August 22nd, 2024 – The political profile of female voters in Texas as Democrats reach out to women in Chicago.

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the Second Reading Podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. Sir, 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 for Over the male colleagues in the room.

[00:00:33] 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. Joined by Josh Blank today, Research Director for the Texas Politics Project.

Uh, did you get enough sleep last night with the convention? No, no,

[00:00:48] Josh Blank: I’m at the end of my rope here.

[00:00:50] Jim Henson: You and, you and everyone else or a lot of people. Well,

[00:00:52] Josh Blank: I’m an early riser. And so this is tough for me.

[00:00:54] Jim Henson: Yeah. It’s the most common, the most common complaint, I think, uh, about the convention, at least, you know, among people that are watching.

Right. Um, so yeah, you know, the big national political story this week is the democratic national convention being held in Chicago. Um, you know, and this dovetails with our emphasis on the presidential election over the last couple of podcasts, and as we record this on Thursday morning, the final act of the convention, Kamala Harris’s big speech to delegates and, and the media audience.

Is still coming tonight. So, you know other shoe, you know yet to drop but you know been a been a lot going on now You know, we’ll talk about that a little bit before we get into that though. Um, the hobby school at the university of houston Uh, and the jordan leeland school at texas southern university released Uh the latest in their texas trends poll But this one happens to be the first nonpartisan statewide, statewide poll I’ve seen since Biden was replaced by Harris at the top of the ballot.

There was another poll, I won’t mention, kind of floating around on Twitter, but I couldn’t really find it.

[00:02:02] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:02:03] Jim Henson: Um, by an identifiable firm, but I, but, um, you know, be that as it may. Um, so this poll was fielded between August 5th and August 16th. So, you know, after the, the. the replacement happened, um, but before the convention.

So, you know, what did they find? Forty nine and a half percent, uh, of Texas likely voters, and they used the likely voters screen based on vote intention, uh, to, you know, 49 percent, 49. 5 for Trump, 44. 6 for Kamala Harris, uh, 2 percent for Robert Kennedy, 0. 7 percent for Jill Stein, 0. 5, a half a percent for Chase Oliver.

With 2. 7, call it three undecided. So Harris was 4. 3 percentage points higher than Biden’s was. Biden in the, was in the June, their June survey. Um, Trump’s vote was about a half point higher than in the June survey. So he went from. 40 from 48. 9 to 49. 5. Uh, Kennedy had dropped 2. 7 percentage points lower than he was in the June survey.

Two to four, two, 2 percent versus 4. 7. Kennedy, of course, uh, by a ton of reporting on the cusp of dropping out and under negotiation, at least to endorse Donald Trump, which is, you know, another part of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ‘s Long journey having started in the democratic primary.

[00:03:39] Josh Blank: Yeah, and I think

[00:03:40] Jim Henson: the larger arc of his long journey

[00:03:42] Josh Blank: Well, and also, you know a pretty predictable end to something that you know, probably got more attention than it needed just out there But whatever that’s me.

Sorry.

[00:03:51] Jim Henson: Yeah. Well, you know You wanted to de emphasize him from the beginning, so this is Well, you know, and

[00:03:56] Josh Blank: it’s funny, here we are at the end of the summer and the real campaign’s beginning and look, look what’s going on. Look who’s out. This person that we, you know, who wanted us to talk about him for a long time has, has kind of gone where he wants to go, which is, you know, to somebody’s administration.

Great. I

[00:04:08] Jim Henson: think the bear story was the final nail in that coffin. Oh, God. Although, as you point out, there were others in there. Um, so, you know, what to make of the U of H poll? I mean, it looks to me, you know, not off the line of what we were, what we’ve been kind of thinking might be happening in this race.

[00:04:25] Josh Blank: I mean, it has the value of being eminently plausible if you’ve been looking at the trend line of Texas elections. Even if you’ve been looking at, you know, the polling results throughout, you know, the last year with a different candidate, I mean, this is not the first, you know, quote, unquote, likely voter survey to have, you know, about a five point lead to a seven point lead, which is about, you know, I think for those of us, you know, handicapping this race at the outset, you know, would say that’s a place you might start from.

And then if we’ve talked about this before, depending about how the fundamentals shift, how the campaign goes, you could see that get a little bigger, you could see a little, get a little bit smaller. This is probably on the smaller side of this. starting point, but when you’re talking about a point, it’s, you know, it’s on the line.

And I think that’s been the main thing is, you know, I think for all the, we’ll kind of get into this in a second, but for all the jubilation among Democrats this week that there’s a sort of, you know, if they want to think of it as a reset or whatever, one is a very narrow conversation going on at this point.

But I think the promise of that, the Democrats saw, and you’re seeing in this polling, I think you’re seeing the New York times polling recently is like, yeah, this is a re engagement for Democrats with parts of their constituency. They were clearly disengaged from the process. And so a lot of this is not necessarily like, uh, this isn’t a boon to Democrats and that it’s like a gain above and beyond where they were.

This is actually just like a return to normal. The normal, which I think has been another big message of the convention this week is it’s close. It’s going to be real close. It’s gonna be a real tight election. Democrats are now, you know, probably not starting from the same major deficit that they were, but the deficit only, you know, is only getting them back to where they like kind of should be.

[00:05:54] Jim Henson: Right. And remember, you know, the. You know, Trump won in 20, or Trump won Texas in 2020 by a little less than six points, five and two quarters, something like this. So this seems pretty, you know, really fits the narrative that the Harris candidates see, you know, not less a reversal and more of a just kind of bending the curve back down, maybe closer to the expected slope.

Yeah, we’ll see. Yeah, we’ll see. So, you know, that brings us to the convention, you know. What do we add to this? You know, a lot’s been said about this is, you know, we were joking. I mean, I’m the grumpy old man about, you know, yeah, this has been great. Let’s wrap it up and move on to whatever’s coming next. Um, the, you know, I, I think I, I, you know.

To defend my, my view of this a little. I think being out of the media flow on vacation a lot this summer probably made me a little more sensitive, a little more grumpy to, you know, the repetitiveness that when you jump back in, it’s kind of like, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh. All right, can we just move on? But there’s a lot.

We’ve all been watching and I think, you know, not, not everything can have been said about it possibly. What’s, what’s been striking you about this?

[00:07:09] Josh Blank: Yeah, I mean, I mean, there’s been a lot of things that are striking to me. I’m trying to avoid any of the cliches because I don’t want to, I don’t want to poke the bear over here, you know.

Um, you know, I’m just looking at my notes. Should I pick anywhere from the list, whatever stands out, what

[00:07:24] Jim Henson: you think is least, least cliche bound. Okay. Well, you know, balanced with significance.

[00:07:29] Josh Blank: Yeah, sure. You know, I think, you know, I’ll start with this. I’ll say, you know, I think it’s interesting to see how the Democrats are trying to translate this, this sort of concept of vibes into maybe something more tangible, translatable campaignable.

Right. Cause you know, vibes in and of itself is not really a message. Right. Right. Right. Uh, and, uh, you know, I think it’s an interesting thing. And the one hand is the exact same strategy that in a very broad sense that Biden was pursuing is that he wanted this to be a choice and not a referendum on his last four years.

He wanted to be a choice between him and Trump. And I think it is interesting to kind of watch a lot of the set pieces of this convention, which were clearly already. You know, to go. I mean, we’re loaded up and see why you could say, you know, maybe Biden and some of his people have some sour grapes about this because a lot of the set pieces.

I think that they’re making Democrats feel good. I think, you know, in terms of Trump’s own words and kind of linking that stuff together, reminding people, you know, especially Democrats in particular, but a lot of independence about how exhausting some of the Trump years. You know, were, but also, you know, leaning into some of the places in public opinion, which we’ll get to where, you know, they see an advantage for themselves, right?

And they feel like, you know, in the first election after a row that there’s something here, but nonetheless, there’s a sort of wrapper around this whole thing, which is like, you know, there’s this repudiation of Trump, but there’s also kind of, I think, directly and indirectly kind of a repudiation. And I sort of put in my head of almost the last 12 years.

I mean, it’s kind of going back to the rise of the tea party. And the way that insurgency sort of morphed throughout time and is kind of not directly we’ll say is, is, can be put of the cognitively at least in sort of the MAGA space now. But the exhaustion, I think that that’s kind of led to in terms of the, the nature of politics.

And Trump is really at the lead of this and this idea of the combative style and it’s a style and it’s worked well and it’s, and it’s worked, it’s been effective. But I think what you see is, is the cost of that is not only sort of acrimony between the parties, but also the acrimony. among the parties. I mean, one of the notable things to me this week, and I’ll stop soon, is the fact that Democrats could just pull on their roster of any former elected official, high ranking person within the party to come up and give a full throated endorsement of the party and its candidate.

And that’s not something that, Trump can do because he’s either alienated or he’s, you know, essentially made enemies of a lot of these people and it translates into the national policy the way that, you know, the republicans in the house have had a really difficult time organizing themselves and it’s true in texas to where you see sort of things that may be in a different generation would have been dealt with behind closed doors.

Become, you know, really public infighting amongst, you know, Republicans. And I think, you know, Trump is a, a big contributor to this style. And Democrats are saying, Hey, you know, what if we could try to not do that now? I think this comes to the whole kind of dismissive, hopey changey kind of stuff. And, and I think that’s where it kind of leads to my big question.

All of this is, you know, with negative economic sentiment kind of still out there or not even kind of still out there, definitely still out there, the border, these other big issues. Yeah. Is a change in tone going to paper over, you know, what are probably a lot of real concerns for people about just the way that things are going?

[00:10:27] Jim Henson: Yeah, I mean, I, you know, that’s, I think that’s a, that’s an interesting thing to try to untangle because, you know, when you talk about putting, you know, more meat on the bone and the change in tone or, you know, the vibe is not quite, you know. I mean, there was a sense early on and there’s still some, you know, I mean, you know, to, to adopt an old phrase, you know, you know, in some ways I think you get the sense that the vibe is part of the message.

[00:10:54] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:10:55] Jim Henson: Right. But what else can they add? And I think what’s been, what’s, there’s a lot of tricky things about that. I mean, the objective thing is like, you know, can you? move people’s attention, either move people’s attention away from their current understanding of the economy or supplant those concerns with something else.

Yeah. Typical agenda management. That’s

[00:11:17] Josh Blank: tricky.

[00:11:18] Jim Henson: And you know, I think that’s hard. And I think that, you know, one of the interesting things that, you know, has struck me in watching not all, but a lot of these speeches and, you know, is that, you know, they keep bumping Against awkward moments that they clearly the convention the reprogramming of the convention was meant to address Which is and I think you’re right.

They’re trying to kind of see, you know, the last dozen years You know have been a bummer. They’ve we’ve all been negative. It’s been oppressive It’s you know, all the negative messaging about that some of which is perfectly reasonable And let’s get a new start That’s placed the last four years in kind of an awkward position because they need to campaign, you know Because of the continuity you’re talking about.

I mean, I don’t think we’re going to see You know setting aside the specifics and how many More specific she needs, you know, the general thrust of the campaign, particularly in the economy and the policy stuff as much as it’s been articulated, you know, isn’t materially different from the Biden program and that’s, you know, and that would, it would be a trap to walk into changing that too much, but there’s, you know, there’s still bumping, you know, every time I heard somebody, you know, going very forcefully, This has sucked.

We got to turn the page. It’s like you, they want to have a little aspect. He says, we don’t really mean Biden or the Biden Harris administration, but we mean the overall. And that’s where, in some sense, the vibe does have to be part of the message. Yeah. I think that’s right. And, but there, you know, but I think that’s still taking shape.

And I, you know, look for all the limitations of how you interpret, you know, the very closed universe of convention programming and what’s going on in the hall, you know. It’s, you know, they’ve had a pretty good convention.

[00:13:13] Josh Blank: No, I You know, in

[00:13:14] Jim Henson: terms of consistency. I mean, you know, it’s a democratic event, so everybody’s running late and, you know.

[00:13:19] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:13:19] Jim Henson: That’s the problem with having a bunch of former presidents and former, you know Everybody’s important. BIPs. Everybody’s important. Everybody thinks they can go outside their limit.

[00:13:27] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:13:27] Jim Henson: Right? At least according to the coverage. I’ll say, you know, Bill Clinton, like 27 over like a 15 minutes. You know, Blue, you know, you know, Blue passed his, his, You know, if there was a red light, he was just ignoring it as he was, as it was blinking the whole time.

That’s when he really

[00:13:39] Josh Blank: gets started. Yeah, right. And there was, you know, and,

[00:13:41] Jim Henson: and he, you know, not to single out Bubba for that. I mean, there’s a, you know, others were guilty of this, you know? Yeah. So, you know, um. You mean

[00:13:50] Josh Blank: attention seeking people are going to seek attention given the opportunity?

[00:13:53] Jim Henson: Right. And, or, you know, people that think, you know.

They’re entitled and usually entitlement, you know, almost in our current parlance is always, always, you know, completely negative. But look, you know, you’re Bill Clinton, you’re Barack

Obama. You know,

[00:14:09] Jim Henson: do you really think, you know, do you feel like anybody’s entitled to give you the hook? Yeah, exactly. Right.

I mean, you don’t.

[00:14:17] Josh Blank: Well, I was gonna say, you know, neither does Oprah.

[00:14:18] Jim Henson: Right, right. So yeah, yeah. Somebody gonna go, you know.

[00:14:22] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:14:25] Jim Henson: Yeah. I don’t think so. So, you know, and, you know, look, it wouldn’t be a democratic public event if it wasn’t a little,

[00:14:31] Josh Blank: you know, and just, just, you know, I mean, just to, to respond to what you said and just say, cause I have this in my notes, I mean, what’s been interesting to me is see the Democrats simultaneously try to kind of jettison a lot of their baggage with us from the last four years or even beyond it.

I see baggage, I mean, sort of labels, policies, sort of ideas about, you know, essentially Absolutely.

[00:14:49] Jim Henson: Well, tone again,

[00:14:50] Josh Blank: but, but, but also, I mean, but they’re not, I mean, you know, I say this neither as a criticism or a comment or an observation, it’s just an observation, but it’s really the same stuff. I mean, they’re not really jettisoning any of this stuff.

Well, it’s a repackaging in a lot of ways, and this is something that has been interesting about this convention, nonetheless, is like, you know, Harris is in a very, very unique position. We need to go through all that, but like. This is a chance for her to not only define herself, but to define the party in a way that didn’t really have to go through the litigation of the primary process and all the, all the compromises need to be made to every single group.

Who is ready to just, you know, threaten everything that’s been a big part of the message is like, Hey, look, we don’t have to agree about everything and even be able to say that and for people to kind of the people are in the Democrats are in this room to be able to look around and say, Yeah, I guess that’s right because it is for them.

Is he is an interesting thing. And it’s just sort of, I mean, you know, in and of itself, it’s a very interesting moment. I’m curious to see how much she leans into it, how much the Democratic Party is a holdings into it. And what kind of, and I think maybe this actually is a good centrist transition to Texas here is, you know, how much does the whole party lean into this?

Right. I mean, I was sort of thinking last night, I mean, the messaging has been pretty consistent each night. From the different speakers. And obviously that is, you know, calibrated and on purpose. But then, you know, if you are a Colin Allred, you know, are you gonna, are you now ready to be a joyful warrior?

[00:16:04] Jim Henson: Yeah. And Colin Allred, you know, we, I,

um, yeah, I mean, I think another piece of that, that is, you know, that you kind of, you know, an implication of what you’re saying in terms of, you know, look, the, the underlying divisions are there still, and you can kind of, you know, you can see them, but it’s a little, you know, but that is all. Being well managed at this point.

I want to put a nister asterisk come back to something on that but that It’s also created a space that I think has also been interesting in this and very deliberate In terms of a lot of the speakers and particularly speakers that were strategically chosen to deliver this message Like the vice presidential candidate walls Is and also remember, you know, you don’t have to to be a Democrat, you know, to want to weigh in, you know, to throw in with us this time.

[00:17:07] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:17:08] Jim Henson: Yeah. Right. And, you know, that’s, uh, I mean, I think they’ve done a decent job of operationalizing that message, which, you know, always has a little bit of a role. Some of these conventions, you know,

[00:17:21] Josh Blank: yeah,

[00:17:22] Jim Henson: but I think you know, I mean, it’s a recognition of How tight it is and what the trench warfare is like and that’s also kind of cohered with the message of You know needing, you know, the kind of overall mobilization message there.

Um,

[00:17:38] Josh Blank: yeah, and it’s reinforcing I mean, that’s I think that’s that’s what I mean, you know, you can take that as a positive or a negative You know, I mean you can look at it as you know If you want to be a sort of a positive democrat the way to say is that’s right We’re going after everybody because we can now If you want to be sort of, you know, cynical or critical political analysis, you say, yeah, they need the votes pretty bad.

And

[00:17:56] Jim Henson: like we were talking before, and again, this is something people have noticed, and you know, we’re not the first ones to say this by far, but you know, you’re also seeing that in some of the language shifts, you know, this, you know, obviously freedom, right? You know, I was saying as we were walking onto campus today, I don’t think I heard the term choice.

It’s In anything i’ve heard even in the most

[00:18:15] Josh Blank: Yeah, you know

[00:18:16] Jim Henson: abortion or reproductive rights focus. Yeah

[00:18:19] Josh Blank: forward not progress. Yeah, right and

[00:18:21] Jim Henson: that’s you know That’s all kind of interesting and at least notable in terms, you know, I I think you know, I want to just You know, this is probably post privilege, but, you know, um, you know, there’s an interesting balance here between stoking the vibe of enthusiasm, but everybody also, you know, the major speakers also reminding everybody in the call that, you know, this all feels great.

We’re happy. Implicitly, we dodged the bullet by getting rid of Biden. Um, but let’s remember, you know, per where we started with the state polling here, the implicit. Recognition that all we’ve really done is reset this back to parody.

[00:19:09] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:19:10] Jim Henson: Right. And there’s a lot of that. And, and so amidst the good talk, one of my favorite moments was away from the ball, was away from the convention floor.

Um, and that was a, uh, just a. clip I, I ran an interview I randomly managed to catch in between speakers because on PBS they, they were less, you know, during the roll call vote, PBS was not like following every roll call vote. And I think this, they had an interview where they had, you know, Nancy Pelosi whose presence at the convention itself has been very interesting and in this whole sequence.

Um, but she did an interview on PBS with a panel of PBS people, including, uh, uh, Jeff Bennett. Who is, you’ll hear a little bit in this clip and I, you know, I liked this as a reminder of what is going on below the surface and here you have. Pelosi talking about the camp Democratic efforts to retake the House of Majorities.

So let’s roll that clip if we can.

[00:20:12] Nancy Pelosi: Last week at the invitation of the governor, our candidate for Senate there is way ahead, take nothing for granted. We think we can pick up a seat there and hold what we have. Uh, I, some, I made a prediction today to Al Hunt that it would be. He said, maybe you can win five.

I said, I want ten. He said, is that your prediction? I said, I want ten. At least. We want thirty one when we want to win. Now remember, in the last election, they said we were going to lose thirty or forty seats. What? They didn’t know what they were talking about. We were, we know our, we’re different from the presidential.

We’re very different. Discreet, reptilian, cold blooded, these are the races we have to win. Others are winning the whole country. Ten.

[00:21:06] Josh Blank: Where do you pick up ten seats, if I can ask?

[00:21:08] Nancy Pelosi: Well, I think we can pick up a chunk in New York because we

[00:21:11] Jim Henson: There is nothing I love more at this convention than her use of reptilian in terms of the strategy on targeting House seats and, you know, the underlying dogfight that will be going on after this convention.

And, you know, if you’re an institutionalist, the difference between tone setting efforts in a presidential race and the kind of considerations you’re making in the House races now. You know, when it comes time to cut spending and think about which swing states you’re really, the money you can really spend money on and which can’t come late September, early October, the presidential campaign will get pretty reptilian itself.

[00:21:52] Josh Blank: Yeah. And I mean, I think, you know, one of the things, I mean, just hearing in that clip and sort of just thinking about what’s going on, I think if you’re, if you’re Nancy Pelosi right now and you’re sort of, especially, you know, uh, uh, Moderate house Democrat in a moderate district or someone’s, you know, a Democrat seeking to topple a Republican in a moderate district.

You’re looking at these two conventions and you’re looking at the tone and the style and the contrast and you’re saying, okay, I like this better for me. You know, just honestly, I mean, I think Donald Trump and Republicans really leaned into in a lot of ways, you know, the, I mean, kind of the same issues they’ve been leaning into, you know, for a little bit, but they’re, they’re a little bit on the extreme side at this point, especially in these districts.

I mean, one of the things that surprised me and just sort of is how much You know, sort of the library books have come up in the last few days, but it’s funny. I mean, you and I give a lot of talks to a lot of different groups, different partisan groups, you know, different liens and, and, and that kind of thing.

And it surprised me, you know, when I’ve talked to sort of, you know, suburban and outer Democrats, how much the library books are just coming up everywhere. And I think these are the sorts of things where I think, you know, Democrats now sort of think, you know, I think we can, we can be on the front foot on some of this.

And you can see that at this convention where they’ve been on the back foot on a lot of these issues that really puts them at a disadvantage where they are actually, there is the most competition. And you can see in the tone, in that comment, no, we feel pretty good about these terms.

[00:23:11] Jim Henson: Yeah.

[00:23:11] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:23:12] Jim Henson: Well, and I think, you know, the other, I guess the other thing, and I agree with all that, I think the other thing I liked about that is that, You know, was a slight eruption of the real in the sense that, you know, by all accounts and some people are downplaying it and some people are not.

Pelosi played a key role in the effort to convince Biden he needed to step down. And it does give you a sense of, you know, this was some, this was some pretty hard ball underneath, you know, as I saw, uh, An interview with somebody else describing this dynamic and it’s like, you know, look, this is business and our business is winning and regaining the majority.

And, you know, sorry about the hurt feelings. Sorry about all of this or, you know, whereas people are sorry, not sorry.

[00:24:06] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:24:06] Jim Henson: Um, and I think

[00:24:07] Josh Blank: I’m sorry you feel that way. Yeah.

[00:24:09] Jim Henson: And I also think, you know, Pelosi’s role in this, you know, by way of transition is interesting, you know, in another part of that PBS interview, um, She talked a lot, and this is kind of where I think they wanted the interview to go and she kind of turned it this way in the direction that we were listening to.

And she talked and she did tell a pretty good anecdote about this. They really wanted to talk about women and, and you know, how she felt about the ascension of women in politics in the party. Obviously Hillary Clinton having lost Kamala Harris now having taken another shot at being the first woman president.

But it, it also speaks to some other things we’ve been looking at, right, which is, you know, there is a lot of, there are a lot of people advocating. You know, for pushing abortion to the center of the agenda for Democrats or closer to the center or to the top of the agenda in popular appeals in a way that, you know, as we’ve talked on here before, Joe Biden was not likely to do.

Various kinds of reasons. And a big part of the logic of that is, you know, mobilizing women and we can, you know, Whether it’s soccer moms or democratic women or suburban women or, you know, whatever it is. And so, you know, it does seem to me to make sense as we think about where this campaign is going to go in Texas to get some baselines on, you know, what the political composition is of women as a social group in the state and what that.

Scenario, you know, how that scenario might play out in Texas and, you know, I mean, Harvey Kronberger’s on the show last week and, and, you know, Harvey was putting on one of Harvey’s, the components of Harvey’s argument that, you know, I mean, I think I was clearly on the podcast, not entirely persuaded by, and Harvey and I’ve been having this discussion for years and he flagged that.

So it’s not, I’m not talking behind Harvey’s back after he’s not in the chair anymore. We talked about it some last week, but it was, is that, you know, to use Harvey’s phrase, you know, the, the Dobbs decision has not been fully litigated yet in the Texas election. He thinks that gives Democrats a big boost.

So let’s look at where. where women are. So let’s start with the exit polling. Let’s just get the baseline on, you know, composition in the electorate. Yeah.

[00:26:32] Josh Blank: And there’s a lot of ways we can look at this. We’ll look at some here and we’ll probably look at some more later.

[00:26:36] Jim Henson: Yeah. Later on, we’ll come, we’ll come back to this.

And we should say, you know, this is in a way I’m conceiving of us talking about this, like I said, as a baseline before we get new data to add to the data set that looks at the pre post switch out.

[00:26:48] Josh Blank: Right. I mean, this is, this is ultimately the steady state that people are looking at when they’re making these arguments now, now that people are, you know, You know, inserting themselves to try to influence and make these differences manifest or not, right?

So just as a starting point, if we look at exit polling, you know, women have made up between 52 and 55 percent of the electorate in each of the last, you know, elections since 22, uh, you know, in presidential election years, they have a little bit more 53 percent in 2016, 55 percent in 2020. So some of this would say this is about, you know, in, In line with, again, their share of the population, women are slightly larger share of the population, uh, but I mean, the broader part is they are majority of the electorate.

And this is true in Texas. It’s true. True in other places. According to that same exit polling, Democrats have received between 51 and 59 percent of, of, uh, The female vote, uh, but notably only 51 percent in 2020. Um, and you know, this definitely raised the question of the power of having a woman on the ticket, right?

So Hillary Clinton received 54 percent of the vote, but the Democrats received 59 percent of the vote in 2018 during Trump’s first midterm. So it’s not,

[00:27:52] Jim Henson: you know, yeah, we should pause. I mean, this is yet another one of those things about 2018 we have to keep in mind about how different 2018 was from most elections and certainly most midterm elections.

You

[00:28:06] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:28:06] Jim Henson: But I mean, you know, I think that’s a striking number to me if it’s, you know, and again, we should say we all take the exit polls with a little bit of a grain of salt. I mean, I’m not saying they’re completely wrong, but you know, but,

[00:28:17] Josh Blank: but, but here’s the, but here’s the reason that I, that I’m going to caution people against putting too much salt.

It’s too many grains of salt in there is that it’s, there’s an external validity component to it, which is to say, you know, you’re not looking at the 59 percent number and then saying, well, you know, but Democrats didn’t do that well. It’s like, no, Democrats are the best they’d ever done. And when you’re looking for the sources of why, you know, obviously the vote, right?

Voting patterns of women in that election were one of the major factors, probably along with the voting patterns of independence, I would say. Um, and so it is a big part of it. And it also speaks to, you know, again, I mean, one other thing that kind of comes out of it speaks to the importance of the broader context, right?

I mean, ultimately, that was a very good year for Democrats when they got 59 percent of the female vote, uh, to your point. 2020, they got 51%, right? And so there’s, you know, it makes a difference at the top of the ticket, right? Okay. You know, this is also an important point to step back and remind people that, you know, the democratic party in Texas is a majority female party, right?

And when we’ve looked as a majority non white party. So there’s a key feature here, which is to say for Democrats to mobilize their voters, they have to, in some ways begin with women, right? I mean, this is a big feature of this. And I think one of the things that we already kind of mentioned about the newer polling that’s come out is that what you’re seeing is the re engagement of, uh, key Democratic constituencies.

The New York Times poll, they were analyzing where the biggest changes were in terms of adding to Harris’s, uh, improvement over Biden. I mean, one of the biggest ones was women under the age of 45, you know, non white voters under the age of 45, right? Right. But ultimately, it’s not that, you know, again, it’s not that she’s exceeding expectations, it’s that she’s getting back to the expectations about where these, these voters would be.

And the other

[00:29:55] Jim Henson: thing I would point out about that Texas data that you’ve talked about so far is that, you know, again, even allowing for, you know, the vicissitudes of election, of exit polling, you know, we’re not talking, that difference between 2020 and 2018, we’re not talking 51 and 53 percent, eight percent of You know, 8 percent is a big increase

[00:30:18] Josh Blank: is a big increase.

No, 51

[00:30:19] Jim Henson: to 59 from 2020 to

[00:30:22] Josh Blank: right now. Having said that, we have to kind of now we have to put it put on the brakes a little bit even more just so people understand this. Okay, so I said Democratic Party’s majority female party. So when we look at our June polling, 55 percent of the Democratic Party was made up of women, whereas in the Republican Party, the gender split is nearly even.

And this is pretty consistent throughout all of 2024. Um, but when we talk, there’s this thing that people talk about the gender gap in politics, right? And I think people tend to think that the gender gap, I mean, this is a sort of like one of the things you learn kind of early in, you know, grad school political science if you study, you know, opinion and behavior is that I don’t like, I don’t like to phrase this way, but it’s the easiest way to understand it, which is to say a lot of people think of the gender gap being about democratic women, about women being more democratic.

It’s really about men being more Republican in most cases than anything else. When we look at our data, right, if we go back all the way since February 2021, what we find is that, uh, you know, Democrats and Republicans, you know, identification is about even in Texas among women. So if we look at the mean, the average across 21 surveys going back over the last, you know, four years, uh, among women, 45.

5 percent identified as Democratic over those polls, 44. 9 percent identified as Republicans. We’d say about exactly the same. Okay. So again, what generally makes for this gap is men’s over identification with the Republican Party. So on that, over that same 21 polls, uh, 40, about 49 percent, let’s just say, of, of men identified as Republican compared to about 38 percent who identified as Democrat.

So that’s where your gap actually comes from. Right, the gender

[00:31:54] Jim Henson: gap is not particular. It’s not it’s not mainly between parties. It’s between men and women. Now that results in something of a gender gap. It

[00:32:01] Josh Blank: does, but but the point I think the main point here, and this is something I think people were have been thinking about a lot this week, and it’s sort of is worth stating, especially Texas.

You say, Well, you know, Harris is going to do so much better with women than Biden was the premise, then Therefore, is she going to do, like, is Texas in play because of women? And the answer is, well, no, because essentially the party ID gap among women is almost non existent. It just means that she’s actually getting the Democratic voters back that she needed.

The problem is that there’s just so many more Republican men. And so it’s sort of a separate thing, right? Now, you also thought ideology was an interesting piece of this.

[00:32:37] Jim Henson: And it’s, you know, as always, you know, the intertwining of ideology and party in these surveys is, But it seemed to me there was something here.

[00:32:44] Josh Blank: Yeah, and so, I mean, we should say at the outset, when we have, you know, measuring ideology is difficult, and it’s also the case that, you know, because of a lot of historical features, generally speaking, when we ask people if they’re liberal, moderate, or conservative, you’re always going to see more people identifying as conservative than identifying as liberal.

The caveat to that is when we start to look at policy preferences in a lot of places, and sort of, if we were to identify someone as liberal or conservative based on their policy preferences, whether it’s economic or socialist or however really you want to do it, You find that that gaps either, you know, disappears or in some cases goes in the other direction in a small way, but nonetheless, because it’s a baseline, we can look at it.

And so we found is that, you know, again, in June polling, uh, you know, I say this first, just to say what the point is, the ideological differences between men and women in Texas are a lot less than the party differences. Yeah, I generally don’t really exist that much on June polling. 29 percent of both men and women identified as liberal were 45 41 percent of women and 45 percent of men identified as conservative.

Now again, we could talk about this whole thing for an entire other podcast. But the idea is the female electorate is slightly more liberal than the male electorate, right? It’s about 32 percent to 27 percent and somewhat less conservative, 41 percent to about 48 percent 47%. And that You know, it seems to me, I mean, you know, that’s six points that’s about

[00:34:03] Jim Henson: yeah, I mean

[00:34:04] Josh Blank: the gap is

[00:34:05] Jim Henson: yeah I mean that I you know, I kind of put a note as I was looking at that data.

I mean, you know You know, it’s not it doesn’t mean you know, you know men are from Whatever men are from mars and women are from venus but six points is

[00:34:23] Josh Blank: It’s something, but I think, and I think the point here, yeah, exactly. But I mean, the point is

[00:34:27] Jim Henson: not 10 or 15, but you know, it’s not, it’s out, you know, it doesn’t come out in the wash necessarily.

And looking at the averages, that’s, these are averages over time, right? So, you know,

[00:34:38] Josh Blank: right. So. You know, what do we say about that? We say, look, you know, ultimately, women are not going to be able to deliver Texas to Democrats on their own. But But ultimately, they’re such an important part of the Democratic coalition that that has to be central to the message necessary,

[00:34:52] Jim Henson: if not sufficient,

[00:34:53] Josh Blank: necessary, if not sufficient, right?

And one of the things that the point was also showing us was that, you know, there’s a real Enthusiasm problem for Democrats, you know, certainly before Biden exited the race, it had been apparent throughout, you know, the entire year and, you know, there’s the gap wasn’t necessarily even based on gender, although by the last poll we did in June, female enthusiasm had really kind of started to look like it was falling off a cliff in this election, only 35 percent of women said they were sorry of Democratic women.

So they were extremely enthusiastic about voting on 2024. That was nine points lower. Um, Then in October, 2019, before that 2020 election, right? And that’s the election. So ultimately, sorry, I have some wrong notes. I was like, I was looking at something. I thought that’s not right. So I’m going to skip that.

But anyway, going back, this is something that was like a glaring problem for Democrats. So now they’ve chosen obviously to figure, to mobilize, you know, On gender partially and part of that is around I think the composition of the candidate the composition of the speakers who are being lined up I mean, it’s a pretty you know I mean again it’s hard not to look at like hulk hogan and joe rogan and the republican convention on the one hand and You know hillary clinton and some of the other people they’ve been putting up in these prime time slots in the democratic convention oprah Yeah, exactly so It seems that, you know, this really does point to sort of where are the attitudes on abortion among these groups, right?

I mean,

[00:36:13] Jim Henson: that’s ultimately like, you know, not just among democratic women. This is where the anticipated leverage is really greatest, I think.

[00:36:20] Josh Blank: Right. And I think, you know, the argument for decades has been that, you know, overturning Roe v. Wade is going to upend elections in this country. And I mean, you’ve been hearing this for decades now.

And the theory

[00:36:29] Jim Henson: is being operationalized in other states with, you know, putting abortion measures on the ballot.

[00:36:33] Josh Blank: Well, this is what’s going to be interesting, you know, to Harvey’s point, this is going to be the first Post Roe presidential election, right? The Harris campaign is almost certain, it seems, to mobilize on the issue if this, you know, last week is any indication.

Question really is, you know, can Democrats translate the successes they’ve seen in other states where abortion was directly on the ballot to a national campaign where it’s not directly going to be on the ballot and all states is going to be sort of through this, you know. And

[00:36:58] Jim Henson: then the question in Texas, you know, does, you know, to what extent does that Do the fundamentals suggest that that rising tide would lift boats here as well?

[00:37:08] Josh Blank: It’s tough. I mean, I can say this, you know, this is a really, you know, That’s kind of

[00:37:12] Jim Henson: the brass tacks. It

[00:37:13] Josh Blank: is the brass, you know, and I’ll do some of these numbers in a second, but it is interesting. I will say, you know, if setting aside the way this race has changed, you know, I’ve definitely said this to people, so I’m, you know, it’s out there for sure, but I don’t, you know, believe if you had asked me a year ago or even post Roe v Wade, you know, in this time window, you know, In a, in a statewide race in Texas, does the Republican or Democratic candidate want abortion to be their primary issue?

And I think the answer is, I think this might still be true, I have to kind of play it out, but I think the answer is no. If you’re a Republican candidate, the state’s laws are not popular with the majority, and that’s a problem, right? And if you’re the Democratic candidate, you don’t necessarily want to be tied to, you know, essentially all the things that Democratic candidates do.

Running on abortion or tied to abortion on demand all these now look the the fundamentals of that discussion. Yeah I mean so dramatically and I and I think you gotta

[00:38:05] Jim Henson: really not you but I mean, I think candidates I mean We’ll get to you know, this is where colin allred I think has a real choice to make

[00:38:13] Josh Blank: Yeah, well, but this is another aspect of that choice and part of this is to say, you know and part of the reason of the why is not because you know taking a A pro, you know, a pro choice position in the race is a problem.

It’s because the issue itself is not necessarily the most salient issue to the vast majority of voters.

Right.

[00:38:32] Josh Blank: That’s the problem, is it misses, it can miss the mark when people are concerned about grocery store prices, when people are concerned about, if they’re concerned about crime, if they’re concerned about, honestly, for people on, you know, of, who are not, Of, you know, gestational age, not attached to someone of gestational age, not considering these issues are not for whom it’s not a primary driving issue to begin with, it can seem off the mark if you’re worried about the price of gas, right?

Um, you know, it’s my, it’s my, it’s my wife’s grandmother. So what does that have to do with the cost of eggs?

Yeah,

[00:39:02] Josh Blank: right. Okay. You know, but nonetheless, Even, you know, though this partisan distribution doesn’t necessarily show that Democrats have this huge favor, you know, with, with women, it is the case. And when we ask people in another question, you know, or voters in another question, the poll, are you, do you generally define yourself or describe yourself as pro life, pro choice?

Neither. Right? And we look at women in the state, 37 percent say they’re pro life and 48 percent say they’re pro choice. So you have a party ID gap that’s almost non existent amongst women. But when you’re talking about this question of choice or pro life versus pro choice, that becomes about a, A 10 point gap.

So I think that’s probably something the Democrats are trying to exploit here or in other, you know, if they are going to or they’re gonna have to exploit here if they’re going to mobilize on this issue, right? And the other thing that they’re going to mobilize on here that sort of, I think, plays into this is the vast, you know, the you know, uh, The extreme change in the laws, you know, over the last five years, right?

And so another way we can look at this is we can look at this question about the strictness of the state’s abortion laws. We’ve been asking this question since 2013, which I saw this morning. I thought, oh my God. But anyway, going back a little bit more recently, you know, in February of 2019. So before the overturn of Roe v.

Wade, 41 percent of Texas voters wanted abortion laws here made more strict. That was the plurality. 32 percent wanted them less strict, 20 percent wanted them left alone. Now, we still had strict abortion laws here. It wasn’t as though, you know, there was nothing going on. But it was

[00:40:24] Jim Henson: pre Dobbs and pre, you know, ratcheting up of abortion laws.

Right.

[00:40:29] Josh Blank: And so in April of this year, now 45 percent want those laws made less strict, 23 percent left alone, and 20 percent more strict. There’s no difference by gender. On this which is interesting, uh, but I will say, you know You look at those numbers and it’s easy to sort of notice the okay 41 and 29 wanted them more strict 45 want them less strict today But if you add up left alone or made more strict the numbers become 45 less strict 43 left alone or more Strict right which tells you it’s still pretty close pretty close.

Yeah. Yeah, right So among female democrats 66 wanted them made less strict, which is the same as male democrats Among female republicans 28 want these laws made less strict compared to 24 of male republicans But I should say and this is the thing if abortion does become a primary issue that people consider in this election having about a third of your coalition on the wrong, you know, Basically on the other side of the issue is not And I think that’s a great place to be.

Now we’ve talked about this for a long time. And there are a lot of issues where I think Republicans in the state have kind of edged into this around guns and some other kind of pretty hot issues where you’ve got about a third of the, a quarter to a third of the coalition basically disagreeing. But those are just not the issues that mobilize elections when it’s about the economy and it’s about the vote.

Well,

[00:41:40] Jim Henson: and you know, the issues that are mobilizing people don’t exist entirely in a state of nature. Right. Campaigns. as we say in here all the time, emphasize some issues and de emphasize others, and this is why, you know, Republicans are only talking about abortion to very specific audiences,

you

[00:41:58] Jim Henson: know, and that will continue into the general election.

And, you know, that circles back to the All Red Factor, right? It’s like, how much do you talk about it enough to keep it on people’s minds without having, you know, Potentially persuadable voters feel like you’re doing it to not to purposefully not talk about something else, something else. It would be the economy and the border.

[00:42:22] Josh Blank: Yeah. And look, and there is exposure here. I mean, the fact is, I mean, you know, you I mean, I think a reasonable bull. Response to some of the polling. I just says only six percent only sixty six percent of democratic women want the laws made less strict

[00:42:34] Jim Henson: Yeah,

[00:42:34] Josh Blank: I mean there’s you could say it that way. I mean that’s that’s sitting there

[00:42:37] Jim Henson: too Yeah, that’s the other balancing fact and

[00:42:39] Josh Blank: I think you know And this does speak to I think a lot of you know One of the other sort of themes of the democratic convention that I think is you know been probably on purpose And I think has been smart which is you know, the details have been pretty pretty few and far between, right?

And I think that is ultimately one smart strategy, you know, to the extent that you have, you know, anyone in Trump’s orbit saying, well, they should be more specific about their policies. I mean, the, the responses already kind of have written themselves, you know, saying, well, excuse me. Yeah. And I think, you know, the Democrats are sort of smart to play in kind of a post specifics world, but You know, ultimately they can not lay out specifics.

The specifics will be attached to them

[00:43:20] Jim Henson: Yeah, did he look to the extent that the specificity is a problem right now at this stage of her campaign, you know And and you know, it’s been interesting to see it’ll be interesting to see what she does tonight with how specific she gets I suspect she’s not going to get much more specific.

Yeah, but there have been more specific commitments floated by other speakers at this convention.

[00:43:44] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:43:45] Jim Henson: That’s right. I mean setting aside Bernie Sanders, but even people that I would think are closer. You know, the vice president, you know, they’re beginning to throw some other more, slightly more specific things out there.

Right. And You know, I mean, I think, you know, that will continue to happen. And I think, you know, I mean, we were talking about this driving in today and I, you know, I guess when I think about that, I, I largely agree that to this point, not being specific has been both an advantage and kind of her prerogative,

you know,

[00:44:18] Jim Henson: um.

They are in that kind of bind I was referring to earlier in terms of, you know, differentiation from the Biden administration that’s not repudiation or doesn’t create a different kind of problems, like, oh, so now you don’t want to do this, or now you do want to do this, or whatever, but I, you know, and you mentioned the Trump campaign, I, you know, I think, you know, to the extent that not being specific is a problem at this point, it’s a bigger problem with you.

The press than it is with the trump campaign Right. Well, I mean It’s the national press in particular that keeps you know, and then of course trump campaign picks up on that

[00:44:56] Josh Blank: Well, I think it’s and I think I think it’s a bigger problem with the press than I think it’s going to be with Individual voters.

I mean as some you know as people who Study public opinion, you know, it’s very rare that we’re asking people their attitudes about specific policy proposals because it’s so rare that people have any real views about specific policy proposals. You know, I mean, I, you know, I’ll throw this out there. Maybe it’s sort of kind of my wrapping up portion of this, you know, the specificity of things been really interesting to me and the criticism again coming from the press and sort of, I mean, I think the strategy of, of again, not being.

Laying out a bold agenda for, you know, universal health coverage or anything like that. You know, it seems to me that in a lot of ways, you know, what, what, what Trump was able to so successfully exploit is the over promising of presidential candidates in a system that they can’t control. And then in a system that’s become harder and harder to control, given the partisan dynamics and given, you know, not only in fighting between the parties, but even within the parties, right?

And it makes it easy for someone to come along and say, how many times have you been promised? X, Y, and Z by these guys, and they don’t do it. Well, you know what? That’s right. Cause they’re liars. Now, look that, you know, fundamentally, like fundamentally that’s, it seems perfectly sensible that a voter would say, yeah, that’s right.

I keep being told that they’re going to do this, that, and the other, but the president can’t do those things, right? I mean, the president has to sit there and sign the bills that are sent to them. And I think, you know, there’s something about the idea of saying, you know, to voters, look, you know. What are the vibes?

What are my attitudes? Where, you know, when, if a, if a bill comes to my desk, you know, there’s two, two presidents, you know, candidates. If a bill comes to, to our desk and one is going to set a nationwide six week ban on abortion, who’s going to sign it? Who’s going to veto it? You know, the answer to that question, right?

If something comes making a, you know, a, Um, a mandatory 20 week allowance period, who’s gonna sign that, who’s gonna, who’s gonna veto it. And I think, you know, that’s kind of known. Same thing with climate change, same thing with gun control, same thing with all these issues that generally tend to on the edges really divide people up.

So I, you know, I think it kind of makes a lot of sense, both, you know, as a practical campaign says, but honestly, even just as like a democratic principle, I’m starting to get normative here at the end of like, just say, yeah, this is where I’d like to see more climate change. I’d like to see more abortion access.

I’m not saying I want it to be up to here, what it is, because you know what? It’s not up to Harris because she’s not going to be able to get it through the Congress. It’s going to be whatever the Congress

[00:47:18] Jim Henson: produces. But you can’t camp, you can’t, you know, you can’t really say that in a campaign.

[00:47:23] Josh Blank: No, but would you, but, but this is, but I think, and this is what they’re, I think part of this is, is the most is the notion of this whole, let’s just wrap it up and then let’s not go back.

Let’s move forward. You know, what’s going to happen there.

[00:47:33] Jim Henson: I think, you know, to, you know, to close out, I mean, I think going full circle, that is in a way where You know, I think moving forward, what they will be doing is calibrating this effort to make the vibe a substantial, to put some meat on the bone of the vibe.

Yeah.

[00:47:52] Jim Henson: Right. And I think, and I think the way you’re talking about is what they’re trying so far, which is look, and the good thing about it for the Democrats is that it, it jibes with right, what is right now, their forward looking messaging, which is, you know, look, here’s where we want to take you.

[00:48:09] Josh Blank: Yeah,

[00:48:10] Jim Henson: is this where you want to go?

[00:48:11] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:48:12] Jim Henson: And, you know, uh, you know, it is a gamble on the, you know, the press can say that I’m not being detailed enough about how I’m going to get you there.

[00:48:22] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:48:23] Jim Henson: But, you know, if ever there was a time that you could ignore the press a little bit more, you know, I mean, I, I think you ignore them completely at your peril.

Right. I mean, I think. Joe Biden discovered that. Right. Um, and so I think there will be they will be mindful of that, but I do think that the you know, this attempt to articulate the the vibe message with the policy commitments And I think that’s, that’s probably what the speech tonight. And I like,

[00:48:55] Josh Blank: you know, I like your use of the word calibration there.

It’s sort of figuring out, you know, how do you calibrate the right policy areas to be specific on to reinforce the overall message. And then I’ll go back to what I said, my last name is just, and does any of it matter if people feel like the price of gas is too high?

[00:49:11] Jim Henson: Yeah. And, and I think that’s why, what they’re going to do with that.

And, you know, look, they’re signaling that they recognize that with, you know, You know, a lot of the destinations broadly that they’re talking about, they’re talking about where the Biden administration has attempted to make it easier on the middle class, Lord, you know, talking a lot about insulin.

Yeah.

Right.

[00:49:34] Jim Henson: And that kind of thing and I think so that you know, that will be You know, I mean, I think there’s the more amorphous speech of her life You know, this is her big introduction to her biggest all of which is true.

[00:49:46] Josh Blank: Yeah I’m not gonna say that because that’s everybody knows that

[00:49:49] Jim Henson: but the details of that I mean, you know what she needs to accomplish and how she’s going to do that are kind of the challenge for her for tonight and the you know, the most interesting thing that I guess theoretically will make it staying up for her till midnight tonight.

Um, so with that, uh, you know, if you’re listening to this in the afternoon or early evening, maybe take a nap if you’re going to stay up and watch the convention, whether you’re doing it for advocacy purposes or because it’s your vibe or because it’s work, you know, take a nap would be my advice. Um, that’s what I’ll probably try to do.

Um, so with that, thanks for being here, Josh. Thanks to our excellent production help here in the dev studio at the College of Liberal Arts, University of Texas here on the Thursday before school classes start again. Um, and most of all, thanks to you for listening. You will find the data, most of the data, That’s not all of the data that we talked about at our website, texaspolitics.

utexas. edu. If you’re listening to this directly from a podcast platform, some of the things we’ve talked about here, the U of H poll, the Pelosi interview, some of our polling, we’ll add to a post that also has a link to this podcast, so if you want to pop over to the blog section of our website. Again, check it out.

Texas politics dot u texas.edu. You’ll find all those extras there. So again, thanks for listening and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast.

The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.