Feb 20th, 2024 – What the latest UT/Texas Politics Project Poll tells us (and doesn’t) about the Texas primary

[00:00:00] 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. Happy to be joined by my colleagues in the University of Texas, Texas Politics Project poll, which will be Focusing on today, uh, Darren Shaw, professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin.

[00:00:20] Good late morning. That’s what’s very nice. It’s a harking back to Animal House for those of you who remember that. Uh, and, uh, Joshua Blank. Research director for the Texas Politics Project. Hi. I was waiting to see if you can do a funny voice. No, I don’t. I didn’t want to compete. Well, you might want to go super like, hello.

[00:00:39] I’m a little deeper. So, you know, as I’ve said, the, the. The topic of the day is the February University of Texas, Texas politics project polls. We record this on Tuesday. We released the poll yesterday morning on a holiday as it turns out it was President’s Day, but I should notice as [00:01:00] I, or note, as I said to a few people that asked me about it, it’s not a holiday at UT Austin.

[00:01:05] So you know. Just, you know, we just went like the hard working state employees we are and released the poll on a day that was a work day for us. So sorry for those of you whose, whose holidays we disturbed. I hope we didn’t disrespect anybody. So I think, right. So I think what we’ll, you know, well, okay. I was going to go somewhere with that, but I’m not going to.

[00:01:27] You know, we’ll focus on elections results today, but you know, probably touch on some of the other stuff. There’s a lot in this poll. If you haven’t seen it, you can find the results at the Texas Politics Project website, texaspolitics. utexas. edu. Links on the front page, links everywhere. Um, if you follow the blog link in the polling section, you’ll find not one.

[00:01:51] Not two, but three documents pegged to the release and also links to the summary and the crosstabs. Um, Jim and I had a [00:02:00] fun weekend. Yeah, that’s basically for some of you had a three day weekend. I would say we had a zero day weekend prepping for the. for the poll release. So it’s your Super Bowl. So, yeah, we’re not, you know, right.

[00:02:11] Exactly. There you go. It’s our Super Bowl. Um, six times a year. Um, so since we’re going to talk about, uh, uh, the election results or at least start with Aaron and really focus on those today, let’s, um, let’s start with arguably the one that is probably most interesting, at least statewide that we captured in the poll.

[00:02:33] And that’s the democratic Senate primary result, result, which In some ways was not very surprising. In other ways, though, there was an aspect of that, that people paid attention to. Josh, why don’t you tell us just what we got in that little. Yeah, sure. So, you know, when we’re looking at, uh, we’d like to call potential democratic primary voters, which in this case, it’s, it’s someone who told among the registered voter pool in our sample, they told us they were going to vote in the democratic primary.

[00:02:56] And then they expressed a high degree of certainty that they would definitely vote. [00:03:00] And so that’s what we do. Uh, and. On that, we found Colin Allred leading the pack with 52%, which is an important number, obviously, followed by a state Senator Ron Gutierrez at 14%, and then a lot of other candidates below 5%, basically, after that.

[00:03:16] Um, yeah, I mean, that’s the result. Well, talk a little bit about, I mean, look, obviously, the thing that, you know, as you kind of implied there, Josh, the The thing that people really noticed with that 52%, which, you know, enable, you know, which, you know, were that to be the election result would, um, enable congressman all read from, uh, to avoid a runoff.

[00:03:39] Um, but we should talk a little bit about how we got that number because some people notice that number is a little higher than we’ve seen in some of in other polling. But there’s, there are good reasons for that having to do with both time and how we did it. Yeah, that’s right. I mean, uh, so one of the things is when we were asking this question earlier in the year, when all red was, you know, probably in, I want to say in the thirties, maybe the [00:04:00] mid twenties, when we started doing this, one of the things that we allow respondents to do is just say, I don’t know.

[00:04:04] I haven’t thought about this enough to have an opinion. I’m not sure yet. And so that. Um, share of the respondents is relatively high, especially early on in a primary season. So you might see 20, 30, 50 percent of the electorate say, or the primary electorate saying, yeah, we don’t know. And as we said, when those polls were released, I mean, it’s useful to know that people aren’t paying attention and don’t have a preference early on.

[00:04:24] Right. And the idea is there’s going to be a fair amount of movements, you know, as we get closer to the actual election. Now, what we do when we get to this point, when we know that people are about to enter the voting booth is especially once we’ve now filtered down to people who’ve indicated they definitely intend to vote is when they say that they’re not sure yet who they’re going to vote for.

[00:04:38] We say, okay, but here’s the ballot. You got to pick somebody as if you were in the voting booth. And so what you end up with is you end up with both the combination of the people who initially chose all red in this case, plus those respondents who then when, you know, essentially forced to make a decision, pick someone as well.

[00:04:54] And that’s what pushes all reds numbers up higher than they were in prior polling, which is pretty standard for how [00:05:00] we do this as we get closer and closer to the actual casting of votes as opposed to, you know, when we’re kind of speculating. And there were enough people initially and decided that it was that push to put them over 52.

[00:05:08] It was, um, it definitely was, uh, you know. It’s sort of interesting. I mean, I think, you know, one thing to note is that the 52%, you know, that’s within the margin of error of 50%. So this doesn’t mean that already sitting here cruising. However, you know, it is notable that as you type as you type, well, as you tighten the screen, and as you look into the democratic constituencies that you think might make up more of the democratic primary electorate, or his numbers do tend to go up.

[00:05:33] If we tighten that likely voter screen a little bit more, his numbers go up a little bit more. If we look at the People who say who are, let’s say, extremely liberal or describe themselves as extremely liberal support for all red jumps to 62%. So it jumps up another 10 points. I think this is kind of, I mean, in and of itself, it’s sort of, is this interesting?

[00:05:48] It’s not, I think it’s interesting just because in some ways, you know, I’ve, there’s a lot of Democrats lamenting the fact that maybe all red didn’t seem to be more active on the campaign trail heading up to this point. I mean, that’s kind of what I [00:06:00] was hearing. I don’t know if you were hearing something similar to that, that, you know, he was basically complaining that he was spending too much time in Congress and not enough time in Texas.

[00:06:07] So You know, getting this thing going and I think there’s a strategic, you know, my reaction to that was, well, there’s a strategic reason not to do that, which is if you think you’re going to be in a runoff anyway, why go out and spend all the money he’s raising right now when you’re going to just have to kind of go out and do it again.

[00:06:20] At the same time, these results kind of push back in the opposite direction saying, you know, maybe he didn’t need to, or maybe he won’t, or maybe he will look back after, you know, election. It’s, ah, didn’t need to spend money then or spent a bunch of time in Texas. Strategy to take the mantle of. the presumed candidate, he’s been as much as possible ignoring his closest competitor, Ron Gutierrez.

[00:06:41] And so, I mean, I think this reflects that too. I think he’s been He’s been letting his campaign finance numbers speak for him more than anything. Right. Darren, what’d you make of this? Well, a couple things just on a small methodological note, what, what you see here. You know, we’re basically pushing. That’s kind of the colloquialism that we use in polling.

[00:06:57] You know, we, we push those who say they don’t have a preference to say [00:07:00] like, well, if you had to choose who would you select? Um, you know, we have a collective mentality, which is more often than not, we’re trying to replicate the ballot that voters are going to actually see. on election day. So, um, which is why we talk about this later.

[00:07:12] I actually kind of prefer the five way presidential ballot to the two way because assuming these candidates are going to be on the ballot, you want to give voters the option. Um, but, uh, but what you saw in Josh’s push, and I think Josh deserves a credit for the likely voter screen and kind of, uh, putting that together is, you know, basically a proportional allocation of people who vote.

[00:07:33] At the initial stage, didn’t express a preference. So in other words, you know, we were showing, you know, we were showing all read, you know, in the I think jobs right in the thirties or something like that, but basically like a two and a half or three to one edge over good years. And when you push people.

[00:07:49] He gets about, you know, three and a half or four to one of the undecideds, um, and you know, which is not unexpected, and I think reflects the fact, and we can talk about some of the deeper [00:08:00] numbers here for a second, the fact that Allred is just better known, and if you push people who aren’t terribly familiar, they’ll tend to side with the person that they’ve heard of before, so just on the fave unfaves, um, you know, there’s some good news.

[00:08:13] The good news is Allred is, is plus 12. So, um, yeah. 28 percent fave, 16 unfave. Uh, Gutierrez, 21 percent fave, 13 unfave, so plus 9. The bad news, uh, is that, uh, for Allred, 36 percent cannot rate him. And another 20 percent rate him as, ah, in between, neutral. Now, that might be people who are genuinely neutral. Uh, but it also might be people who just don’t have enough information to kind of go one way or the other, but would prefer to say, so, yeah, so I want to say they don’t know.

[00:08:44] Right. So Josh’s point about all word is really interesting. And the point that you raised, Jim, that, you know, he didn’t spend much money. There was almost a bet that people aren’t going to be paying much attention. I’m kind of the odds on favorite, why would I use money to make noise about a race [00:09:00] that otherwise I’m probably the default candidate?

[00:09:03] You know, and I was looking back this morning, this was out of curiosity, and those numbers, those fave unfave numbers for all right among Democrats, all Democrats at this point, is 50 fave, 7 unfave, so I thought, well, where was Beto O’Rourke in February of 2018? Among Democrats, 53 fave, four on fave. So, I mean, without really, you know, doing anything dynamic, spending a ton of money, really pushing himself out there, visiting every county, skateboarding, whatever, he’s in the same place as, you know, basically, you know, would say the most successful Democratic challenger in some ways with Democrats.

[00:09:35] There’s a good number in here, too, that I can’t remember, you know, which of my co worker geniuses came up with this one, but, uh, how certain are you? Oh, yeah. And in the certainty number, 60 percent of all Red supporters say they are not considering anyone else. Mm hmm. Right? So, if he were to lose That other 40 percent, which is not going to happen, but we lose all of them.

[00:09:56] He’s still at about 30 percent. Um, [00:10:00] which would almost certainly get him into the runoff at the very least. You know, Darren, you’ve worked on campaigns and, you know, I want to, I want you to put on both, you know, the, your hybrid hat here of both the guy who’s been strategizing and a guy spent a lot of time looking at stuff from an academic perspective.

[00:10:15] You know, two, two things I’ve been pondering, I think, and one is. Um, you know, if you look at a number like this, is the strategy then, you know, to, if you really, if it’s really important to you to avoid a runoff, which I, I think is probably a pretty high priority of the All Red campaign, do you take some of that money and buy a lot of TV in the last week and a half?

[00:10:42] So that’d be one question. Um, the other is, and this is really for all of, you know, both of you or all of us, but you know, When you have a ballot as crowded as this one, because that’s something we haven’t really said specifically, I mean, there’s going to be a bunch of names on the ballot. There’s a bunch of names on our trial ballot.

[00:10:59] [00:11:00] What is it? Like eight? I think it’s eight or 10, something like, you know, I mean, how much is just randomness your enemy? And do you kind of go, you know, what, what is it? 10? Yeah. You know, do you just kind of go, you know, You kind of throw up your hands and say there’s going to be enough people in a democratic primary not paying attention You know, there’s a couple of Hispanic surnames.

[00:11:20] I mean what? Yeah. And are we just, are we just at the mercy of randomness? Yeah. There is, there is a little bit to it. There’s a robust literature in political science that talks about ballot order effects. Yeah. And this is where alphabetization is your friend, if you’re Alred. That’s right. You know, there is a tendency, That’s a good point.

[00:11:39] Yeah. There is a tendency for, for people who are looking for some sort of clue in a race where they don’t have much information to, to make sense of this. And if you’re looking for sort of a, you know, a coethnic. Well, okay, I got Gutierrez, but I got Gómez, you know, I got González and, you know, sort of the G candidates in here, um, which works in favor of Allred.

[00:11:59] [00:12:00] Um, you know, so there are a lot of things here, I guess the roundabout way to answer your question, Jim, is, uh, there’s always somebody in the campaign is pushing to spend money on TV and it’s usually the person who’s getting, yeah, it’s usually the TV guys. Um, and I guarantee you that’s being said right now, but I, I think the lesson to be learned is apropos what Josh suggested, which is I’m, I’m probably doing digital, I’m probably doing mail.

[00:12:23] And I’m doing micro targeting that is messages to individual voters. I’m not doing broadcast. I’m saving my money. You know, you’re going up against Cruz. Almost certainly, you’re going to need every dollar. Um, I don’t think it makes much sense to try to do that. If, if, if you thought it was a difference between 50, 51 and 49 percent, you could avoid a runoff.

[00:12:43] Maybe, but it’s not clear to me. I know the digital people right now and the male people are having a fight with the television people about the best approach. It’s like a long, it’s like a long standing fight. It is. It is. And this would be a honeymooners or something. Yeah, exactly. And this would be a great case to go in.

[00:12:58] If you were, if you could be a fly on the [00:13:00] wall, um, I guarantee you those are the sorts of fights that are going on right now on the Allred campaign. Yeah. I mean, I just keep hearing also even on the Republican side too, especially during this primary season, the reliance on digital and micro targeting be the, just the go to now.

[00:13:12] And I mean, when you think about a primary electorate, that’s going to be, you know, what, under 10 percent of all registered voters, do you really want to go on TV in Dallas? Yeah. Yeah, Houston and saying, I mean, sort of, it’s, it’s, you’re throwing a lot of money, you know, for that one point, right, you know, and so it is, it doesn’t, I mean, it’s always, you know, if it’s, if it’s 5149, what I spend my own TV or what I just save it even still, I might still save it.

[00:13:33] It’s a good point, Josh. I mean, you know, I was looking at some of the historical numbers and in a presidential, you’re probably in an open, this is not quite an open presidential. In fact, you could make an argument that it’s too closed. Uh, that is there’s two incumbents basically running, but, uh, in open presidential races, you get usually about 2 million people on each side, 2 Reap.

[00:13:57] I would really Even with a [00:14:00] really kind of interesting Democratic Senate race and an active Republican Senate race I’d be pretty surprised if we get two million on each side. Yeah, I think so Yeah, I was wondering what your number was Boy I tell you one five on each side would be especially for the Democrats I think would be Something they’d be kind of happy with.

[00:14:19] Yeah, I was gonna say, I, you know, I don’t have a precise, you know, My gut is The R. B. number keeps going up, right? So, you know, I think that’s I think of it in, like, the percentage terms, and you think, like, well, is this really, like, I mean, I think the way you said it is right. You basically have two incumbents at the top of the tickets.

[00:14:36] You’ve got this Senate race, which, again, has two candidates who are not, I mean, two top candidates who are not super well known, who aren’t spending a ton of money. What, you know, what’s gonna draw people in? You know, at least, at least sort of the people that’s going to make, you know, say it a high quote unquote for Texas, a high turnout primary, right?

[00:14:52] Not much. Yeah. I mean, you know, the Democrats, I think, hit 2 million in the 2008 contest. I think they hit 2 million or something close to [00:15:00] that in 2016. You know, there’s no contest for the Biden. So that’s a huge reducer. I mean, the Republicans hit 2 million in 2016. Cruz is not, that’s not a competitive race.

[00:15:11] So, uh, you know, I’ll be interested to see where the final turnout figures are. So, so let’s before, I really want to move on to the house races and, you know, which is the preoccupation. But before we do that, since you’ve raised the presidential, anything really, anything stand out, any, you know, anything to see here before we just move along in presidential numbers in the, in the presidential race?

[00:15:31] Yeah. I, I just point to a couple of the. The demographic groups right here. So right now, our two way, not our having championed the five way, the two way. In some ways, this is simply the if Biden and Trump were the nominees, who would you vote for? And we’re sitting right now at 48 Trump, 41 Biden. The first thing is, my goodness, 47 or 48 seems to be the ceiling for Trump.

[00:15:52] Everywhere. Everywhere. The variable here is Biden, not Trump. And I would just sort of say, take a look at that across these states. [00:16:00] But the subnumbers are interesting. So Trump is winning independence, according to our poll in Texas, by 19 points. Um, that that’s something Biden just can’t, you know, that margin isn’t as large elsewhere, but he’s losing independence.

[00:16:12] Biden is most everywhere. Uh, gender gap, men plus 14 Trump Republic, women plus one Trump. So the, the margin is almost entirely driven by men, uh, amongst blacks, uh, plus black people, 65 points. Uh, net favorable towards Biden, but the top line number is 77 percent for Joe Biden. 77 percent amongst African American voters will not get it done nationally.

[00:16:35] Hispanics, Biden has a lead by one point. Um, now, you know, there’s all the caveats about Hispanic subsample and smallish numbers, but Biden’s at 43 percent in our poll with Hispanics. And you know, on the bright side, Biden’s at plus 14 with people under 30. And that’s a number you haven’t seen nationally.

[00:16:56] The number has been much closer nationally. So at least in Texas, Biden’s [00:17:00] doing better with younger people. So I thought those were all interesting. Uh, Trump is up 10 in the suburban areas and 48 in the rural areas. Um, and that’s a little bit of a Texas thing is numbers suburbans, the suburbs elsewhere aren’t as good as that.

[00:17:15] Um, and then the thing we’ve been focusing on so much lately amongst, uh, people, the high school education or less Trump by 17 amongst those with a postgraduate degree Biden by 15. So that education divide is manifest in Texas. So just. You know, some behind the one thing I would note about the, uh, about the, the black, the, the number with black voters, that’s a, that’s a common thing.

[00:17:36] And isn’t it that those, the, the divides on the black subsamples, not just in our polling. I mean, I’ve had this, you know, I don’t know. I got in some argument with somebody on Twitter two cycles ago or something. If you go back and you look at what the pre election polling and the exit polling looks like among African American voters.

[00:17:57] The, the black polling is, is [00:18:00] always more Republican, at least in our stuff, in our stuff and in other polls in Texas, then the ultimate vote appears to be, yeah, there’s a pretty common, there’s a question about, you know, the rally, right? That, that, um, you know, there’s partisan polarization. Um, so it is unusual for most groups to see You know, a group that’s heavily Democratic with the Democratic candidate underperforming given that, you know, what exactly is there to learn about Biden and Trump that we already know right now?

[00:18:29] So that that would be my one rejoinder to those who look at these numbers and say, well, blacks will come around, right? They’ll eventually get to 90 percent for Biden. And by the way, that might happen. Right. But right now, I think there is a strong sense of those who actually are looking at the polling numbers right now saying like, and I know the White House feels the same way.

[00:18:49] No, no, we, we are absolutely underachieving. The notion it’s going to organically come back to us as people are reminded of their partisanship over the course of campaign. [00:19:00] Um, also there’s a, there’s a gender divide. There’s a class divide, you know, African American women. are closer to historical numbers in African American men on the end.

[00:19:10] You know, on the Hispanic side, I’ve had several arguments with a good friend of mine, Matt Barreto at UCLA, who argues that there’s no evidence that the education divides you’ve seen amongst whites. That is less well educated people moving to the Republicans, college educated people moving to the Democrats.

[00:19:24] He says we don’t see that with Hispanics. Oh, contrary, mon frere. As we’ve aggregated Hispanic cases, more and more cases are accumulating. I’m seeing a class divide, um, less well educated Hispanics seem to be the Achilles heel here. Um, we need more data, but. One thing I wonder, I mean, just to just to just to ask you on this, I mean, and I can see I can think of a response to the question I’m going to ask if I can phrase the question.

[00:19:50] Well, anyway, but I want to hear what you have to say about it. I mean, one of the things I’m wondering right now, because we always sort of see the sort of stronger sets of attitudes about the person [00:20:00] holding office. Then sort of the hypothetical alternative now. Trump’s a weird case, right? Because he has held office.

[00:20:05] People know what they think about him, right? It’s not like this is some wallflower sitting, you know off to the side, but he’s not but I mean, I think trump has been Relative. I mean, you know, I say relatively careful for himself I mean, I know that’s I know that can sound kind of crazy but in terms of the volume, right?

[00:20:19] I think he’s been a lot more controlled about how often he’s sort of putting himself out there because with biden being the incumbent president He is the object of evaluation, right? And so what i’m wondering about is, you know I mean, just let me put this to you. What about the possibility that once Trump becomes the nominee, he’s on the campaign trail like we’re in the fall.

[00:20:37] This is really happening that that sort of, you know, we say that that mobilization, these sort of enlightened preferences, people start moving back into their camps. Does it happen later? Does it happen at all? I mean, do you think that that’s part of the dynamic going on here? Because You know, again, Biden is the president, the president owns, owns everything, right?

[00:20:53] Two, two points. The first is persuasion versus mobilization, and that is, I’m dubious about this claim that lots of these [00:21:00] independents and, and sort of recalcitrant Democrats, people are traditionally Democrat but aren’t really maybe thrilled with what they’ve seen on inflation or immigration are, are, are going to be persuaded to come back to Biden because, oh, Trump is actually the nominee.

[00:21:13] Yeah. Um. Yeah. Yeah. I think we kind of know Trump and I don’t know that the, you know, however, having said I’m a little dubious about how much persuasion or, you know, kind of I guess, uh, reanimation of partisan preferences will occur. It’s not even so much persuasion as it is a kind of rediscovery. Exactly.

[00:21:33] Oh, I’m a Democrat. Right. And Trump’s, you know, Trump’s Trump. Um, but on the mobilization side, I think what you’re going to see is, you know, let’s take African Americans, for instance. Well, you know, let’s say you don’t get 90%, but you get 85%. Um, as long as you mobilize at very, very high levels, the net. is, is what you need.

[00:21:54] I don’t necessarily need 90%, but I need really huge turnout at 85%. And it’s interesting. I [00:22:00] mean, I think, I mean, I think that’s kind of what’s sort of interesting here is we’re getting into this election cycle where it’s like, okay, how many Republicans is Trump going to lose? And we say lose, and this is the important part I want to make, like when I don’t think it makes me think about Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as well.

[00:22:11] And like, you know, there’s this idea in 2016, like reporters would call and say, like, well, there are a bunch of Republicans going to vote for Hillary Clinton. And I’m like, and I say that, ask that question to yourself. And Listen to the words coming out of your mouth, right? Because, like, that’s not happening.

[00:22:25] I think, you know, I wonder here, to the extent that we’re not talking about Democrats. Voting for Trump. We’re just talking about ’em not showing up. Right. And I think right now we’re kind of heading to this election cycle where you are kind of starting to wonder about like, how many Republicans does Trump lose?

[00:22:37] How many Democrats does Biden lose? And it’s not necessarily that they’re gonna vote for the other side, just that they just don’t show up. I think that’s, that’s a really good point, Josh. And I’d I. I’d go even further. We have made this point about Texas, um, certainly in 2018, um, and a little bit about 2020, which is the Democrats were just the more motivated party, which is definitely not the case in this polling and and the interesting question about 2024.

[00:22:59] I still [00:23:00] think the variable. It’s a little more even right now, but I do think to your point, um, That Trump being on the ballot solves the Democrat mobilization problem. They’re going to turn out. I’ll be interested to see how, so again, the interesting thing is, you know, Republican turnout becomes. I think the higher level variable, right?

[00:23:22] Are they that fired up about getting Biden out or getting Trump in that they’re going to do what they did in 2016, certainly 2020, which is, you know, that was the thing we talked about collectively at 2020, you know, well, Biden’s going to win unless Republicans show up at really, really high numbers. And we were all kind of like, eh, you know, and they did.

[00:23:39] I remember the first numbers on election night in 2024. I was like, or 2020. I was like, well, I guess they were really in. And he ended up getting this, this record turnout. The, um, you know, the, the, the second sort of part that I mentioned to your, to your question is, it is a matchup of two incumbents. And the curious thing that we’ve seen so far [00:24:00] is, I know this is to the frustration of the Biden campaign, that memories of Trump’s economy.

[00:24:05] Yeah. He doesn’t. When you ask, you know, how good was the economy under Trump, you know, even Democrats, some Democrats say, well, it was pretty good. Whereas Biden’s, the memories of Biden’s economy seem to be frozen in, uh, in September of 2021, you know, when inflation first hit. And I think that’s really, really frustrating to them.

[00:24:28] Could that change? Yeah, I suppose so. But, but I’m actually kind of, you know, I, I’ve was involved in 1992. And one of the things I recall from that distant campaign was how absolutely fixed voters perceptions were about the state of the economy and especially George H. W. Bush’s handling of the economy.

[00:24:46] And so I have in my memory this one kind of example of man, it is tough to convince people that what they think about you and the economy is wrong. It’s actually, you know, the economy is actually good. But We’ll see. Jim and I were talking about this the other day [00:25:00] too. I mean, in the specific nature of like inflation being the problem, you know, given an electorate and especially, you know, like, you know, a large part of the democratic electorate is going to involve, you know, younger voters who’ve never experienced this.

[00:25:11] You know, it’s like, well, the economy, you know, Hey, look, unemployment. So it’s like, yeah, but everything still costs a ton. Right. Well, you saw the 18 big Mac deal. That’s like, that’s the meme now. The 18 Big Mac. Which McDonald’s has been, you know, at, at their wits end about like, we have regional pricing guys, okay?

[00:25:27] Just because it was like, it was an 18 Big Mac in New Jersey, but. It was cheap in Austin though, guys. But I think it is a good example of this idea that, you know, I mean, we, you and I had this conversation, a version of this conversation on a panel we did last week. But, you know, this idea that, you know, there’s a mixture between this, generational, the, the novelty of inflation for some people, for a lot of people, most maybe, um, and you know, the, the lag that’s inherent in perceptions of economic change, right?

[00:25:56] Right. And the thing is, prices, you know, this, I think the white house is [00:26:00] understands this, but they’re still having trouble with it, which is like talking about the rate of inflation going down. That doesn’t mean prices are coming down. And I think the real question is, are these Other benefits and other kind of high, you know, these things we like about the modern economy or the current economy, I should say, uh, enough to make you and and will Americans get comfortable.

[00:26:21] We use the example. I guess the Big Mac deal is now the prototype. But we’re talking about a 9 box of Cheerios. If Americans get used to a 9 box of Cheerios, I think Biden is in good shape. But I don’t think it’s coming back down to 4, right? And you might not want it to, right? Because if that happened before the election, we’re in a lot of trouble just generally, right?

[00:26:42] But yeah, I mean, it’s interesting to me. It also reinforces the class dynamic, right? Because that’s the other thing about this, too. I mean, if you’re a Democrat and you know, you’re increasingly relying on college educated voters who are doing election. Yeah. you know, pretty okay in the economy, you know, you can kind of ignore the fact that, you know, these problems are like, are seen pretty, you know, the [00:27:00] perception of these problems are pretty widespread.

[00:27:01] And especially you see these big movements in the, in the, in the college and on college educated. Yeah. I, you know, I like your point about, you know, the way that you talk about it and the way that, you know, the way that everybody talks about inflation, because from a pointy head perspective, it’s the way you should talk about it.

[00:27:16] But if you’re your average person, it sounds like the Biden administration is trying to bullshit you. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Um, Let’s, all right, so let’s shift over then to talking about, you know, the vibe of the Texas House primaries, um, and, and the primary elections in Texas, you know, you know, these elections are currently, you know, are the, you know, are the political preoccupation among the Texas focused, you know, political, political professional class.

[00:27:45] Begs the question of how much people actually know about their state house races, which is not much, um, You know, but we still try to dig at this. Uh, we, of course, don’t have district level, specific race level data to use to [00:28:00] talk about individual races or to try to build it out in that way. But we did try to poke around in the public opinion dynamics of some of the themes that people are.

[00:28:13] paying a lot of attention to in these primary campaigns and in coverage of the legislative primary campaigns. So, so Josh set us up for a little bit for how we approach this, which was an interest, which was fun, you know, I would say. Yeah. So, I mean, what we want to do is we wanted to try to kind of Really, you know, test a couple different propositions here at the same time about how these, you know, primary elections operate in some ways, you know, we’ve when we if you’ve been listening to this podcast, right, you know, Jim and I talked about this a few weeks ago about some of the sort of theories that people have about what drives voters in these primaries, whether it’s, you know, sort of these, uh, Ideological, you know, preoccupations of supporting, you know, especially the Republican primary, the most conservative candidate or maybe the most liberal candidate in Democratic primaries.

[00:28:56] This idea of issue publics, you know, basically voters who show up because they have an [00:29:00] issue that they are, you know, committed to, and this is what they’re primarily voting on when they’re choosing a candidate. And then because of the nature of, you know, what you’re talking about and, you know, uh, really Greg Abbott.

[00:29:11] You know, Ken Paxton and Dan Patrick now weighing in against incumbent House Republicans, the role that endorsements, you know, may or may not play, uh, in these elections. Now, I should say at the outset, I don’t, you know, we did this having said that, you know, when people tell you the rationales for their decision making, that’s not always entirely accurate.

[00:29:30] But what we want to do is at least try to take people at face value and see what do they say is important to them first. So we asked them about the importance of, you know, supporting the most conservative or most liberal candidate. And that depend on if you’re voting the Democratic or Republican primary voting for the candidate who agrees with you on the one or two issues that are most important and then voting for the candidate who has, you know, the endorsement from the political figures that you trust the most.

[00:29:50] And what we found was, you know, across, you know, the entire primary electorate, you know, issues were were rated as most important. 49 percent of potential primary voters said it was extremely important [00:30:00] to support the candidate who agreed with them on the one or two issues they care most about. It’s 52 percent for Republicans, 44 percent for Democrats.

[00:30:07] Next was ideology, 38 percent for all primary voters. Mary voters, 42% for Republicans, 32% for Democrats. And then last was endorsements. 29% for all voters, 30% for Republicans, 29% for Democrats. So in the other two cases, Republicans weighed issues. More important, leaving Democrats, uh, and ideology more importantly, but they.

[00:30:25] Equally sort of, I don’t want to say undervalued endorsements, but valued endorsements less than the others. Now, what we did was, for those, uh, voters who said that issues were at least somewhat important, or that endorsements were somewhat important, then we said to them, for the issue question, you said this was important, what are the one or two issues that are most important to you?

[00:30:44] And this was open ended, so we allowed them to say whatever they wanted to provide us, they could provide us with multiple issues. And boy, did they. It was fun to code as it always is, um, and, you know, and what we find is both, I would say, not surprising, but also, you know, I would say [00:31:00] illuminating in terms of the sort of broader discussions that people who listen to this podcast and are following and covering this have about the effects really of, uh, The issue of vouchers, the issue of Ken Paxton’s impeachment, and then the endorsements of Abbott and Paxton.

[00:31:13] So we asked about issues, um, among Republicans who said that issues were the most important, you know, were really important to them. Unsurprisingly, immigration to the border was the most mentioned issue that they were looking for. 64 percent of Repub of potential Republican primary voters said that this was the issue that they were looking at their They’re house candidate for this was in the context of house elections.

[00:31:31] To be clear, that’s not totally surprising. I think we had 68 percent of Republicans saying that immigration or border security is the most important problem facing the state. After that, it was the economy or inflation, 33 percent abortion, 10%. And then nothing else was above 10%. And notably, we can come back to this 2 percent of Republican voters said something about vouchers.

[00:31:50] None said anything about Ken Paxson’s impeachment. I believe there was one open ended that said something about Democratic committee chairs in the house, which was great. I was cool, you know, uh, [00:32:00] you know, among Democrats, surprisingly pretty spread out. 28 percent said abortion. There’s another about, I don’t want to say 5 to 7 percent who said something about women’s health.

[00:32:08] 21 percent of the economy are inflation, 15 percent said guns, 14 percent said health care, 12 percent said immigration or border security, which might come back to climate change with 10 percent and then democracy at 9%. Now, this is just like when we look at democratic issue areas, very spread out, not surprising, does important to note that abortion was the top issue when we look at the endorsements that matter most, we said again, you said endorsements was important.

[00:32:29] So whose endorsement are you looking for? Right. And among Republicans, Trump topped the list. Not surprisingly, 24 percent mentioned Trump, 7 percent mentioned Abbott, 7 percent mentioned Cruz, fewer than 1 percent mentioned Ken Paxton, which is notable. Among Democrats, Biden was at the top of the list at 18%, Obama at 6%, and then sort of spread out.

[00:32:50] I gotta tell you, there were a lot of names that were thrown out there. Taylor Swift. Taylor Swift got 2 percent of Democrats, but there was one, there was one person that said Travis Tritt Travis [00:33:00] kind of my favorite one. Yeah, there, there was some wild stuff in there. Um, such a great question. So All right.

[00:33:09] I’ve laid that out. Let me, let me stop. So what did you make of this, Darren? I went, you know, we’re eager to have you, I was eager to have you on to talk about this because, you know, on one hand, there’s the thing itself. I mean, what we were trying to get at. And, and again, I should say we had some ideas about, you know, testing some ideas, but you know, we didn’t design this in an academic way.

[00:33:30] We were just kind of doing a heat check here to see what kind of structure we got and, uh, you know, I was relatively pleased with the structure we got at the top level on this. I thought, you know, I love it. I think it’s really interesting. I mean, Josh talked, used the percent saying that, uh, it’s extremely important to me or extremely relevant.

[00:33:51] Um, and I would actually combine the extremely and very, and what you, what you get is about 80 percent. You [00:34:00] know, saying that their top issues, you know, got to be in agreement with me lockstep with me on those top couple issues and then about 60 percent would say ideology or endorsements. So it’s not like they didn’t say those things mattered.

[00:34:12] But the You know, this notion of borrowing from political science, issue publics, especially for lower level races, seems to be a pretty big deal. So this is consistent with the literature, and I think a very kind of smart way the way you and Josh had this set up. I was actually fascinated by the issues that were listed.

[00:34:30] If you’re a Republican, you look at this, it’s like. Yeah, it’s immigration and the economy. That’s it. That’s the list. Um, the Democrat and I think if you were to look at this, you might be tempted to say, well, the Democrats are all spread out. They’re all over the place. To me, this is the trap of the 2022 election, right?

[00:34:49] Which is the two big issues that unite Republicans are out there. I’d probably throw crime in there nationally, right? Um, And it seems like, you know, people generally think these are relatively important, and the [00:35:00] Republicans seem to have, be on the offense, Democrats on the defense. But if you put all these smaller issues together, I think you mobilize Democrats.

[00:35:08] You know, 28 percent said abortion, 15 percent said gun violence. So if you’re, if you’re looking at this from a strategist point of view, and you’re talking about micro targeting. You’re talking about, well, you know, yeah, we don’t have inflation. We don’t have border security to fire up everybody, but we got this sort of potpourri of small issues and the notion that Democrats aren’t intense about those issues, you know, we haven’t really tried to measure that.

[00:35:35] I don’t think that’s true. Well, and I think another thing that this brings out adjacent to that is that You know, we, and look, it’s true. It’s one of those things that’s true enough that the basic kind of orientation of Democrats on an issue basis is more spread out. I mean, there’s no two ways around that, but I think one thing that we got by And [00:36:00] I, I didn’t even really thought about this a little bit more until you used the way that you added, you know, equality in women’s rights and equality into the abortion number.

[00:36:09] Added it to you. Is that when we just say, what’s the most important problem facing the state? In our typical question, political leadership and corruption, you know, always comes up as the top. Is the top response among Democrats and there’s always this kind of, well, shouldn’t abortion be at, or, or depending on what’s going on, shouldn’t it be something else, but political corruption and, and leadership of just activates all of the part, all the hyper partisan stuff, the negative partisanship in a state like Texas, where Republicans own state government, lock, stock and barrel this question.

[00:36:45] And I, I didn’t think about it ahead of time doing this. Kind of push that out because it’s baked in right this is a primary where we’re talking about a partisan setting and what it does Is it does show you that you know more than a third of? Democratic [00:37:00] voters, you know are focused on you know what however you want to put it women’s rights in the halo of abortion or abortion in the halo of women’s rights and equality and it You know, it is a pretty big motivator.

[00:37:12] I mean, you know, it’s not immigration and border security is for Republicans, but you know, what is? Well, I also think these issues are, you know, would I rather have the issue climate, right? If you know, the sort of Republican issue profile or portfolio or the Democratic issue portfolio heading into 2024, I’d probably prefer the Republican portfolio right now.

[00:37:34] But I think it’s a lot closer than people seem to think I think I think that’s a I think that’s a nuanced take Yeah, and and I look at abortion gun violence Even climate change. There are these these sort of issue publics on the Democratic side who are really intensely Interested in these issues and feel them very personally and you know, you look at the Republican issues and it’s like, yeah, you know inflation [00:38:00] the economy.

[00:38:00] We all want a good economy. Um, you know, border security. Yeah, that might affect, you know, services in my local community or resources. But, but I just can’t help but look at these things and think from a democratic strategist point of view that I can cobble together four or five of these issues and reach enough people to, to really fire them up and to, to, to make this wherever, wherever I go, you want to jump in, Josh, but I want to follow up on that for just a minute though, Darren, and this is just a question as I was thinking about the podcast that I wanted to ask you specifically, because you know, this literature so well, and you raise issue publics in here a lot.

[00:38:38] I mean, when you have immigration and border security together, yeah. Um, as such a, you know, you know, such a widespread concern among Republic. Is that really an issue? Public? I’m not, I’m not sure. Right. You know, I mean, it’s a conceptual question, but, but with real prag, you know, practical consequences. Yeah.

[00:38:58] I think maybe the best way to kind of [00:39:00] explain this to the audience is to make the literature kind of sensible as to, to see, you know, is there a deal breaker? for you, right? The negative way of putting it is there, is there an issue where, you know, if Jim Henson is running for office and I like Jim, he’s a good guy, he’s got decent experience, but he’s wrong on this issue, you know, does that mean no, nope, cannot vote for him.

[00:39:19] And that’s our sense of issue. Publix there, there’s singular issues that are litmus tests or however you want to frame it. Um, and, uh, and I think, I think there are kind of a set of those Democrats here, but yeah. No, so in that case, I think that probably, you know, that probably does that within that loose definition, that probably does make at least border security an issue public.

[00:39:43] Yeah, I think that’s right. But I think, you know, we’re reading this in these smaller races, these state ledger races and these house races, and we’re using Texas, but we’re Extrapolating from Texas to the country and the question is in my district where I live, um, can I use these, these issues, um, you know, [00:40:00] if I’m a Republican, can I use immigration in a way to rally my supporters and to differentiate me from the opposition?

[00:40:05] If I’m a Democrat, can I use abortion in that way or climate change in that way? And, um, I don’t think it’s as lopsided as that’s, that’s one of the lessons from 2022, I think. Yeah, I mean, two things. I mean, it’s first you on the lopsidedness. I mean, I think it’s notable given that, you know, Republicans, you know, expressed economy and inflation is sort of the next biggest issue.

[00:40:24] How dour their attitudes are about the economy. That’s not surprising. The national sense, but what’s been notable in the polling recently is that their attitudes towards the state economy are Are pretty bad too. And their personal economic, you know, the way they wrote their own personal economic situation is also bad.

[00:40:38] So 53 percent of Republicans say that their personal economic situation is worse than last year. 68 percent view the national economy that way. 36 percent say the state economy is worse than last year. Democrats are generally actually on the Plus side on on all of these measures. And so to the extent that you know, you want to say, well, this is Biden.

[00:40:56] This is Biden. This is Biden. I mean, one of the things that’s, you know, I mean, I’m just thinking about what you said. It’s interesting in the [00:41:00] sense that well, yeah, Republicans at the state level have these two really good big issue buckets, but like pretty hard to affect the economy and inflation. And we’re seeing what it looks like trying to impact the immigration border situation.

[00:41:12] And it’s not Easy and it’s not clean, right? So, I mean, in some sense, when you think about it, it’s much easier for Democrats to say, yeah, I mean, like, I’m thinking about what you were saying, actually, Jim, about the idea of like, you know, Democrats mentioned or will say political corruption leadership is the most important problem.

[00:41:25] But if we were to push them after that and say, well, what do you mean? You know, they probably say, well, yeah, look at the abortion laws or oh, I mean, what about You know, gun violence and mass shootings and all this stuff will come out. What about the fact we have an expanded medicaid and like, and so that becomes the bucket.

[00:41:40] The other thing about this battery, you know, in some ways is in part of why we asked it. I mean, the way you said that about issue public says, what’s the litmus test? What is the thing that if you’re not with me on this, we can’t do it is, uh, the extent to which vouchers didn’t come up. And the extent to which Ken Paxton’s, you know, impeachment or the management of the house or any of that stuff didn’t come up now that feels really inside baseball [00:42:00] and we wouldn’t expect it to be a widespread, you know, sort of concern of people and even a primary voters, but to the extent that there’s a lot of money being spent, a lot of ink being spilt and a lot of sort of, you know, thrown around of weight around this idea that like, well, you should vote against this house incumbent who voted to increase border security spending, you know, dramatically voted for the trigger law voted to, uh, you know, Get rid of licensing requirements for guns went after, you know, gender transition therapy and all this other stuff.

[00:42:29] But by the way, they vote to impeach Ken Paxton. I just don’t think it really has. I mean, look at this. It would be surprising if it has a big impact when all is said and done. I mean, just again, what people didn’t mention. And part of this, we didn’t limit them. We said you could. Yeah. Tell us anything, please.

[00:42:46] And again, they did. And we did. Well, and you’re seeing, you know, a Texas version of the, uh, of the New York special election, special house election strategy, which is, uh, try to neutralize border security immigration as an issue and move the, move the [00:43:00] issue conversation onto different grounds. Right. And I actually, I’m not sure you’ll, the Democrats will be able to do that nationally, but I actually think it’s a smart strategy.

[00:43:10] Right. And that election, that special election also came at kind of the optimal moment for that. Correct. Yeah. Right. And it’s, it’s a, but I actually think in Texas, there’s, there are, there’s many democratic candidates with more credible kind of positions on, on border security immigration than you necessarily see in New York where, where they really are fighting a rear guard action against statements they’ve made previously and positions they’ve taken before.

[00:43:31] I mean, you know, Josh and I were talking about this yesterday and as I was kicking this around and looking at these results, I mean, you know, if you talk to People in campaigns, I think there’s a legitimate argument that says, interesting, this is all useful, you know, but at the same time, you know, a house race is a very localized, specific critter, you know, I mean, these house districts are small, you know, they’re, they have dynamics all [00:44:00] their own, um, to the extent that people are going to pay attention to this or, Or be motivated by this, you know, what you hear all the time from people inside the process and from these legislative races is, you know, how is this person in their district?

[00:44:16] Have they done a good job in their district? Have they not? Have they worn out their welcome? Have they tended to their grassroots? Are they active in the district? Are they active in the district? Yeah. Are they, you know, are they good members basically, right? And I, you know, so I don’t want to discount that, but I think, you know, and then from the other end, there’s this idea of.

[00:44:35] You know, just because Greg Abbott is spending a lot of money, making a lot of endorsements, and he is apparently, we think, motivated by his defeat on the voucher issue, that doesn’t mean necessarily that when he is intervening or they are spending that money in those districts, they are explicitly doing it in the name of vouchers.

[00:44:57] Now, in some districts they are. [00:45:00] Based probably on district polling, but I mean, but what I think this is useful for is thinking about how these three things. that we talked about here align in practice in a specific district. In other words, in some places, you’re Greg Abbott, you know, you go out, you use, Greg Abbott endorses, and when he endorses, and in the ads that they help support, it’s about, it may be about border security, even if it’s motivated, you know, but as, but as you were saying, Josh, You know, if you go back to what happened in the session, the Republican leadership, particularly the house leadership, the much maligned house leadership did a lot to give their members a lot to run on.

[00:45:44] And I think the things that they have to run on are pretty much underlined by, you know, are underlined by the results we saw. Yeah. This is something I pointed out. Usually the context is Ted Cruz. And how is Ted Cruz, you know, because his reputation nationally seems to [00:46:00] be so negative and he certainly has his detractors in Texas, you know, why is he, you know, in our poll, we show him doing quite well, both in the primary and the general and it gets to this point, Jim, which is if you actually look at Cruz’s position on the issues and you try to identify, well, if I’m, you know, if I’m all red, right, or Gutierrez, how do I go at Ted Cruz on the issues?

[00:46:23] There’s not a lot of vulnerability there. He’s taken positions that are pretty popular within the state of Texas. But that’s not the, that’s not how they’re going to go after. No, no, that’s right. Well, but that’s, that’s what’s left. The reason that’s what’s left over is, well, people don’t like him because he’s, you know, perceived as a jerk and stuff like that, but that’s what you do, you know, as opposed to, you know, even in 2018 where nationally, everything kind of favored the Democrats, but O’Rourke in the race against Cruz, there wasn’t a lot of.

[00:46:51] positions that Cruz had taken where you could say, well, this is out of step with, with Texas. Um, and so I think that’s true both at the House level, the district level. [00:47:00] It’s true at the state level with a lot of, you know, these Republican figures, you know. So we’ve been here a while. Let’s, uh, let’s, let’s start to wrap it up.

[00:47:07] Let’s do, you know, I mean, I, I think we always do a lightning round and I can’t see any reason not to do that. So, you know. Let’s end with a quick, you know, a quick, what interested you in this that we haven’t talked about and allowing that we’ll be back to talk more about the issue results certainly soon in the next podcast.

[00:47:23] That doesn’t mean you can’t mention them, but if you’re listening, this isn’t all we’re going to talk about whatever comes up necessarily. So, so Darren, what, what, what caught your eye? Uh, we’d begun asking, um, Actually, not begun. We’ve done it since 2014, but I really like the question that we used to try to tap into Sort of what we refer to as isolationism Um, and so for those of you following along with your scorebooks at home, that’s q31 on the uh, the newly released poll But do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

[00:47:51] This country would be better off if we just stayed home and did not concern ourselves with the problems in other parts of the world um And the total, [00:48:00] you know, agree, disagree back in 2014. We first started asking this question. Uh, it was plus nine disagree. That is, people rejected that kind of cozy isolationist position.

[00:48:12] Uh, it’s now, um, plus plus three agree and almost all the movement has been in the Republican Party. Uh, the, the robust foreign policy, confront the Soviets, you know, promote democracy abroad. Uh, that wing of the Republican Party is collapsing at best, collapsed. Well, yeah. I mean, Josh pointed this out to me that I, you know, collapsed is probably, if you look at the party trends, the Republic, there wasn’t much Republican movement, if anything, was a little bit within the margin of error in the other direction.

[00:48:47] It’s big shifts in Democrats more recently. I mean, I think, I think the big story, I mean, that’s what I had to talk about. So I agree with that. Take a look at the younger, the younger voters. Yeah, I know. It’s, it’s all the younger ones are. Yeah. Yeah. It’s [00:49:00] really interesting. Okay. How about you, Josh? Uh, well, I could do one that I think is important and one that I think is less important.

[00:49:05] I don’t know. We might choose the same one of the same two. Um. You know, I think the result that really stuck out to me, I guess, and we’re going to probably definitely to come back and talk about this, but we asked, uh, you know, we asked a bunch of questions about immigration, border security, obviously, and part of what I know, right?

[00:49:21] Well, you know, you know, look, we’re, we’re pretty okay at this. And what it turns out is that the issues that the voters said were really important tended to be the issues that we actually asked more questions about deeply later in the poll. And one of those being kind of going deep on immigration. And I think, you know, there’s sort of Two things that stand out.

[00:49:36] One, we asked people whether the number of migrants attempting to cross the U. S. Mexico border is a crisis, a very serious problem, not a serious problem. Overall, 48 percent of voters said it was a crisis, 23 percent said it was a very serious problem. Not surprisingly, overwhelming, you know, majority of Republicans, 74 percent said it’s a crisis.

[00:49:53] compared to 20 percent of Democrats, but 37 percent of Democrats. It’s a very serious problem. And that, you know, together means 57 percent of Democrats [00:50:00] see the number of migrants crossing the U. S. Border as you know, either a crisis or at least a very serious problem. And I think this is like just such such an important result in kind of the scope of even the history of this poll, because, you know, even going back and we look, we’d kind of look at the M.

[00:50:13] I. P. Numbers and you’d see, you know, 64 66 percent of Republicans saying, you know, immigration of the border is the most important problem facing the state. And you have like 4 percent of Democrats, 2 percent of Democrats. Now that’s up to about it. 12 now for it’s moving up, but people, but, but we would always have to kind of be at pains to say, well, look, you know, you’re picking one issue.

[00:50:30] It doesn’t mean it’s not an issue, you know, right? It’s just not the top issue. But what you’re seeing is, is that the sort of, you know, it’s, it’s becoming impossible for Democrats to ignore the border. And I mean, I think that’s kind of obvious. And we’re kind of not joking about it. And, you know, this is the polling that Biden saw about four weeks ago, right?

[00:50:46] When he started changing his tune, right? Relatedly, and I’ll just drop this because I think it’s super interesting. We said, you know, make, is it, you know, do you support or oppose making it harder, uh, for migrants to basically seek asylum in the U S a little bit more information about what asylum means overall, [00:51:00] 59 percent support making it harder for, uh, migrants to seek asylum.

[00:51:03] 32 percent oppose, obviously overwhelming Republican support 71%, but among Democrats, it was 48, 43. And that is just a very different, you know, I think, perception of the Democratic electorate than I think the communication coming from Democrats, especially nationally about the border, about immigration, about all these issues, has painted over the years.

[00:51:22] And I think, you know, you’re seeing right now Democrats in a real tough spot trying to figure out what to do with an issue that is becoming increasingly important, you know, not just nationally, not just to Republicans, but also to more and more Democrats. Yeah, I had both of those on my list. I knew it.

[00:51:35] Sorry. No, it’s fine. There’s there’s a lot in here. I mean, I think to circle back to the primaries and One of the things I noticed that I don’t think we we mentioned Is that you know for the fourth time since june of 2023 when the impeachment of of ken paxton was in motion We asked people do you think?

[00:51:54] the house was justified or not just was justified. Yes or no. Basically, I saw that number too. I’m glad you’re [00:52:00] going and impeaching Ken Paxton. And you know, that number has just not moved very much over the period of time in which he was impeached and then, you know, acquitted by the Senate in a very controversial process and vote.

[00:52:15] I don’t think the public. Most people probably didn’t see a lot of the controversy, but we certainly did. Um, and now, you know, you’ve got Paxton trying to position himself in these House primary races. Um, story, I think, in the Texas Tribune over the last few days about how active Paxton is in some of the court system races, some of the state court races.

[00:52:36] And yet, 49 percent still say that the House was justified. 21 percent say it was not justified. Now, that not justified number Has dropped from its high in October from 26 to 21%. Um, but those numbers have just not moved very much as we see the attorney general, you know, very active in the, in the [00:53:00] electoral process.

[00:53:00] And I think, you know, figuring out what the scorecard is on that. And it will be, you know, because we never fully know what moves elections. I mean, there’ll be a lot of credit claiming in the gray area or, or blame in the gray area. I think that number is really interesting in terms of. Paxton’s very high profile position, or, or at least trying to take a high profile position in these primary races.

[00:53:24] And, you know, there’s an interesting thing, Josh and I were talking about this a little bit in the judicial races this morning, but I think it goes for the house races to, you know, in these low salience races You could get involved, not have a big impact one way or the other. And whether in terms of the attorney general case, whether it’s because of Paxton’s direct presence as a branded presence in the race, or it’s just the maneuvering that he engages in, um, You know, it’s going to be interesting to try to sort this out when this is all over.

[00:53:54] Yeah. I mean, when you look at these results and you say, okay, so 37 percent of Republicans think the house was not justified impeaching him. [00:54:00] Yes, that is a plurality, but that also means that, you know, 63 percent either thought it was, or don’t want to offer an opinion either way. Additionally, when we asked about how much attention people were paying to this stuff or how much they’d heard about it, you know, more than twice as many Republicans said they’ve heard a lot about Ken Paxson’s legal problems is said they’ve heard about his endorsements.

[00:54:20] And so you do sort of start to wonder, especially in the judicial case, when Ken Paxton weighs in and says, Well, you know, I’m the attorney general, and I think this is who we need. And I mean, how that’s being received is like, you know, it’s gonna this is who we need on the bench. It’s how that’s being received is like, and again, we’re pollsters.

[00:54:35] I look at like, I don’t know. Yeah, I’m just I just don’t know. And I think, you know, when there’s gray area in politics, you know, people occupy it to comparative advantage, right? And I think this really points to that a lot. Look, my guess is, you know, you’re talking about only Republicans. So the broad numbers are the broad numbers.

[00:54:53] But now we’re talking about only Republicans. And then we’re talking about only a small section of Republicans are going to go vote in the primary. And [00:55:00] my sense is, is that, uh, people who are seeking Paxson’s endorsement or Paxson’s people who are identifying places where they want to intervene are looking at very narrow slices of the electorate.

[00:55:09] Um, there’s not much chance of counter mobilization. That’s something that gets a little lost in the shuffle when you’re talking about primaries is in the general election, if you send a controversial partisan figure in. He’ll motive or she will motivate and mobilize your supporters, but they’ll probably counter mobilize at least as many on the opposite side.

[00:55:27] There’s no evidence that happens in primaries. So it’s it’s unclear whether a controversial endorsement really hurts you very much in the primaries, right? This is I’m thinking about this in terms of Trump, but you know I think it’s a it’s an important distinction to make when you’re thinking about the impact of people with baggage Yeah, and Josh points to a good result.

[00:55:50] I would just as we wind down point our listeners to, you know, these results are a little bit hidden in, in the, in the poll document in some ways, [00:56:00] not they’re hiding in plain sight, but they’re still kind of hidden in that. If you look at our Q28, we’ve been getting in the habit of just sort of asking, how much have you heard about a set of things to kind of get some relative sense of what is, what people are hearing about?

[00:56:14] And, and, and by implication paying attention to, but we don’t, it’s a different thing. I said, I know, but, and we have items in there about, you know, are you paying, you know, how much have you heard about Greg Abbott’s endorsements? How much have you heard about Paxton’s endorsements? That’s Q28. I’m sure we’ll come back to it, but I, I would urge people to look at that.

[00:56:32] So with that, Josh, Darren, thank you as always, uh, I think interesting. fun in a subjective kind of way. I had fun. Um, thanks very much to our, uh, excellent production team in the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts here at UT Austin. Uh, again, all of these, uh, results and more at texaspolitics. utexas.

[00:56:56] edu. Um, thank you for listening, keep [00:57:00] in touch, 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.