A last look at election issues in Texas before Election Day

[00:00:00] Jim Henson: Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin.

[00:00:05] Intro: The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the constitution, they have become the norm.

At what point must a female senator Raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

[00:00:34] Jim Henson: And welcome back to the second reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. I’m going to be joined today by a slightly ailing, but I believe recovering Josh Blank, research director for the same outfit. Josh, how are we feeling?

[00:00:49] Josh Blank: I’m feeling pretty good.

But if my voice is a little off, if you hear a couple hacks now and then it’s just, you know, I’ve got kids, they’re in school, which means they’re sick. I’m sick. It just happens.

[00:00:56] Jim Henson: Crud central. It’s a beautiful piece of parenting. Yeah, you’re doing a great job there, I think. Trying. Well, so what are we going to do today for the podcast?

We’re here on the Thursday before Election Day. Just let that sink in for a minute. Let the, I read somebody, one of the, one of the things that’s one of the laughing

[00:01:17] Josh Blank: nervously, well,

[00:01:19] Jim Henson: to that point, one of the newsletters this morning, I think it was political playbook was talking about an interview with an unnamed democratic consultant, I think in Wisconsin saying that they were nauseously optimistic.

And I thought that was a really I really, I thought the phrase was really great. So I think that’s

[00:01:36] Josh Blank: great. I mean, that, that feels good because I’m wanting to say, I feel I’m half of that. Yeah. I was going to say, I felt low level of nausea for quite a while. Right. I think there’s a lot of kids.

[00:01:46] Jim Henson: Anyway, so, you know, we could do a lot of things here today.

I, what we talked about doing and what we’re going to do is I, you know, still leverage a bit of the. The polling that we did in early October, obviously we’ve kind of moved as we put in a blog post this week that you can read at texaspolitics. utexas. edu, you know, trying to move a little beyond the horse race trial ballot stuff and not that that’s not out there, you know, we’re all adults here.

I mean, oh,

[00:02:13] Josh Blank: it’s out there.

[00:02:14] Jim Henson: But also, you know, to look a little bit more at the context and what we thought we’d do today is drill down a little into something that we haven’t talked about as much and we didn’t talk about it much with Darren and we haven’t talked about it a lot. In the last few weeks, and that is, you know, where attitudes are on the issues that are prevalent in the marquee campaigns in the state, in the Senate and presidential race.

The polling tells us about where voters are on this, but also how it’s shaping, you know, the track of the horse race, if you will. We have talked a lot. You know, over the course of the last year about issue selection, issue ownership, the conflicts between campaigns over trying to foreground issues that play to their comparative advantage.

And I think, you know, we’ve, we’re certainly seeing that play out in the final weeks of the campaign or final days of the campaign, even in the advertising, both on broadcast and in social media. So, in the messaging the candidates that the candidate then but the national and the state candidates for doing as they travel around the country and in case of the Senate race around the state.

But I thought it would be you know it would be helpful for us to really unpack and a little more detail. where we are right now, because some of this is, as we’ll notice, changed a little bit, not in any big way, but some of the internals have moved a little bit as the, the final stages of the campaign have unfolded.

And certainly we’re now in the final, in the fall post Labor Day stage, a lot of different things going on. Now, if you want to look at all the horse race polling, of course, we’re keeping track of it on our website. Again, we’re not, You know, we’re not trying to make anybody take their medicine here. We know that, you know, we know that one of the most trafficked pages on the website right now is the U.

S. Senate poll tracker in Texas. So we know what people are watching, but you can find those in the, in the blog page of the website at the URL I just mentioned, and we’ll link to those pages in the blog entry that we published with this second reading in that same segment at texaspolitics. utexas. edu. So, you know.

Let’s start with the bedrock, shall we say. Let’s start with immigration and border security. Clearly in the presidential campaign, going back almost a decade now,

[00:04:33] Josh Blank: uh, uh, I know,

[00:04:34] Jim Henson: um, immigration and the border. issues related to that, the underlying sentiment that they raise, I would argue, or we have argued is central to Donald Trump’s political pitch.

It’s central to his political identity, and it’s central to his appeal to the Republican base, and as we’ll see to some crossover voting, at least potentially. In the Senate race, Cruz is, you know, Beating up all red by connecting him to Kamala Harris for his part in invoking the borders are trope for his part already, as we’ve said in here a few times noted in here almost every week since it started, you know, already started his campaign with an introduction ad that had him.

On the border with the uniformed enforcement personnel. And we know that, you know, this is a, an issue that however much it’s kind of receded a little bit in the national headlines because of the economy. Well, maybe we’ll start with that a little bit as a precursor, but that, we have. You know, immigration and border security really never goes away, particularly for Texas Republicans.

And it’s, uh, and it’s just a foundation for both Trump and Cruz as we start thinking about how issues are affecting both mobilization and persuasion efforts in this campaign.

[00:05:54] Josh Blank: Yeah, right. When we look at voters overall and we ask them, uh, in this last poll, you know, what, what is the issue that’s driving your vote?

It’s an open ended question. They could have told us whatever they wanted. Surely. The economy, inflation, cost of living, you know, led the list. But when we look at Republican voters, what’s interesting is, well, 36 percent said something about the economy, inflation, the cost of living. 29 percent said immigration, border security was driving their vote.

That that was the main issue. So almost equal shares. For comparison point, 22 percent of Democrats said something about the economy, 1 percent said immigration or the border independence. It was 23 percent said something about the economy or prices, 12 percent said immigration or the border. So it remains, you know, competitive.

It was

[00:06:33] Jim Henson: actually 13 percent on the economy. It’s a little hard to read on the notes. Oh, on the

[00:06:36] Josh Blank: economy. I was adding it up. Oh, I see. Oh, that’s right. Because you have to add the

[00:06:39] Jim Henson: inflation in the economy. Okay.

[00:06:40] Josh Blank: Yeah, doing quick math. Got it.

[00:06:42] Jim Henson: So, well done.

[00:06:43] Josh Blank: So it’s about, so it’s basically what you’d say is that for Democrats and for independents about twice, well, I’m sorry, for independents about twice as many said something economy than said immigration border.

For Democrats, about 22 times as many said something about the economy versus immigration border. For Republicans, it’s almost comparable. And honestly, if we were to say, Hey, what’s the second issue? I would be shocked if the vast majority of those Republicans who said something about the economy first didn’t then say something about, uh, immigration border.

Why? Well, because in the same poll, when we say what’s the most important problem facing the state of Texas, 53 percent of Republicans said that immigration or border security is the most important problem facing the state. This is actually a little bit low. I mean, we’ve been asking, obviously, you know, uh, What’s the most important problem facing the state, you know, for the lifetime of the poll, and we have a graphic on our website that looks at the share of Democrats, independents and Republicans who say immigration of the border is the number one state issue, and for Republicans outside of the pandemic, no fewer than 44%.

44 percent of almost half of Republicans on every poll going back to 2015 have said immigration or border security is the state’s most important problem, again, outside of COVID. And really the average is probably somewhere in the high 50s to low 60 percent of Republicans usually cite immigration or the border.

[00:07:52] Jim Henson: Right. If you set aside the COVID dip, which only lasted three polls. Three polls. Yeah. It only goes below 50%, maybe four out of the 20 something polls or 30 something polls in that period.

[00:08:03] Josh Blank: Right. And I think, you know, for some people watching, you know, the, the, the federal, you know, the federal election, the presidential, the presidential election in particular, and, and thinking to yourself, well, what, you know, what’s the policy response?

And you start hearing, you know, the, the deportation forces, mass deportations. Well, we’ve asked another question, uh, repeatedly since I think at least June of 2014. And we’ve asked it a lot of times, which is basically, do you agree or disagree with the following statement? undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States should be deported immediately.

No fewer than 64 percent of Republicans have agreed with this question between June 2014 and October 2024. I think we’ve asked close to 20 times, it looks like. And actually in the last few polls, when we’re looking in this year from 2023 24, it’s actually hit a high watermark among Republicans. We see 85 percent in the last two polls agreeing with this statement.

And really importantly for the political, uh, I should say, actually, uh, for the, uh, more than 80 percent going back to August 23. So August 2023, February 2024, June 24, October 24, all over 80 percent of Republicans agreeing with this. But importantly, too, a majority of independents agree with this statement across all the polls.

And, uh, you know, you can see an uptick among the percentage of Democrats who are agreeing with this statement.

[00:09:10] Jim Henson: And I think, you know, I mean, I think two things about that. One, Something of an aside, but it is, you know, as I look at this graphic in the notes of this data over time and the results of this question, I’m struck by the degree to which when we first conceived of this question, it was kind of an underlying heat check attitude in which you said, well, you know, we’ll design this question in which nobody can actually like, there’s no place to like prevaricate or high.

But it was really about I mean, there were I mean, it’s not that nobody was ever saying, hey, we should have a strict law and order approach, but it was not a mainstream proposal per se. So, it’s gone from kind of an amorphous underlying hypothetical attitude check to a check on a policy proposal. Well, you

[00:09:58] Josh Blank: think about the fact that, you know Given

[00:10:00] Jim Henson: given, you know, the the bank.

The centrality of mass deportations to the current Trump campaign.

[00:10:05] Josh Blank: Well, I mean, it’s hard not to sort of think about it in the context of, you know, for me, at least, it’s hard not to think about the context of Mitt Romney’s gaffey comment about self deportations. Right. I mean, the sense that, you know, you can go from the idea of, you know, the Republican, and these issues, I mean, again, these attitudes existed, maybe not as prevalently outside of Texas.

We’d have to, I’d have to go and look around. Um, but they existed in places like Texas at that point in time too. And you had, again, the leading candidates saying, well, you know, we’re going to create environment in which they’ll deport themselves to the point of, no, we’re going to mobilize military resources.

And we’re going

[00:10:35] Jim Henson: to mobilize local, both military and local police resources. And so I carry this out is the proposal I’m hearing on the table. Right.

[00:10:42] Josh Blank: And so I think, you know, for some of you, you need to say, well, there’s not, this isn’t surprising, but for some of you listening to this thinking, well, aren’t people, you know, when people react, Overwhelmingly negatively to the idea of that and again, the actual implementation is a separate question, but to the idea No, no, they wouldn’t act, you know, necessarily uh uh Hostile to that so so then that kind of leads to something we did in this poll Specifically a little bit different and we’re looking at some of these underlying attitudes and we we have to i’ll give credit where credit’s due And polling we often like to look around people use our questions.

We use other people’s questions if we think they’re interesting CBS news ran an interesting battery, uh a little bit before we did our survey Asking questions about immigrants to the US. And so this is, I should say, the only thing that this is generally about immigrants, right? So we’re not saying undocumented immigrants.

We’re not saying legal immigrants,

[00:11:27] Jim Henson: immigrants writ large. Yeah.

[00:11:29] Josh Blank: And basically was asking people whether they agree or disagree that immigrants to the US, you know, basically fulfill a certain characteristics, some positive, some negative, right? So in terms of the positive characters, do they fill jobs Americans won’t do?

Are they generally hardworking people? Are they part of what makes America special? On the more negative side, do they take jobs and wages away from U. S. citizens? Are they more likely to commit crimes? Are they looking for handouts and welfare? And interestingly enough, I think overall what you find is, is in Texas compared to the U.

S., in the overall numbers, there’s less agreement in actuality with all of these. But what that actually hides, I think, underlying it is vast partisan differences in terms of the way that people look at these, because the extent is pretty, pretty broad. remarkable. So real quick, when we look at, for example, among Republicans, what are the statements they agree with most?

80 percent say that they, we added one. I’m sorry, I should say we added one because it was so part of the dynamic, which is put a strain on local resources. For example, emergency service and public schools. This is a big part of the discussion. We knew from other polling we had done here that that was a big concern for Republicans.

That was a

[00:12:27] Jim Henson: concern in other places. It was even a concern of Democrats, you know, connected with the busing.

[00:12:32] Josh Blank: Real quick for fun just to let you in you know on probably what I think CBS thought my guess and what we thought If you’ll notice in the first battery that I just described there’s a balance of three positive and three negative, right?

Is that right? Yes, maybe three four. That’s

[00:12:46] Jim Henson: right.

[00:12:47] Josh Blank: No, I think there’s four now. There’s three negative Yeah, that’s right three positive and three negative Yeah So and then we so we were like well We’ll add one more because it’s just part of the discussion 80 percent of Republicans agreed that again immigrants put a strain on local resources 69 percent say they’re looking this is

[00:13:00] Jim Henson: all the Texas State of Texas.

[00:13:01] Josh Blank: Yeah Are looking for handouts and welfare. 64 percent say they take jobs away from US citizens. 58 percent say they’re more likely to commit crimes, and then we get under a majority when we get to the positive statement. 47 percent each say they fill jobs Americans won’t do, are generally hardworking, and 39 percent say they’re part of what makes America special.

The Democratic numbers are even higher. More divided 86 percent say they’re generally hardworking people. 80 percent say they’re part of what makes America special 79 percent full jobs. Americans won’t do. And then on the negative ones, not to go through each one, but it’s all 31 percent or less. So less than a third, in most cases, less than a fifth.

Democrats agreed with those statements. So ultimately, you know, you see in terms of just the overall orientation towards immigrants, towards immigration, towards enforcement, why this issue is just unavoidable, at least in partisan politics and in electoral politics, because, you know, it really motivates some very strong feelings.

[00:13:56] Jim Henson: Yeah, I, you know, I think the other, you know, I would, I would add two small things to that. One is if you can, you know, just to put Texas in perspective, if we compare these to the national numbers, the share of agreement with the more positive propositions is lower in Texas generally, uh, in some cases substantially lower.

And I believe the agreement with the negative is a little higher. Maybe comparable. So a little, a little closer on that. Um, so it’s an interesting diet, you know, I mean, we, that was one of the things we were thinking about. Interesting was that the results are a little bit of an ambiguous, I think, in that sense, although they may, when I step back and I’m thinking about it in real time, they make sense.

[00:14:38] Josh Blank: Yeah, I think, you know, the way that I would probably think if someone forced me to explain, you know, why that might be the case. And my, my suspicion would be that if you go back to what we just talked about, you know, immigration and border is a, uh, Persistent state level issue. It’s persistently in the politics here.

And so I think it’s not surprising potentially that the views of Republicans and Democrats have polarized more here, right? And I’ll say, and there’s an underlying piece of that, which is the demographics of the state also kind of reinforces that in a way that maybe you wouldn’t see in Illinois.

Nebraska or, you know, averaged across the entire United States.

[00:15:12] Jim Henson: And the other piece I’m belatedly realizing here is that I do not think the CBS poll gave people a don’t know option.

[00:15:21] Josh Blank: Right, which we did.

[00:15:22] Jim Henson: Which we did, and so that gave people a little bit of a safe harbor that shaped some of those responses here, I suspect.

[00:15:28] Josh Blank: Yeah, and likely some of that is a mixture of people Truly not having opinion and some of that is people not wanting to say, you know what they feel but that’s fine

[00:15:36] Jim Henson: Now, you know, would you how would you describe? How would you compare the lopsidedness of? Republicans and Democrats on this because I don’t see too clear a pattern in this and what I mean by that are the Are the Democrats more positive than the Republicans are negative is are reasonably symmetrical Um, I think it’s eyeballing it.

I believe it’s reasonably symmetrical.

[00:16:00] Josh Blank: Yeah,

[00:16:01] Jim Henson: I mean, I probably should have talked about this before. I would

[00:16:03] Josh Blank: say, I would say it’s a little bit more positive on the democratic side. But again, I think that goes down to coalitional pieces, right? I mean, I think there’s a little bit more room probably in, uh, in the democratic coalition and in parts of the democratic coalition to, to endorse these positive frameworks.

Um, You know, I think some of these questions, you know, are a little bit harder on the Republican side to know. I mean, since you are looking for handouts and welfare will make, you know, right. I mean, taking jobs away from US citizens. I mean, it’s kind of an empirical question. And the crime thing has actually been out there for a while, right?

I mean, that’s that discussion has been going on for I mean, what’s interesting is 58 percent of Republicans say should say real quick, all of the studies that have looked at it. Right. Both immigrants undocumented and document shows that they generally tend to commit crimes at lower rates, partially because they’re in the country illegally.

And, you know, in the case of undocumented immigrants, and if you commit a crime, you’re risking deportation, right? So I mean, there’s a lot less sort of petty crime. But if you think that Republicans 58 percent say, you know, they’re more likely to make crimes. Only 16 percent of Democrats say then that’s at the bottom of the Democratic list, right?

So I think, you know, this is information source. I think Democrats are, you know, I mean, we’re more uniform in their Transcribed Embrace of the positive statements than Republicans necessarily are uniform in their embrace of the negative statements Even though majority of Republicans in each case embrace the negative,

[00:17:18] Jim Henson: you know, but there’s also an interesting kind of You know, in terms of us adding the local resources on here, that’s the highest that of the negative kind of impressions.

That’s the highest one among well, you know, honestly, that’s probably and it’s a little more. That’s a little more policy driven than underlying assumptions about immigrants as a class. I think

[00:17:41] Josh Blank: that could also be our mistake in the sense that, you know, that could be messaging, right? I mean, to the extent that that is, we put that in there.

Because it has you know, it’s been in the discussion pretty regularly again We knew from other point that it was a clear concern of republicans But to the extent that that’s been a discussion point,

[00:17:57] Jim Henson: right?

[00:17:57] Josh Blank: And I think to be fair, you know in certain communities and especially in texas. It is possible.

That is just a fact, right? Well,

[00:18:03] Jim Henson: yeah, that’s kind of what i’m saying. It’s a little bit more policy grounded, right? But I also think the reason I raised that even though maybe you know I think it was fine that we put it in there frankly, but I also think That 31 among democrats and agreeing that you know Immigrants put a strain on local resources does help us underline how this battery.

Tells us that there is still some crossover appeal for this issue for Republicans as they pound it.

[00:18:31] Josh Blank: Yeah, I think whenever we look at any of the, you know, stepping outside of even this specific issue, I think whenever you find any sort of issue where you find a third, you know, where it’s framed in a way That is the framing of one party, but it pulls over about a third of the other party 30 to 35 That’s usually a pretty good issue.

I mean for that for the party that’s pushing what I think that

[00:18:50] Jim Henson: is I think that’s a good transition to talking about abortion.

[00:18:53] Josh Blank: Okay,

[00:18:53] Jim Henson: great Right, right.

[00:18:56] Josh Blank: No, absolutely. That’s a very good example.

[00:18:58] Jim Henson: So, you know with abortion we can you know, we can perceive the same way Let’s talk about the salience numbers and then talk about what we know about direction,

[00:19:04] Josh Blank: right?

So, you know for abortion, this is you know, I don’t want to say you You The dog that embarked on this election, because I think it’s still having an impact, but it’s not having the sort of impact that I think the people who talked about the fall of Roe v. Wade and the coming electoral consequences had anticipated.

I think there’s that story’s not done yet. I mean, actually, I should say, like, there’s a story out yesterday. I mean, ProPublica is putting out the receipts right now on the women in Texas who appear to have died because of basically being denied care. Right during a health emergency. So I mean, this is still an ongoing discussion.

But when we ask people, you know, basically how we want to know how salient abortion is, and we get asked this all the time, you know, where does this stand? Well, what’s the most important problem facing the country? This is Texas voters, the October poll, most important problem facing the country. 4 percent said abortion or abortion access.

80 percent of Democrats, 6 percent of women. State of Texas. Most important problem. 6 percent said abortion. 11 percent of Democrats, 7 percent of women. That election. Most important problem. 8 What is driving your vote? The open 7 percent of voters mentioned. Uh, abortion access or, you know, sort of women’s rights, basically, uh, 13 percent of Democrats and 10 percent of women.

So you see it, it’s inching up there. That becomes, you know, one, one in 10 women. Um, but it’s not, it’s not like the economy. It’s not even necessarily like immigration and border. It’s not

[00:20:22] Jim Henson: like immigration and border security.

[00:20:25] Josh Blank: Right. And those

[00:20:25] Jim Henson: numbers are just not, you know, they’re all single digit.

[00:20:27] Josh Blank: Yeah. And it basically, you know, what it looks like, is it, you know, I mean, to me, it looks like, Another democratic issue.

Now, look, if we asked Democrats to give us multiple issues, I’m sure it would come up for many of them. But this is something we talk about all the time, which is there’s just a lot more heterogeneity in terms of Democrats perception of the most important issue because they’re competing for a lot more things.

It’s the climate, it’s gun control, gun violence, it’s abortion. Right. And

[00:20:47] Jim Henson: that doesn’t mean that within the subgroups here, Particularly in, you know, I mean, this is all Texas data, but if you extrapolate for a moment to the country and thinking about, you know, the larger argument you’re talking about, about the role of abortion as a mobilizing tool for Democrats.

You know, small increases in the, in women mobilizing on this issues and it being the most salient issue in their vote, you know, could be very important. Yeah, it could be. Right, and that’s probably part of the thinking of the Harris campaign in driving it. Um, and even in Texas where we’re looking at, you know, single digit margins.

Mm hmm. Um, movement of a point or two, we’re going to notice.

[00:21:30] Josh Blank: Right. And this, this does create exposure for Republicans here, regardless of what we say about, you know, sort of the salience numbers at the top level. And when we last people in Texas about basically how strict the abortion laws are in Texas, Texas, and whether they should be more strict, less strict left as they are now.

And you look over the timeline from June 2013 to August 2024, we’ve asked about this, you know, probably maybe 10, 12 times, I don’t know. But in April of 2021 was sort of where you see the split. Right. So before that, you had almost equal shares, essentially saying that they should be made more strict or left strict.

And then after the law, basically after, you know, the fall of Roe v. Wade, the implementation of the new regime here, the share of Texans saying the law should be made less strict became the plurality position between 43 and 40 and 50 percent of Texans since February of 2022 to August 2024 say that the law should be less strict.

Having said that, if you add up the total of Texans who say they should be made more strict are left alone. It becomes pretty comparable, which is why, again, we’re talking about margins here. Right. Very small margins. But, This has led to a very curious result, which we brought up before, which is when we asked, uh, voters about which candidates they trust on a range, you know, on a range of issues, 54 percent said they trusted Kamala Harris on abortion access, only 28 percent said they trusted Donald Trump,

[00:22:44] Jim Henson: which is a remarkable result.

Yeah, that’s by far her, the biggest advantage numerically that we see for her.

[00:22:50] Josh Blank: And as

[00:22:51] Jim Henson: I recall, I don’t have the data in front of me, the share of Republicans that migrate to Harris on that issue alone, not saying that’s going to determine their vote. Um, is close to a quarter, I think.

[00:23:03] Josh Blank: Yeah, I’d have to look back, but I think this is what

[00:23:04] Jim Henson: And then, and you add that to the don’t knows Mm hmm.

and we get to that third range that you were mentioning a few minutes ago.

[00:23:12] Josh Blank: Right. When

[00:23:12] Jim Henson: we made the transition into

[00:23:14] Josh Blank: Right. into this.

[00:23:16] Jim Henson: Look, this is definitely an advantageous Issue for Democrats because it plays well among Democrats, whether it’s the most salient issue, there’s not a lot of Democrats that are going to be alienated by your emphasis on abortion rights and reproductive rights.

And it’s helpful with Republicans, even if it’s not a slam dunk, it’s not going to, it’s not going to make Republicans say, you know what,

[00:23:38] Josh Blank: Yeah,

[00:23:39] Jim Henson: I’m going to stop thinking about the border and start thinking about abortion, and that’s why I’m going to vote unlikely that that’s going to happen, given what we see about the intensity of and the persistence of immigration and border security is a salient issue for Republicans.

And given what we see in the underlying attitudes about the border and immigration that we saw in the last set of attitudes. But if we, if we break down the abortion attitudes, you know, there’s a, there’s a, there’s a interesting, similar, interestingly similar party division in here, but it’s also more complicated.

[00:24:15] Josh Blank: Yeah, I mean, I think the way that I’m thinking about this in some ways is that, you know, this really speaks to a lot of the efforts in the last few days of this election to have people like Liz Cheney go out there speaking specifically to Republican women saying, Hey, look, you can do what you want in the voting booth.

You don’t have to tell anybody. And you

[00:24:31] Jim Henson: can still be pro life and vote for Kamala Harris. You can still

[00:24:33] Josh Blank: be pro life. You can still be against, you know, again, against, uh, undocumented immigration. But if this is making you uncomfortable, just know it’s okay. And there’s been a lot of effort, I think, by Democrats to give Republican women in particular permission to express discomfort with the current regime.

Where is that level of discomfort? Well, again, we asked in this most recent poll a set of questions we’ve asked a number of times now about basically when a woman should be able to, sorry, um, At what time during the pregnancy and under what circumstance a woman should be able to obtain a legal abortion across seven different circumstances, and you guys have probably heard about this before.

I’ll go through it quickly. The gist is, is that across all seven circumstances, the majority of Texas voters believe that a woman should have at least some time And this ranges from the woman’s health being serious endangered, uh, rape, incest, you know, strong chance of a serious birth defect, family income, you know, a woman just being unmarried, or just simply not wanting a child, basically.

All of these possibilities, a majority of techs say there should be some range of legal access. Now, there are differences by party. They’re not as surprising. Prizing as you might think, while three quarters of Democrats believe there should be some access across all these circumstances, uh, in the case of the, of sort of life, rape, incest, and a serious birth defect, at least 63 percent of Republicans believe there should be some time for legal access to abortion.

So, and that’s

[00:25:50] Jim Henson: a, you know, that’s a lot of Repub I mean, that’s a large share of Republicans. That’s

[00:25:53] Josh Blank: a large share of Republicans. And the flip side of that is, And, but this is sort of where it gets even more complicated, you know, while there remains very little support for outright prohibition of legal abortion access across this range of circumstances, which is the current law, there’s a lot of variance when it comes to how voters think or how long voters think a woman should have to obtain a legal abortion.

And I think this is an observation, you know, observation really driving Trump and other Republicans move to focus on the end. Of, uh, the pregnancy and not the beginning, right? So if we exclude those voters, the first I should just say, no more than 34 percent of voters say that a woman should never be able to say, access to legal abortion in any of these circumstances.

Um, and in the cases where, you know, we talk about the main cases that are being talked about right now, you know, the woman’s health is in danger, rape, incest, and a serious birth defect, no more than 15%, which really runs very, very cleanly into the sort of data we’ve seen for a long time. Yeah,

[00:26:48] Jim Henson: that’s a pretty consistent result.

I think we’re up to four or five times having run this battle.

[00:26:52] Josh Blank: And even actually running this Question different types of questions find a similar kind of upper bound on prohibition in the in these circumstances But if we set aside, you know the voters who are those voters who think that abortion should be available at any time during the pregnancy So let’s take those people out because that’s a possibility too.

You could say hey look, it’s not up to me I don’t care about, you know, across the circumstances, any time, fine, but we ask about different sort of weeks, how many weeks should a woman have to obtain a legal abortion, and what you find when you do that, and we, and our range is never within the first six weeks of pregnancy, 12 weeks, 24 weeks, within 36 weeks, and then at any time, there’s a lot more permissiveness with, Allowing a woman to access a legal abortion in the first 6 to 24 weeks, then after, which it really does kind of, and especially really in the first 6 to 12.

So one, I would say, you know, we’ve talked about this before. These results both support the logic of Roe v. Wade, which generally provided pretty unfettered access during the first term of pregnancy, but also playing to the bitter partisan fights of the last three decades around how close to conception the, Republican legislatures and judges and, you know, the whole universe could place these limitations.

Right. So with no access has obviously become a tricky path to navigate for Republicans in Texas and maybe even more so in a federal election with the possibility of federal limits under a Republican presidency. But you can see why the discussion is sort of where it is right now and why, you know, Donald, Trump and Ted Cruz, if you watch the debate with, with all red, I mean, that was just, I mean, saying, well, you would, you would allow basically abortion.

I mean, Trump to actually, you’d allow abortion up to and after, you know, childbirth. Well, that’s speaking to the sort of the discomfort, especially Republicans. You might say, Yeah, I don’t like I’m not comfortable with, you know, sort of the level of restrictions now. But I don’t trust Democrats to put something else in

[00:28:33] Jim Henson: right and that’s and that’s obviously yeah, the the fear that they are stoking But yeah, I mean, I you know, I think you sum that up really well I mean, I think the to me the really interesting takeaway here is you know, just how much this data illuminates Where each of the campaigns are pushing the conversation.

[00:28:55] Josh Blank: Mm hmm, right,

[00:28:56] Jim Henson: right I’ve seen a half dozen instances of Tim Walls saying, basically, we embrace the Roe framework.

[00:29:03] Josh Blank: Yeah, that’s what Harris is trying to say. That is a

[00:29:04] Jim Henson: signal to relatively informed voters. Yeah, right. So it makes me wonder a little bit, you know, if, and look, this is also why we’re getting Each campaign is, you know, trying to, when it’s to their advantage, occupy something that’s maybe a little bit obscuring.

And obscuring is a little too, I mean, look, for the Democrats, I mean, I think it’s, as, how many years did we struggle before we got to an abortion question that we really thought helped us get to it? Yeah. Let alone talking to voters about this. Yeah. I mean, I could see why Walton Harris would embrace Roe v.

Wade as a shorthand.

[00:29:45] Josh Blank: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:29:46] Jim Henson: And then I can see why Trump and Ted Cruz would embrace, we’re going to leave it to the states as a shorthand, but both sides are now there. But then there’s a, so there’s the intellectual competition, and then there’s a visceral competition. And the visceral is emphasizing You know, these alleged, you know, either late pregnancy or, you know, abortions after birth, this kind of things that are coming from the other side, and the Democrats are emphasizing the more visceral violations of the effects of laws like Texas, where women cannot get health care, you know, they are suffering physically, some are dying, you know, it’s so, this really underlines, helps us map out it.

Why those spaces comfortable is the wrong. Why those spaces are strategic for each of the campaigns, given the complexity of the issue and the complexity of the ray of public opinion when we really when you’re able to parse it out in the way that I think the way that we ask this question enables us to do.

[00:30:50] Josh Blank: And I think what this also shows you is in some ways why You know, even though this is a fight between partisans, actually, there’s a lot of constraints on within the partisan universe. Right? So if you want to know why, you know, can’t Ted Cruz just say he supports access, you know, for abortion in the case of rape, it’s because it’s not that simple.

I mean, I mean, just in the political sense, because when you start to say that you say, well, For how long right now, there’s all kinds of other complicated questions that come around this. But I’d say the point is, is that, you know, within his party, it’s, you know, it leads to another question. And same thing for for Democrats is that you can say I bring us a row framework.

But the flip side is you’re what you’re trying not to say is, Yeah, but what’s your limitation? Like when? When would you say that, you know, the states can step in and start to limit abortion? Because within the Democratic Party, you know, to say that the states can come in and limit it? Abortion, let’s just say, I mean, just if you think about some of the fights, we’ve had 15 weeks, 20 weeks, 25 weeks, heartbeats, all these things, these were all seen as really big retrenchments of abortion access when they were being fought over.

Yeah. And for some Democrats, the answer is, is clear and only one, which is whenever the woman wants.

[00:31:54] Jim Henson: Right.

[00:31:54] Josh Blank: And so for the Democrats, it’s not that easy to kind of get more than abstract in some ways by talking about Roe. So, for Republicans, similarly, it’s easier to just sort of talk about Democrats in favor of, these late term abortions than it is to be where they actually would say protect a woman who is, you know, in

[00:32:10] Jim Henson: a pretty bad situation.

And, you know, and look, I mean, to bring it back to Texas, and clearly that redirection of the discussion moves you away from, you know, the baseline fact that, you know, women in Texas right now don’t have access, other than, you know, through medical abortion and even that is under siege, and, um And this makes it a very difficult path for Republicans in Texas.

You know, as we’ve said in here, the basic point is they’ve taken one of their issues that for a long time has been a leverage issue for them in the realm of cultural politics and basically taking it away from themselves and not only taking it away from themselves, actually created expo, political exposure by overstepping, certainly overall public opinion, but even, you know, the The attitudes of a significant number of their own of their own partisans.

So not surprisingly, then we find another issue making its way back to the forefront of the campaign. Um, that has supplanted abortion as the leading cultural, political slash social issue that Republicans are talking about or certainly advertising about, and that’s transgender rights, in particular, transgender children.

[00:33:28] Josh Blank: Right. So what’s the underlying attitudinal space here, right? So we actually have a fair number of questions across time we can look at. I’ll go through them relatively quickly, but, you know, back in April of 2023, 63 percent of Texans, including 89 percent of Republicans, Sixty percent of independents and a third of Democrats said that the sex listed on a person’s birth certificate should be the only way to define gender, right?

That’s a, that’s a big, big shift. So just think about the idea of the existence of the notion that there might be alternative ways to define gender besides biological sex at birth is not something that is, you know, widespread. In fact, most Texans disagree with it. Almost 90 percent of Republicans, and I would say to the extent it’s not 90 even more.

It’s probably lack of information. Yeah, lack of knowledge. I mean, that’s not that there’s some, you know, there’s probably a few, but it’s not going to be a lot in June of 2023. So in June, we’re this was during the session. We’re asking a couple questions about various policy proposals related to LGBT rights.

60 percent of Texans supported, limiting the extent to which teachers and public schools can talk about gender identity or sexual orientation that include it. 88 percent of republicans 62 percent of independents. Oh and guess 28 percent of democrats very suspiciously close to 30 percent June 2023 again 60 percent support prohibiting gender affirming care to minors including 86 percent of republicans 68 percent of independents and 31 percent of democrats and maybe the big one here Same poll 68 percent supported requiring athletic participation to be based on biological sex in both k through 12 and higher education institutions in the state 94 percent of republicans 73 percent of independents and 39 percent of Democrats.

There was that

[00:35:01] Jim Henson: high 90 number in the 90s you were looking for earlier among Republicans. You got to introduce sports, just to clarify. That’s what

[00:35:08] Josh Blank: I meant when I said the big one. I don’t mean in terms of importance, but I mean the one that really seems to generate the most obvious pushback. Well look, in some ways

[00:35:14] Jim Henson: going back to our, you know, our discussion about what’s abstract and what’s not and thinking about abortion and even thinking about immigration.

Right. Sports is pretty concrete for a lot of Texas voters. Yes. A lot of people, a lot of people, a lot of American voters. Yeah, exactly. Shouldn’t pick on Texas.

[00:35:27] Josh Blank: Right. So, you know, I think, well, there’s a lot of real concern here about, you know, the impact that the reemergence, you know, of this rhetoric is going to have on the transgender community.

Only 14 percent of Republicans said in our June, 2024 survey, that transgender people face quote, a lot of discrimination in America today. So 14 percent fewer Republicans than said the same about Christians. 35 percent Jews, 38 percent white people, 26 percent and even Men 19 percent and I should say that we’ve asked this question number of times over the last eight years and this the structure of these Attitudes and they’re in the relative rankings.

Yeah are pretty consistent,

[00:36:04] Jim Henson: you know, and I think you know One of the interesting things about that I the results of those items is it before we rank them?

[00:36:11] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:36:11] Jim Henson: It’s not like average Texans don’t recognize if you’re a transgender person, you probably experience discrimination.

[00:36:19] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:36:20] Jim Henson: I mean, I think if we were to look at that, I mean, I think the, the column for experiencing some discrimination among Republicans is actually reasonably, is higher than that.

Right.

[00:36:29] Josh Blank: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:36:30] Jim Henson: But. Um, But it’s notable that it has been consistent. It does underline again and

[00:36:36] Josh Blank: unresponsive to the rhetoric and the focus. I mean, that’s actually one of the really interesting things about it is that, you know, we’ve talked on this podcast about how one of the, you know, we’ve got a bunch of stuff written about this too.

But one of the things that makes this an attractive political issue for Republicans is the fact that this is not really well defined in a lot of people’s Minds other than what they know, which is, you know, boys play boy sports, girls play girl sports. Why are you asking me to think about this differently?

You know, why do I have to think about gender on a continuum or bathrooms or whatever? And so it allows for easily defining the subject in a politically advantageous way. But what’s interesting is that even as it’s really risen in terms of You know, frequency, the share of Texans, but in particular Republicans who see transgender people is facing a lot of discrimination has not changed.

[00:37:21] Jim Henson: Yeah, which is, you know, again, very interesting. And, and we should say that, you know, that’s an indirect way, I think, of backing into the point that, you know, we didn’t start this discussion as we did the other two policy areas, because there’s no evidence that this is salient to a lot of people.

Absolutely. To, to you, to the, you know, to general voters.

[00:37:41] Josh Blank: Yeah. To, you know, this is, this is a really, I mean, the way that I sort of, if someone, you were to say to me, well, well then why is there such a focus on this? And I think you’ve raised already the one, you know, one really good reason, which I think has emerged more recently, which is that it is, it’s a good way to activate social conservatives when you don’t want to talk about abortion.

[00:37:55] Jim Henson: Yeah.

[00:37:56] Josh Blank: I think also the other piece of this that’s sort of, you can’t help but notice is the particular politics of Texas, which is that as long as political competition is really being focused in the suburbs, you’re trying to. Talk to parents, potentially conservative parents, people who just, you know, might be more open to sort of these sorts of messages and questions than, you know, again, other voters, because that’s where the competition was.

I think

[00:38:17] Jim Henson: about it. You know, you’ve got a, you know, you’ve got a share of voters, but Mostly are going to be that are mostly going to be conservative along with you know, we shouldn’t forget a sliver of You know liberal progressives who are also paying a lot of attention to this, but it’s a pretty small share Yeah, so you’ve got that, you know for if you’re if you’re Deciding to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of ads on this subject and I think the number is in that.

[00:38:44] Josh Blank: Yeah Um,

[00:38:45] Jim Henson: it’s a good mix because you’re hitting people that you know will be activated by this Mm hmm Be, you know, in a proactive kind of way, right? Because it is salient to them, but you’re also like activating the less informed, more reflexive, you know, responses of people that may not be, you know, spending a lot of time thinking about this, but when you raise it within a certain framing,

[00:39:12] Josh Blank: yeah,

[00:39:13] Jim Henson: they’re gonna respond the way you kind of want them to respond.

[00:39:16] Josh Blank: And I would say to the and, and to the same. extent that Republicans have a difficult job in this environment, talking about abortion and abortion access, it puts Democrats on the defensive. I mean, ultimately, what what are they for in this space? Because we’ve certainly

[00:39:30] Jim Henson: seen that with cruising already.

[00:39:31] Josh Blank: Yeah, because about a third of their voters again, are kind of look like Republicans on this issue. And I bet if you look by age, you’re gonna see vastly different views even within the party. And the problem is, is that the people in the Democratic Party who probably hold the more conservative views on these issues are actually the more likely to vote than the Democrats.

[00:39:46] Jim Henson: And it’s a, and it’s a good issue for the Cruz campaign, you know, to the piece, to a piece that we kind of put on the web that we put up on the website yesterday, you know, it, it, it causes friction with the all red, with the all red campaigns definition of all red as a moderate and a centrist. And it forces him to respond and that both turns him away from his message and then creates the problem of the subject itself.

And we’ve seen that. I mean, when the Cruz campaign launched this attack. Certainly, I think it was during the debate, the All Red campaign was very quick to respond with a him looking in the camera saying directly, I don’t want boys playing in girls sports. Yep, that was And then the Cruz campaign coming back and using that to keep the Right discussion going on that issue.

Well, that’s such a class and it was a hard, you know, it was a hard trap for the all red campaign to avoid and they didn’t,

[00:40:40] Josh Blank: but you know, that’s one of the, this is like the classic, you know, when did you stop beating your wife kind of political things and the same thing for Harris to with the, so you want to, you know, do gender reassignment surgery on undocumented immigrants just to bring it all together.

Right,

[00:40:52] Jim Henson: right, right,

[00:40:53] Josh Blank: right. Paid for with U. S. tax dollars, you know, which are too high or something, right? It’s, it just becomes, you know, the response, you know, there’s almost no way to respond to that. That’s not going to feed the narrative anyway.

[00:41:02] Jim Henson: Right. I mean, and that’s why, you know, it’s, they’re doing it.

[00:41:05] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:41:05] Jim Henson: Or at least that’s one of the reasons they’re doing it. I, I, you know, someday I hope we’ll see the internal polling that persuaded all of this spending.

[00:41:13] Josh Blank: Yeah,

[00:41:13] Jim Henson: because, you know, look, I think, you know, the, the data we’re talking about, you know, in retrospect kind of helps illuminate that spending.

[00:41:22] Josh Blank: Yeah,

[00:41:23] Jim Henson: but I, I’m, I will be curious in terms of the guts and the internal dynamics of these things.

I’d like to know more about the meetings where people said, look, here’s this, here’s these patterns in public opinion. Let’s go spend. Tens hundreds of millions of dollars on ads on this subject. Yeah,

[00:41:40] Josh Blank: you

[00:41:41] Jim Henson: know, I mean it’s one thing to go like, you know We’re in the cheap seats here, right one thing for us to go.

Yeah, I can see why they did this It’s everything to go. All right. I I got a checkbook here You know, it’s I would be interesting to see how that argument was made.

[00:41:54] Josh Blank: Yeah, you know, I mean this is just you know Thinking about how data is created, you know how data is generated. I mean, it’s not it’s not hard to imagine beginning with Facebook Focus groups and seeing what, you know, from the Republican coalition came out and then when you start to test what, you know, you look at, okay, what, what are Republicans talking about?

What are, you know, core Republican voters thinking about at that point, you know, you don’t put any judgment. It’s like every issue is the same, but then you go out and you start testing it and you say, well, what, what tests best with everybody? And it’s like, you know, immediate deportation, you know, it’s like, Transgender issues.

Oh, look at this. You know, we got a third of Democrats. We get, you know, 60, 70 percent of independence. All of a sudden he said, Hey, as a, not as a primary. I’d like to

[00:42:28] Jim Henson: see the pitch deck. I’d like

[00:42:29] Josh Blank: to see the

[00:42:29] Jim Henson: pitch deck. The way you’re talking about it. I’m thinking, yeah, I’m envisioning the slide. I

[00:42:33] Josh Blank: can imagine how you, I can imagine how you get there.

I mean, maybe the question that we can’t really do here because it would take too long for us and we’d just be thinking for a while, but it’s sort of like, you know, it’s sort of the, it’s, you know, what are the other possible issues that could have been, you know, Mobilize that they chose not to, or, you know, what else would be, what

[00:42:48] Jim Henson: else was on the grid when they went and highlighted with where they were going to spend the money or they allocated for all we, you know, there are almost certainly some targeted ads out there that we, we may not be seeing you and I are probably certainly not seeing, you know, that were the lower, the lower tier issues.

And I, you know, I’m sure they’re out there, although, you know, maybe not. I mean, at this point, a

[00:43:09] Josh Blank: good example is actually, I think probably from the other side, you’re not hearing the Democrats talk about gun violence much.

[00:43:14] Jim Henson: Yeah,

[00:43:14] Josh Blank: huge issue in the democratic coalition, not going to get a lot of republicans, not, you know, independence, maybe, but there’s like another example.

You might say, you know, again, flipping it around. You can’t, you know, you might say like, that might be one where you’re not, why you’re not hearing as much from Democrats on that. Right. And there’s been a lot of talk about the democracy issue. And it’s like, that’s another issue where it’s like, yeah, it’s motivating Democrats, this idea of like, you know, the decline of democracy, but it’s not really working a lot of other people.

So that’s why I think if you’re reading these stories and why, when

[00:43:37] Jim Henson: it started making a comeback in the last week or so, you know, Democrats started some hand wringing. Some Democrats started hand wringing and and complaining about it. All right. So let’s, you know, tie this together. I mean, what, what have we learned?

I mean, you know, it does seem to me that the polling suggests that, you know, supports the argument that in these three issues, the kind of emphasis and the messaging that we’re seeing from the campaigns do play to their comparative advantages. You know, you know, where this has been, you know, in terms of abortion on the side of the Democrats, transgender issue on the side of the Republicans.

And then immigration and border security is a little bit of a twist on this. It does. I mean, the fact that Donald Trump is, you know, bringing this back and, you know, the, you know, the unpleasantness at Madison Square Garden and the blow back to the joke about Puerto Rico, um, But the way that the Democrats are inverting that and flipping that, we see the Trump campaign playing to comparative advantage on that, but I think it also gives us, you know, provides some degree of evidence for the clear effort of the Harris campaign, if not the Biden administration, to move Democratic positions on the issue, right?

And to move and to move the Democrats in fairly short order,

[00:45:00] Josh Blank: right?

[00:45:01] Jim Henson: to closer to the middle and much more towards the Republican median position. Right, ideal point or whatever. Yeah, I mean, in terms of, you know, being, you know, talking more about, you know, we’re not hearing much about Pathways to Citizenship, although there are some provisions of that that would have been in the bill.

[00:45:18] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:45:19] Jim Henson: That is now become the primary means of the democratic pushback. What I mean, that Senate bill that Trump sort of ordered Republicans to not vote for derail. So, I mean, I think if we step back, I mean, the data does kind of fit what we’re seeing going on.

[00:45:35] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, the thing is, I mean, as you’re talking about the Madison Square Garden event, we’re not going to talk about that too much, but I mean, to the extent there have been Republicans who have defended Yeah.

You know, some of the rhetoric that came out of that event, they defended it along free speech grounds, which we’ve seen another polling, you know, that we’ve done here about, you know, when we asked voters, the

[00:45:53] Jim Henson: fence they have, yeah,

[00:45:54] Josh Blank: we asked voters about their concern and, you know, their concerns in America and through what, you know, these existential threats, you know, republicans regularly say, you know, the size and scope of the federal government and sort of restrictions on free speech.

Those were very high up along with immigration. So it’s almost like a

[00:46:07] Jim Henson: Well, there’s also, you know, and then, you know, I mean, we don’t need to go too far down this rabbit hole. But I mean, but there is something that’s been strange about the response to that. That, you know, this comedian who you know is a roast comedian.

I mean, this is what this guy, I mean, I’d never heard of him. He’s from Austin. Whatever, he’s part of that whole crew that, and I don’t bad that much. Well he’s not

[00:46:26] Josh Blank: funny or clever, and I’m not, and I’m just saying

[00:46:28] Jim Henson: like. Well, and look, I mean, you know, there was an interesting, you probably don’t watch this, you know, Jon Stewart on the Daily Show Monday, you know, was kind of entertaining this, and he kind of made the, you know, and again, he comes from the comedy.

Yeah. You know, point of this kind of going, yeah, you know, look, they showed some of his other roast jokes. Like, you know, sometimes that guy’s funny in the right setting and the fact that, you know, what, however distasteful and poor taste that joke was Donald Trump routinely says things in worse taste and, and just as blunt.

And it’s not a comedy routine, at least not, you know, intended as such. Right. And not well, more importantly, not taken as such.

[00:47:09] Josh Blank: Yeah. And he’s leaned into that.

[00:47:10] Jim Henson: And so, you know, I mean, uh, as we think about where that, where this is, I think the Harris campaign is, has done frankly, a better job than I would have expected of certainly not inverting the issue, but you know, to go back to where we started blunting it just enough to help in those places where you’re looking at very small margins.

[00:47:33] Josh Blank: Well, this thing, which is basically. Everywhere and that’s the and that’s the overarching piece of this. Is it not no one of these things is going to you know I mean i’m thinking about sort of the post election Analyses and all this stuff and i’m thinking you know it’s going to be really hard to come up with a a clear story of this election in some ways when everything we’re talking about are about you know fractions of fractions of percents and Very minor margins of some voters who we might think but you know It’s just it’s gonna be tough and this is the nature of you know, very very

[00:48:01] Jim Henson: decomposed.

I mean, I think we have a You A habit that comes from a different media environment and a different political environment of looking for those sort of, sorry for the, you know, master narratives after the fact, like, yeah, that was that campaign that was about this. Now that’s probably never is true. As it seems as, as it’s presented in retrospect, you know, we always lose the complexity, but, but I, but I think you’re right.

It’s even going to be more, it’s even more so we may have crossed the threshold. A little bit that’s a conjunction of just how closely the divide the country is divided Sorting and polarization part of everything and the media environment.

[00:48:45] Josh Blank: Yeah, exactly

[00:48:47] Jim Henson: And the conjunction of those things has made that idea of the master narrative So I think it makes it that much more useful and important to kind of decompose the issue pieces Because we are looking at narrow slivers now we meet next week for a podcast who knows what we’ll think once we see We What the voting looks like, my guess is if we record on Thursday of next week, we probably won’t have a definitive result.

Ooh, predictions. But we’ll see. I mean, in terms of vote counting and where the, you know, that’s as far as you’re making

[00:49:18] Josh Blank: a prediction. That’s as

[00:49:19] Jim Henson: far out in the prediction, uh, branch as I’m going to go before, you know, people just start, I can already hear the sign. Um, uh, so on that, you know, Thanks for all the groundwork on this, Josh.

This was, this was fun and illuminating to me.

[00:49:32] Josh Blank: Can I say one more thing?

[00:49:33] Jim Henson: Hopefully. Yeah, go ahead.

[00:49:34] Josh Blank: I was like, Hey, everybody, take it easy out there, you know?

[00:49:36] Jim Henson: Yeah.

[00:49:36] Josh Blank: Be nice to your neighbors. Be cool. You know, this is, we’re gonna, we’re gonna get through this, everybody, whatever side you’re on, like we can, you know, let’s persevere and be a little bit.

Somebody

[00:49:44] Jim Henson: having a sign or a flag in their front yard doesn’t mean you have to like them or dislike them.

[00:49:49] Josh Blank: Exactly. I’m having this conversation with kids a lot right now, which is pretty ridiculous. Like, you know, ten year old kids about the fact that like somebody’s party does not make them a good or bad person, right?

And that’s true. Yeah. We can all agree to that, right? So anyway, I just want to throw that out there. On election eve.

[00:50:04] Jim Henson: Yeah, you know person on the other party might, you know, very well Hope you change a spare tire on the freeway and it won’t matter what their party is, right? So with that, thank you, josh Thanks again to our excellent production team in the dev studio in the college of liberal arts here at the university of texas at austin Thank you for listening.

Remember All the data we’ve talked about much more, including a couple pieces that touch on the subjects that we’ve talked about today that we have published recently on the website. You’ll find those at texaspolitics. utexas. edu. Follow the link to the blog and, you know, I’m going to make some people nervous by saying this.

Pretty soon that stuff will be easier to find as we finish a web redesign and relaunch a new website. Keep an eye out for that. Thanks again for listening. It’s sort of redundant in this podcast for this audience If you haven’t voted be sure to vote and we’ll be back soon with another post election second reading podcast

The second reading podcast is a production of the texas politics project at the university of texas at austin