone gets a chance to vote.

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: All right. Thank you, Michael. We’re so excited to have you join the Proyecto Latino team here at UT Austin. it’s been a while since we’ve been here. I think we did our last poll in, uh, 2024, and we’re here today to tell you guys about our new poll on the 2026 midterms. So we did this poll. We’re real excited because this time we’re doing a pre-election poll, and we’re gonna do a post-election poll.

So we’ll have data to explain what’s happening going into the race and then what happened and what voters are looking for coming out of the elections. We’re very fortunate that we’re able to do both a pre- and a post-election survey this year because we have very generous funding from the Latino Research Institute.

Shout out to Nancy at the LRI for [00:03:00] supporting our work and helping us get a better understanding of the, uh, voters here in Texas, specifically also the Latino and the Black population. So what’s really unique about the way that we create the survey is that we have a base sample or a Texas sample of five hundred respondents.

So these are you know, representative of the demographics of all voters in the state of Texas. But then we also have an oversample in the survey of an additional five hundred Latino voters and additional five hundred Black voters so that we really can talk about the nuances that are going into these specific communities and how their views might vary from the general Texas population, right?

So we did this survey. It ran from October second until October twentieth. So hot off of the presses, the people are, you know, finishing their survey and going to the polls or maybe have just finished their, uh, voting or thinking about what they [00:04:00] want to happen and, and who they want to vote for, for the next election.

So I think we should just start digging right in. You know, the question that everyone is really interested in is, what is going on with the Senate race? What is happening there? And, you know, we were really excited to look at the data, and what we’re finding is it’s, it’s still a really close race, right?

When we include all of the people who are undecided, but they’re leaning one way or leaning another way, what we find in our Texas sample is that Talarico is currently leading with forty-nine percent of the vote and that Paxton has forty-two percent of the vote. But there’s still nine percent of the electorate out there that is completely undecided.

Dr. Angela X Ocampo: Great. So, when we look at, the Latino sample and the Black sample which we can do, and I think that’s the really exciting thing about this poll and, and we were talking about earlier about other polls and other data. I mean, you hear Texas really has been part of the [00:05:00] national conversation, right?

And, and everybody’s looking at the polls. But I think what’s unique about our poll compared to other polls that are done in the state of Texas is that we can actually say something really meaningful about the Texas overall population, but also the Latino population and the Black population, which oftentimes there’s not enough information and there’s not enough, respondents to be able to say something meaningful about them.

And so we were purposeful in how we designed the survey because we really wanted to have this comparative approach to understand really what the entire Texas population looks like, right? Including just general population, but also Latinos and Black individuals in the state. When we look at the Latino sample, specifically with regards to the Senate race, we see that Talarico actually is doing much better, right, than the, in the general population.

So Talarico is getting a 54% of vote choice, right, among Latinos, 54% support. And Paxton is [00:06:00] getting 36%, much lower than just, uh, Texas voters. And so Latinos are supporting Talarico at a, at a greater rate, and we still have about 9% that are completely undecided. When we look at Black voters we actually see even greater support for Talarico, right?

Quite almost double that among Latinos. But we have, uh, among our Black voters in our, in our sample that 82% of them support Talarico and 11% support Paxton. And we have just a slight less, uh, percentage of them are undecided at 7%.

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Yeah, and I think this is really interesting because, you know, during the primaries, it was a very contested, uh, race between Jasmine Crockett and Talarico, and so there was a lot of concern about whether or not Black voters were gonna get behind Talarico in, uh, the general election race. And we’re seeing that actually they’re the group that is the most supportive right now.

And so [00:07:00] I think those concerns are really not something that we need to be focusing on as we’re getting closer and closer to election day. But looking at favorability, I think, like, this is where we see Ken Paxton still has a big problem among voters. Some of them might be voting for him, but his unfavorables are just so high, right?

Fifty-six percent of the general Texas sample says that they have an unfavorable opinion of Ken Paxton, fifty-five percent of the Latino sample, and seventy-six percent of the Black sample. Whereas when we look at Talarico, his unfavorables are forty-seven percent in the general population, uh, forty percent in the Latino sample, and fifteen percent in the Black sample.

In the base sample, he’s almost at fifty percent favorable. He’s at forty-five percent, right? So, you know, just comparing favorability, you know, [00:08:00] and what people are thinking about when they’re going to the polls, I think this is a really big indicator that Ken Paxton still has some ground to make up here, right?

Dr. Angela X Ocampo: Absolutely. Let’s, uh, talk about the governor’s race, and then maybe we can dive more into other details. In the governor race, we see that with regards to favorability and vote choice amongst our base sample, Abbott has about 41% of unfavorability. And this is quite similar actually to our Latino sample at 42%.

It is much higher among our Black sample at 58%. But we see that in our base sample there’s a greater level of favorability for Abbott, right? High favorability, I should say, for Abbott than in our La- Latino sample. This obviously contrasts with favorability among Black respondents, which is much, much lower, right?

So their high favorable ratings for Abbott are [00:09:00] really, really low. They’re almost half those of the Latino sample and almost a third of, of what the base sample looks like. When we wanna compare that, right, to Abbott’s contender, Gina Hinojosa, we see that, I would say there’s a mixed sort of picture in terms of favorability with regards to our base sample, our Latino sample, and our, and our Black sample.

We see that interestingly, right, favorability among Latinos for Hinojosa those who are very favorable or somewhat favorable are pretty high, right? So we have 31% of the Latino sample views Hinojosa very favorably and 18% at somewhat favorable. But we have the base sample at much lower, uh, with 26% high favorability ratings for Hinojosa.

So here I think we see something interesting, right, which is um, that Latinos seem to have a greater favorability for Hinojosa overall. When we combine those numbers, we see that the total level of favorability for Hinojosa is 49% among all Latinos in our sample, [00:10:00] but 43% among our base sample of, of Texas voters.

And contrasting that to our Black sample, we see that she is pretty liked by 70- 74% of Black respondents, so that’s the total level of favorability. And I think, you know, one interesting thing obviously is like what does that mean, right? How do we think about does favorability translate into vote choice, right?

Are these numbers that we’re talking about in terms of favorability, like, are they gonna carry into whether or not respondents are gonna vote for and, and voters, Texas voters are gonna vote for these candidates? So, what do we find, right? We find that in our base sample, we have about forty-six percent voting for Hinojosa and forty-five percent voting for Abbott.

So that’s a really– it’s pretty close. That’s a one percentage point difference. And I think, you know, we ought to mention, obviously, all of these numbers fall within this margin of error that are kind of part of our study. So I think [00:11:00] we wanna obviously be, be cautious about the way in which we interpret some of these findings, but I think it’s important that, that we talk about them nonetheless.

However, I think what’s striking and important is that among Latino voters we see a, a much greater discrepancy, right? So we see actually fifty percent of our Latino, uh, sample voting for Hinojosa and forty-one percent voting for Abbott

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Yeah. That makes me wonder if there’s, like, a co-ethnic candidate effect going on here if you know, we’re seeing Latinos wanna lend support to the Latina on the ballot or, you know, if some other kind of forces at play here. But it really kind of appears like, you know, that a co-ethnic candidate cue is really doing some work, especially in the Latino sample for her.

I think what’s really interesting, though, is when we’re just looking at approval, there’s still about fifteen percent of the electorate [00:12:00] that is– has no opinion on Hinojosa, so she’s still kind of an unknown quantity to them. What they do know, though, is that it doesn’t really seem like people are too happy with Greg Abbott, right?

So just looking at the responses to Abbott’s job approval, because, you know, he’s been governor for quite some time now in the state of Texas. He’s a known quantity. Fifty percent of the base sample disapproves of the job that Abbott has been doing in office. And I think this is you know, really going to be one of the closest races he’s had.

Among the Latino sample, it’s still fifty percent that disapprove, and among the Black sample, it’s seventy-five percent. So if you’re looking at these polling numbers, uh, and you’re Greg Abbott, you might be starting to sweat a little which I, Last election, you know, you wouldn’t have thought that this would be the position that, that he’s in.

So that– I think that’s really interesting. And it really [00:13:00] speaks to this bigger moment of where the state of Texas is on the map and this kind of bigger conversation that we have about inflation, about the cost of living, about the things that voters really expected the Republican Party to deliver on after the 2024 election.

The question now is, like, are voters actually seeing that relief? And if they’re not seeing that relief, are they now blaming Republicans for this? And what does this mean for when they go to the ballot box on Tuesday?

Dr. Michael Hendon: Yeah. Something I wanted to point out, uh, going back to favorability, is how Talar- both Talarico and Hinojosa are being reported as more favorable than Democrats in general, uh, amongst the base sample and also our Latino and Black sample.

And you see the opposite trend with Republican Ken Paxton, being reported as less [00:14:00] favorable than Republicans in general. And so that kinda speaks to the different candidate qualities, uh, really that Paxton has versus Talarico and Hinojosa. Vers- you know, and s- keeping with Republicans, you see Trump, still being reported as more favorable than Republicans in general.

And so you still see this kind of, The Rep- the Republican Party and Republican, you know, uh, survey respondents still hold Trump high, you know, in their heads above the typical, uh, Republican. So Trump definitely still has a lot of influence here in Texas.

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Yeah, so let’s talk about what Trump approval looks like

Dr. Michael Hendon: Yeah. Let me go to the base sample. So yeah, just in this, I’m looking at, again, the, the Texas sample here, and 27% of people say he’s very favorable, and 13% somewhat favorable, so 40% of respondents. So he’s still, you know, below that 50% mark. he’s not the most [00:15:00] popular person really in this, in, in this survey.

But a lot more popular than, say, a Ken Paxton, who got 17% favorable and 18%, uh, somewhat favorable

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Yeah

Dr. Angela X Ocampo: Talking about Trump, I think one of the interesting things is to think about, well, how individuals who voted for Trump in the previous election, right, in the presidential election, how those voters are gonna vote in this upcoming midterm election. And I think for us who study Latino politics, we are really interested in this question, right?

Because we’ve seen that particularly in Texas and in certain regions of Texas, we’ve seen Latino voters move towards voting for Republican candidates in a greater share than they have historically done so. But I think it’d be really interesting for us to talk about what that means for this midterm, right?

Are we seeing sort of a swing back? What are you all– Like, what are the numbers telling us, and, and how– what do we make of that?

Dr. Michael Hendon: Yeah, this really gets to the question of, like, who are the Trump [00:16:00] loyalists you know, are, are these Trump loyalists gonna support Republican candidates in, in, in this midterm? So yeah, let’s take a look

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Yeah. So one thing that I wanna put out or point out before we look at those numbers is just thinking about these, like, general overall trends that we’re seeing in Texas, right? Up until 20 actually really up until 2024, really, we had been seeing, you know, this kind of shrinking of the Republican vote share, right?

So in 2016, Trump won Texas by nine points. In 2020, you know, Trump won Texas by 5.6 points. But in 2024, Trump won Texas by 13.7 points, right? So we’re seeing this kind of reversion in Texas. And so what a lot of especially thinking like the state legislature was banking on, is that this was real support for Republicans, and it was [00:17:00] lasting support for Republicans, right?

And so there’s this question of, like, is that really going to remain? And are we seeing that those Trump 2024 voters are sticking with the Republican Party in 2026? So, looking at the general Texas sample, among Trump voters, we have about 74% who say that they plan to vote for Ken Paxton. We have another 7% who say that they’re kind of undecided, but they’re leaning more towards Paxton.

And then we have about 12% who say that they plan to vote, uh, for Talarico. When we’re looking at Latino, uh, voters specifically who voted for Trump in 2024 we see that, 74% plan to vote for Paxton, and that’s including those [00:18:00] leaners. But you have about 20% who say that they plan to vote for Talarico, right?

And so, you know, one of the questions that Angela and I got a lot was like, “Well, are Latinos in Texas Republican? Is this what, what we can take from 2024?” And I think the que- the answer to this question is, like, maybe not, right? Like, maybe what we’re seeing is that the Latino vote is actually more of a swing vote in Texas than it is a solidly Democratic or a solidly Republican vote.

And so kind of understanding that the winds can shift on you, I think, is, is one of the big lessons that we’re gonna be taking away from some of these races, right?

Dr. Michael Hendon: Mm-hmm. Yeah, and you point out Latinos, you know, being swing voters. What do you make of what we, what we’re seeing with Black voters who appear to be even more swinging back towards Democrats? Amongst 2024 [00:19:00] Black Trump voters, 24% are gonna vote for Talarico. Mm-hmm. So that’s almost a quarter of, of, of our sample.

Yeah. Um, An even kind of more emphasized trend than what we were just talking about with Latino

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Yeah. Yeah. And I think this is, like, you know, one of the, also one of the narratives you heard in twenty twenty-four was, you know, “Oh, these Black voters are going Republican. These Black voters are going Republican.” And I think, like, people tried it out, and maybe they realized that that didn’t give them the outcomes that they wanted, and so now the people who were being called defectors in twenty twenty-four are, you know, going back to the Democratic Party.

But I think this also means that, like, we should expect there to be movement in the Black electorate. We shouldn’t expect for them to always vote for Democratic candidates all of the time, right? And I think this is one of the stories of, [00:20:00] like, we need to pay attention to all electorates and make sure that we’re meeting the needs of all electorates, because not everyone is going to have, you know, the same concerns, or they might not see that their– themselves reflected in the messages that campaigns have.

So even looking at, like, the top three most important issues, what we find is, like, while the, the base sample and the Latino sample kind of align on what the top three issues are, for Black voters, it really is a cost-of-living story. Cost of living and inflation is fifty-four percent one of the most important issues.

Jobs and the economy rate, rate at twenty-nine percent, and then housing costs and affordability at thirty-four percent for Black voters in Texas. And I think this really screams that there’s an affordability crisis. Uh, “I can’t pay my today bills” that, you know, our Black voters in this sample are really t-telling us through these survey results.[00:21:00]

Dr. Michael Hendon: Yeah. So you were pointing out those top three issues for our Black sample. For reference, the top three issues for our base and Latino sample is very similar. cost of living at number one amongst our Texas sample. 59% of our Texas samples thought- said that cost of living/inflation was their number one issue.

Uh, the number two issue for this Texas sample is jobs and the economy, and then the number three issue is healthcare costs. So another kind of issue that’s affecting people’s wallets, healthcare. Uh, and that was also the third most popular issue amongst, uh, Latinos. So kind of in line with what we’re seeing all over the country people are really concerned about their wallets, you know, their healthcare costs, uh, in- inflation in general their job outlook, and maybe their 401s, things like that.

All, all of these things are what people have in mind when they’re going into the voting booth.

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Mm-hmm. And what’s really interesting is when we look at optimism in terms of personal finances we see [00:22:00] that about forty percent across the board, thirty-eight percent in the Texas sample, thirty-eight percent in the Latino sample, and forty percent among the Black sample say that they’re pessimistic that things are gonna continue to get worse, right?

And so what does that mean for people who are just trying to make ends meet? Among the base sample, the number of people who say that they’re optimistic things are gonna get better is forty-four percent. It’s forty-eight percent among Latinos, which is the highest group, right? And then for the Black sample, forty-four percent think that they’re optimistic that things will get better.

But this kind of strong sentiment that things are bad right now, and you can really feel that in the data

Dr. Michael Hendon: Yeah, I wonder how much of that has to do with, the conflict in Iran and how right now it does not appear that there’s an end in sight. And I think people are associating that with things like inflation and, and the prices that we’re [00:23:00] seeing here, and that could be part of the reason so many are pessimistic

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Yeah. You know things are bad when people in Texas are complaining about their gas prices, right? Yeah. That’s something we hear often in California, not so much in Texas.

Dr. Angela X Ocampo: yeah. I was gonna say, I mean, I think that overall one of the things that I hope our, kind of our listeners take away from this is that we really then shouldn’t be surprised that there are these movements that we see in the electorate, particularly among Latino voters and Black voters um, because these issues are top of mind.

But, you know, like, people are feeling you know, the impact of the Iran war, the impact of gas prices. People are not excited about the future, right? People are, are really nervous. And so, I think that for so long you know, we really thought that partisanship was the thing that always drove you to always pick a particular candidate.

And what we see, particularly with Latino voters and Black voters in Texas and from our sample, is that, [00:24:00] you know, there is movement. And that movement really we can see it through the data, and we can see through what folks are saying are the things that are deeply impacting them, right? Cost of living how expensive it is to, uh, rent or to, you know, pay for certain things, affordability in general.

Their overall you know, costs in healthcare which as we know, right, have been also some of the issues that many of these candidates have have run and are running their campaigns on, right? Addressing many of these affordability issues and cost of living issues. And so I think, you know, I think we have some tools to be able to, like, understand why we might see that movement, and we shouldn’t be so surprised to see it after all.

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And when we look at you know, Trump’s approval, right? We said 60% of the sample in Texas disapproved of Trump. Among those 60% who said that they disapproved of Trump, we asked them, “Well, what are the reasons why you were disapproving of, of Trump?” And the top [00:25:00] issues in the Texas sample, 34% say corruption, 24% say that they’re, uh, they disapprove of Trump because of inflation, and then an- another 13% said it was because of the Iran conflict, right?

So not happy about that at all. Among the Latino sample, what we see is, again, corruption at 33%, inflation at 23%, and actually deportations come up as the third most with 11%. So these are Latinos who are upset with Trump because of the deportations and the way that his a- administration is conducting these deportations.

Among the Black sample, again, it’s inflation and corruption, and then jobs and the economy and housing costs and affordability are tied for third. So again, we see this, this theme of costs and being one of the, the key factors.

Dr. Michael Hendon: I think I have two [00:26:00] thoughts on, on this corruption being the number one issue, is if people see Trump and, and his allies enriching themselves, right? And becoming, you know, more and more wealthy while they are not, you know, climbing this, this kind of social ladder. And so I think those two things are, tied together, this, this corruption of the upper echelons of society and, uh, and, and the people involved in the White House versus, and juxtaposed against kinda your everyday voter who can’t make ends meet right now.

And another interesting thing to think about with, with these reports of corruption being people’s number one issue, you know, this survey was before the news of Jared Kushner’s, uh, alleged corruption, uh, overseas and potentially billions of dollars involved. And so I think that’s gonna be kind of a big issue moving forward in these last, you know, few days going into the, going into the election.

I think corruption is gonna be even more, [00:27:00] top of mind for voters going into this election.

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Mm-hmm. Definitely

Dr. Angela X Ocampo: Absolutely. I mean, I think that I, I wanna dive into some specifics. I just keep having this question that I wanna go back to. I hope it’s okay that I go back to this, but I’m, I’m just curious what you all think about the differences and discrepancies between the support that Talarico’s getting and that Hinojosa’s getting you know, versus like Abbott and Paxton.

But, but I think, you know, even in, in our data, right, people seem to be much more willing to vote for Talarico than to vote for Hinojosa. And, and I’m curious, you know, what you all think. I think in our data you know, some of the discrepancies are there, but I, I, I think I think it’s important. I think that, you know, our poll among, uh, many other polls that have been done also have shown this discrepancy.

And I think this, this is important, right, to kind of think about and discuss

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Yeah. So I have some thoughts. I really think that part of the reason why Talarico, uh, [00:28:00] appears to be doing better than Hina- Hinojosa is because the Senate is a national election, and he’s getting national media coverage, and we’re seeing it on our TikToks and our Instagrams and our, you know, uh, BlueSkys and Xs and insert whatever social media you use here, right?

In a way that Hinojosa is only now starting to get that sort of attention, right? If Texas gets a new governor, yes, that’s a big story, but that’s mostly a big story for Texas. If, if Texas gets a Democratic senator, that’s a big national story that has to do with control of, you know, the Senate chamber, and, and it’s this much larger narrative.

So I think, like, the media has really kind of lagged on the Hinojosa story, which has made it a bit harder for her to get her name out there. Also, Greg Abbott is a very known quantity, [00:29:00] and she is a very unknown quantity. So I think that’s the other kind of aspect that we have to consider of, like, how much do people actually feel like they know her, that they understand her?

You know, for a while, it seemed like people were happy with what Greg Abbott was doing as governor. He’s been reelected. What, this is his fourth time running for governor? So, you know, obviously he had been doing something right. And it isn’t until recently that we’re starting to see the data show these trends that maybe they’re open to a new governor in addition to a Democratic senator.

But it’s, it’s one of these questions of, like, is she gonna have enough time to fill that gap in the next week? And as, you know, early voting indicates, you know, strong enthusiasm, so anything can happen. But it’s, it’s really interesting to think about this gap that you’re– that you mention and, [00:30:00] like, why we see it and you know, what the outcome will be.

Dr. Angela X Ocampo: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think– and to go back to one of the, uh, points that Michael made earlier about candidates, right? I think that they’re just very different candidates in the first place, right? And you know, Talarico does a-appeal to even because of his background, right? Because of you know, his religious beliefs, because of the way he talks about the Bible, because of, right, who he is might be drawing just– it, it might be a candidate who’s, who appeals more to individuals that are willing to, you know, vote and cross the party lines.

Whereas, Hinojosa may not necessarily offer that for them. And so in, you know, voters will distinguish between candidates, and I think that they’re just very different candidates to begin with. And so it might be that voters are just much more enthusiastic about voting for a candidate that seems closer to them, at least still has a tint of maybe conservatism in, in some way, if we can call it that.

Whereas [00:31:00] Hinojosa may not, right? In their perspective. And so I think that that’s a possibility. But yeah, I hear you about the, the way in which, you know, Talarico has just been in the, in national media all the time. I mean, he’s interviewed in podcasts all the time, and and he, he’s everywhere.

And then you sort of think about, well, what about Hinojosa, right? Where is she? Right. She is just, right, in Texas, and she’s really, you know, not a topic of conversation among voters and folks in other parts of the country.

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Yeah, and it wasn’t only until recently that she got the endorsement from, or not the endorsement, but donations from other governors you know, in this kind of push to get her front and center in Texas. I mean, we have to remember that Greg Abbott has millions and millions of dollars at his disposal, right?

In a way that Ken Paxton does not. Also, like you can compare and contrast Ken Paxton and Greg Abbott, and you can see a lot of daylight between those two Republican candidates as well. So they’re not– they’re definitely not [00:32:00] the same Republican that, that we see in each of these races, right? And so, you know, personality, I think really is going to play a big role in the Senate race, and we’ll see what ends up happening in the governor’s race.

I think the governor’s race is a much more traditional kind of matchup that you would expect, whereas, you know, the Senate race, Ken Paxton is a very interesting candidate for the Republican Party. And he doesn’t seem to, to jive well with the average person

Dr. Angela X Ocampo: Mm-hmm

Dr. Michael Hendon: I think part of what makes Tallarico so appealing to voters, and this has been said before is that his religious beliefs really are this bridge, this bipartisan bridge that’s reaching out to these Latino swing voters and these Black swing voters. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, uh, we’re seeing a kind of rise of Democratic politicians who have these, [00:33:00] this kind of religious background.

The two senators in Georgia, Tallarico, and I’m sure there’s others nationally and locally who have similar kind of backgrounds and who, uh, are open about, uh, their religious beliefs and have this certain kind of brand of, of, of having religious beliefs, but also believing in, you know, the separation of church and state.

Um, And I, I, I do think that’s playing a big role in, in Tallarico’s popularity, especially amongst these Black Trump voters and these Latino Trump voters probably like that, respond to that well

Dr. Angela X Ocampo: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. So let’s talk a little bit about other issues because we asked a couple other things in the survey that I think are really interesting and I think relevant for right, the communities that we’re interested in, in researching and wanna know more about.

But so what about, like, does immigration come up, right? What are people thinking about immigration? Um, Especially because at least for Latinos and the, you know, the just negative impact that [00:34:00] deportations and mass raids have had not nationwide, but specifically in Texas, right? Are we seeing that in the data, and are Latinos in our sample responding to that?

What do we find?

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Yeah. So what we find, so we ask this question, uh, do you approve or disapprove of the way Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been conducting immigration arrests, right? We see fifty-one percent of the Latino sample strongly disapproves, with an additional fourteen percent saying that they disapprove.

So in total, you know, sixty-five percent are saying that they disapprove of the way that these arrests have been happening. And, you know, we point out Latinos because a lot of times that is the population that is most targeted just because of the numbers of undocumented people among these different populations.

Only twenty percent of Latinos in our Texas sample say that they strongly [00:35:00] approve of these actions. And in total, it’s thirty-five percent who say that they approve in some shape or form, right? This looks really different from the base sample, which has, uh, twenty-four percent strongly approve, twenty-one percent somewhat approve, eleven percent disapprove, and forty-four percent strongly disapprove, right?

So in total, it’s like fifty-five percent who are on the disapprove side for the Texas sample. But what’s so interesting to me is if we compare the Latino sample and the Black sample, the group that disapproves the most are those Black voters, right? Sixty-five percent strongly disapprove, with another nineteen percent somewhat disapprove.

So that’s eighty-four percent of the Black voters in our sample who are saying that they disapprove of the way that ICE has been conducting these raids. [00:36:00] And I just, I just think this really goes to show kinda like this bigger picture of like, yes, your community could be directly impacted by it, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re gonna be the group that is gonna be most against the thing that is happening, right?

Dr. Michael Hendon: So why do we think that is? Why, why do we think our Black sample is so disapproving of ICE relative to the rest of our sample?

Dr. Angela X Ocampo: That’s interesting. I mean, I, I do think that, I think that co- even compared to Latinos in our sample, I think Latinos in Texas are just a very different kind of Latino than Latinos in the rest of the country, right? And I think Black voters just are much more liberal, much more you, you know… Yeah, I mean, they vote for Democrats at a, at higher rates in Texas.

So Black voters in Texas behave more like Black voters in the rest of the country. But I think Latino voters in Texas are just very different. I would say they’re even different, for example, even if we compare among the [00:37:00] liberal Latinos in Texas to liberal Latinos in other parts of the country.

they might still be supportive of certain things that we might perceive as conservative. I think they’re also very different from Florida Latinos. So we can’t even say that they’re just as conservative as Florida Latinos. I think that Latinos in Texas are, are impacted by very real things, and oftentimes we talk about just how by region their experiences are so different.

So, one of our polls several years ago, we did an oversample of Latinos in the Rio Grande Valley, because oftentimes they’re not included in very large quantities in these surveys. But also because we really wanted to kinda get better sense of where they are. And th- and Latinos in the Rio Grande Valley have been these swing voters, right?

That have kind of swung, you know, before they used to vote for Democrats much more consistently, and then they started to vote for Trump. And then now we might see them vote for for the s- the Democrat Talarico in this case. And I think that for them, right, day-to-day [00:38:00] issues like inflation really matters.

But they also have family members who are part of the Border Patrol because that is really the only employer that is in their area. And so they might be supportive in name of enforcement operations, so much so that it provides, like, a job and stability. But you know, they– But, but it’s more complicated.

But then what happens when, you know, all of a sudden their grandmother might be impacted, right? And so then they might kind of say, like, “Wait, wait a second,” right? “I am supportive of this, but I– now it’s deeply impacting somebody that I know.” So I think like, there’s a lot of kind of complexity and nuance there, but I do think in general, just Latino voters in Texas are more conservative than are Black voters um, in Texas.

Yeah.

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: And when you think about Black voters, you know, the African American population in the United States is the group that has faced the most amount of, state violence and this history [00:39:00] of, who gets targeted, right? So even thinking back to the you know, you can go way back in history to, like, slavery, and you can think about civil rights, and you can think about police violence today, right?

And so if you think about who’s gonna be most against seeing these very violent arrests that we have seen, you know, in A- in Austin and Houston where people have been killed or shot you know, it’s not really surprising when you think about that history in relation to support for or against ICE, right?

And so I think it’s, it’s also a story… Like, yes, it’s a story about Latino voters, but it’s also a story about what moves Black voters, right? And so I think it’s very important to understand both of those comple- complexities to paint this fuller picture.

Dr. Michael Hendon: We also asked, related to immigration, we also [00:40:00] asked a question about people’s support for a pathway to citizenship, uh, which has been an issue that’s been around for decades now it seems like.

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Michael Hendon: Um, So the exact wording is, “Do you support or oppose a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants that can pass a background check and pay taxes?”

And so here, uh, we see more similar results. people are largely supportive of this. Amongst our Texas sample, 68% of people, uh, support this pathway to citizenship. For Latinos, it’s 73%, and for our Black sample, it’s 75%. So really across the board, about, you know, you could say three in four Texans support, a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Yeah. And I think people would find that surprising, right? Because one of the things that we see, like, of the people who do approve of Trump, o-one of the things that they, they approve of are the fact that he is conducting these deportations, [00:41:00] yet there’s still this large share of voters, 68%, who say that they want a pathway to citizenship and think that there should be a pathway to citizenship.

So it also kind of shows some of the ways where you might think voters want one thing, but actually, in reality if there were a pathway to citizenship, most people would be in favor of that.

Dr. Michael Hendon: Yeah, you don’t see very many issues like this where almost everyone agrees. And so it makes you wonder why maybe Democrats don’t campaign more on this issue if they know that they have broad support when it comes to this

Dr. Angela X Ocampo: Sure. Yeah. I mean, I, I think that there’s been some evolution on this issue too, right? And I think that sometimes like it’s, it’s kind of hard to see it when we’re just, like, thinking about each election cycle and, and there was a time where a pathway to citizenship really wasn’t that sup- There, there [00:42:00] wasn’t that much broad support across the board, and let alone in the state of Texas.

Mm. So I think that perhaps one way to think about the broad support that there is, and the majority support there is for a pathway to, to citizenship, I think we kind of have to think about it in relation to the other things that we’ve seen with regards to immigration, right? And the way in which the issue gets talked about and discussed nationwide, but in the state, right?

And so, is it that people are sort of, disentangling or maybe they’re compartmentalizing in their mind about immigrants and, and, and kind of how they see them. And so, you know, because of the way that we ask this question about im- undocumented immigrants that can pass a background check and pay taxes, like there’s, there’s something about deservingness that’s much more appealing in light of the way that you know, Texas politicians talk about the undeserving immigrants and those that, you know, they are going after and that are the ones that they seek to deport and remove.

The removal. Yeah. But I also, I think [00:43:00] that the, the criminals, right? There’s always this conversation around those that are criminals. When some- somebody’s paying taxes and can pass a background check, then they’re not a criminal, right? So it’s like, it seems as if people are that maybe they’ve gotten better at distinguishing this, and now they’re, they just seem to now have moved towards more support of this issue.

But I remember there was a time where people just were not on board with providing citizenship or a pathway to citizenship.

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Yeah. And I th- I still think those lines get blurred about, like, who is a good immigrant, who is a bad immigrant. Like, it’s not as clear, you know, black and white as voters like to think it is just because, you know, of the fact that you are undocumented, right?

And so, you know, this is always something that, that I think, like, the survey data can’t capture all of that complexity that is going on of you know, these classifications and different ways that people think about these groups. But it definitely is something that I think we’re gonna be paying more attention to, especially in our following [00:44:00] surveys.

Dr. Angela X Ocampo: Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, we’ve talked a, a lot about the really interesting findings from this data, our pre-election survey. But we have a survey that we are gonna be fielding after the election that’s gonna be our post-election survey. So, you know, you should stay tuned for for that survey and for a release of the results of that survey.

That survey is gonna follow the similar f- similar format to the survey that we’ve done for the pre-election. And we are gonna be talking about, … when we release that survey, we’re gonna be doing another podcast to talk about lessons learned- Mm-hmm … from the data, but also from the midterms in general.

So definitely stay tuned. And I will say that even though, you know, we, we gave you a lot of numbers and, and all of that you can visit us on our website. We always post our result. We always post the main top lines, main takeaways, and also the cross tabs. So you can look at the numbers for yourself and compare amongst groups and look at all the data that [00:45:00] unfortunately we didn’t get to mention because we only had, uh, limited amount of time with you all.

But please visit our website. You can see this pre-election survey along with all of the other surveys that we’ve done in the past. And um, with that, I wanna thank Dr. Gutiérrez and Dr. Henron for joining us here and for participating in our podcast, but also for being such a- an important and vital part of Proyecto Latino.

Dr. Angie Gutierrez: Thank you, Angela. Good to be here