January 25, 2023 – The Texas Lyceum Poll & views of democracy in Texas

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Jim: 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. Um, glad to be back. Today we have Josh Blank with us today. We’re recording remotely in the midst of, uh, the, the, the great ice storm of 2023 to add to the list of great ice storms, the

Josh: February winter ice storm of 2023.

[00:01:00] We’re gonna need a new website. Hopefully not .

Jim: So welcome, Josh. Hope you’re warm and, and apparently your power’s still.

Josh: Oh yeah, for now.

Jim: All right, so then let’s, uh, let’s dive into this before one of us releases power then. Um, so, so late last week, the Texas Lyceum released a poll that covered some interesting territory in the wake of the 2022 election and in advance, Of the legislative session, those les peg of the legislative session than to, uh, the more sort of general ambiance out there in Texas and a few issues, uh, on a few issues and in a few areas.

So, uh, Josh, you were one of the primary architects of this poll in your role as. , uh, I gu I guess you’re the director of research for the Texas Lycium as well. Is your, is your new part-time or your relatively new part-time title there? So why don’t you tell us a little bit about the nuts and bolts of the pole and also, you know, organizational [00:02:00] context, the, the thinking behind it.

Josh: Sure. So, uh, you know, this, the Texas LY mean along, before, before I was there has been conducting statewide polls of Texas adults since, since 2000. Uh, you know, and so the current instantiation this year in 2023, uh, is, you know, again, a statewide telephone poll of Texas adults. It’s 1200 Texas adults. And again, just the big distinction here relative to the polls that we talk about on this podcast all the time, the, uh, UT polls is that these are adults as opposed to registered voters.

So the population’s a little bit more diverse, it’s a little bit younger. Um, and so in this survey we’re doing 1200 voters, or re I’m sorry, adults. Now I did it again, a thousand by phone. 60% of those thousand by sell, 40% over landlines. And then an additional 200 that we contact online, uh, who are unregistered, who we confirm are not registered to vote, because those are actually kind of the harder people to reach.

So anyway, you. And quick, you know, the boiler plate of what, why they do this. You know, I think, I think of the Lycium as, as a, as an [00:03:00] organization, as a non-profit, non-partisan organization that basically seeks to kind of identify. educate and activate like the next generation of leaders in Texas is, I think what, you know, is primarily what they’re doing.

And, and the, the poll that they’ve conducted now for, for a while is, is a, you know, a product that is there to help educate those leaders, but also the public and, you know, the press policy makers, whoever might find it useful. So, you know, this year the focus of the poll was on, you know, particular conference topics that, that, that they have.

Um, and you know, some years we would focus on, you know, Depth death poll on a particular topic. Uh, but you know, this year we really wanted to focus on each of the, uh, polls or the, sorry, the conferences that they were holding, including the one that they held LA just this past week, uh, in Austin on the conduct of elections.

And so we repeated a lot of questions that we asked back in 2019 on a poll that was, Specifically pegged to de democratic attitudes in, in Texas. And what we wanted to do was, uh, in the context of this conference and in the context of, you know, [00:04:00] just again, the ambiance, if you will, as you put it, , right. Uh, you know, have democratic attitudes changed, you know, over the short time period.

Jim: So, you know, there were, you know, there were a number of topics on here that you guys kind of spun out of that. And I should also mention that our. Colleague and frequent collaborator, Darren Shaw was, Al has also been part of this project from, from its inception at the Lym. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and then Darren had a, had a role in this as well.

Uh, you guys talked about a, a bunch of different things. I mean, you focused on democracy, but you know mm-hmm. because of the, the topics of the conference. There were a lot of interesting things in here and, and a few things that stood out to me in terms of, You know, uh, how it fills in and, and certainly confirms things that we’ve talked about on the podcast a bit and that we’ve seen developing in Texas.

But let’s, let’s start with that democracy result. And, um, there, there were interesting measures on this, I thought that you guys have developed to, to do this the last couple [00:05:00] of times you’ve asked about this. Uh, talk a little bit about, about how you unpack how you guys did that and what you found. Sure.

Josh: I mean, one of the things that, you know, one of.

Parts of the LY polls. We don’t really write new questions for it most of the time. There’s lots of reasons, you know, sort of, that we could go into on a different podcast about depths of polling and things like that. Um, but we generally borrowed, I mean, there’s a lot of questions about democracy out there.

So when, in 2019 when we first wrote this sort of poll that did the, the in-depth dive into democracy, we really looked around to kind of figure out, you know, what are the dimensions that we wanna look at? And then particular, you know, what are, what are the, the questions out there? Like performed well, you know, that means they show some consistency, they make sense internally, things like that.

And so, you know, one of the big picture questions that we, that we asked and, and one of the ones that actually returned one of the most interesting results is, you know, we asked Texans basically, do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Democracy is the best form of government. pretty easy.

Uh, you know, and not surprisingly, in [00:06:00] 2019 when we first asked that 82% of Texans either strongly agreed or somewhat agreed, a majority, 53% strongly agreed. Fast forward four years, and obviously a lot has happened since then, and it’s 68% who agree. So it’s a 14 point decline overall, including a 13 point decline among in the share of people who strongly agree from 53% to 40%.

So that’s a pretty, you know, not. just, you know, again, pair of results. And I think it’s important to hear at this point to say what we always say, you know, two points, do not make a trend line, and we can draw a line between two points. But I think, you know, given all the other kind of evidence that we have that we could attach to why we might think this is a decline, and also other results in the survey and other results in other surveys, there’s no reason not to think that this is representative of a, like, you know, a pretty serious erosion in democratic attitudes.

Jim: You know, I mean, that kind of systemic assessment. And before we drill down in that, I’m curious, you know, cause we’ve seen some of this in some of the work we’ve done and, you know, I, I looked at this briefly, but you know, [00:07:00] what, what did the party breakdowns look like on that? Yeah,

Josh: so that’s a good question.

And in particular, um, you know, it’s important again to remind everybody this is an adult sample, right? And so we have a larger share of independence and true independence because we have people who are less, uh, engaged. the political system that shouldn’t, you know, it doesn’t matter for sort of, you know, these broad endorsements of democracy, but it’s important to note.

Okay, so the biggest decline was, was among independence. Uh, you know, we saw, I think almost a 50 point decline. Among independent, not independence as we’ve talked about, you know, in general in polling or a finicky group. And so I don’t necessarily look at that and think that that wouldn’t bounce around some anyway, but it’s a, it was a big decline among declines across all groups.

Republicans showed sort of the next biggest decline in their overall endorsement, and Democrats also showed a decline. I think that’s sort of the important, you know, there’s an important point here, which is, it’s kind of easy to look at the, as a result like this and assume is, I think, you know. Yeah, I think intelligent, uh, [00:08:00] Consistent observers of this might, well, oh, that’s driven by X group or Y group.

And I would say this was actually driven heavily by the more disengaged, which I think is, you know, important. There’s sort of normative discussions about what that means. Right. Uh, you know, and then by Republicans, but also by Democrats. And that’s the thing, these declines are evident across all the groups, which sort of shows, you know, sort of how widespread it.

Jim: Yeah. And, and I think, you know, I mean, it’s interesting to me in that, you know, even though we’ve seen in, in some of the other polling that we’ve done, you know, some of these results being party driven, but some of them also, you know, being driven by, you know, for lack of a better, not driven, but at least influenced by who’s in the White House.

This seems a little bit different than that.

Josh: Yeah, I mean, that’s exactly right. I mean, what I was, I mean, that’s a more direct way of gaining what I was saying, which is I think there’s a lot of, we can look at a lot of results, especially results over time. And it’s easy because it can often be right to assign, you know, a certain [00:09:00] amount of, of cause to sour grapes, you know, uh, it’s, you know, whoever’s party’s in the White House kind of colors.

uh, these partisan assessments. But, you know, and I would say, look, you know, I mean, I, I think it’s pretty fair to assume that we’re a Republican to win the White House in the next presidential election. And we were to ask this question again, you know, in a similar timeframe, you know, would attitude towards democracy have improved?

I think, you know, among Republicans, let’s say, you know, I, I, I think so, but at the same time, when you see again, sort of. The negative, uh, you know, I don’t wanna say trend again, but, but, but the decline across, again, we have other, we can go kinda move on to some other attitudes, but the, the decline across these attitudes and the fact that the declines exist across groups and just sort of say, Hey, look, you know, facts are facts.

We didn’t really have like a peaceful transition of power last time.

Jim: Yeah. And that, and that’s gonna, you know, I mean, and, and there are things about that that Democrats and Republicans are going to find. , [00:10:00] you know, have a negative effect on those attitudes potentially for different reasons. Right. So, right.

So you said you’ve got other measures. So like, you know, I mean you had an interesting efficacy measure. You know, we’re calling it here an efficacy measure, but talk about that a

Josh: little bit. Right? Yeah, this is definitely borrowed from from I think somewhere very, you know, somewhat political sciencey. But we, we basically say, you know, which comes closer to your view, even if neither is exactly right.

And this is a way I think, you know, this is a construction of a question. I think that sort of forces people. , you know, to simp, I think to express what can be complicated attitudes in somewhat simple ways, but they can be useful and especially, you know, comparatively so we say, you know, which comes close to your view, even if neither is exactly right.

On the one hand, ordinary citizens can do a lot to influence government in Washington, or there’s not much that ordinary citizens can do to influence the government in Washington. When we ask this question in 2019, a majority of Texas adults, 58% said that ordinary citizens can do a lot to influence government.

In 2023, it’s 37. , the sherry said that there’s not much ordinary students can do. Went up [00:11:00] from 41% in 2019 to 51% in 2023. And so, I mean, that to me, you know, I mean that, and that’s very sort of, you know, we think about like concepts and measures. I mean, like, that’s very, very close to this idea of efficacy generally.

You know, can you influence government? It’s pretty direct actually. Uh, and that drop is pretty remarkable. And again, I mean, to your, you know, to the last discussion, it’s, it was also pretty evident, you know, across. All groups. And so that’s, you know, that’s another sort of, you know, when you start to like scratch at, you know, the various, you know, pieces here about why, you know, these sort of attitudes for democracy are eroding, you know, one Sure.

Some of it’s sour grapes, some of it is, you know, certainly probably the, the lack of a peaceful transfer of power. But also, you know, to the extent that people feel like the government’s just becoming less and less effective. And we, we certainly have found some of that with. Polling on in Texas. I think recently we talked about from the December poll, uh, you know, amidst declining evaluations of institutions generally.[00:12:00]

You know, it’s a pretty, it’s a pretty ugly state of affairs.

Jim: Yeah. I mean, I, you know, and, and I think, you know, I, I kind of want to get to it, you know, I, I wanna unpack a little bit more of the democracy stuff, but I mean, it does point towards this more general sense of, of. You know, dissatisfaction. W uh, I don’t know.

There, there’s a lot of negative affect out there towards institutions generally, and I mean, I, you know, there’s a funny, you know, the classic kind of , uh, slightly evasive, but certainly descriptive, you know, two, you know, line, you know, sort of two-headed, you know, line with two arrows between two things, you know?

Right. You know, indicating mutual effect in terms. , you know, different dimensions of this. I mean, I, you know, the, the demo, you know, broadly speaking, the negative views of democracy or, you know, dissatisfaction with democracy, whatever, skepticism, whatever you wanna call it. Mm-hmm. that [00:13:00] declined in this period.

And, you know, the general sense of, of, of evaluations of, um, You know, how the world is working at large, if you will, negative assessments of leadership, but certainly these economic indicators, the right track, wrong track numbers, which I know you guys, uh, uh, unpacked, you know, you guys also did something, uh, you know, that we’ve done in some of the other work, but you did in a partic in a particular way on this poll.

Mm-hmm. . Talk a little bit about how Democrats and Republicans, you guys capture different views of Democrats and Republicans on voting and the mechanics of the process.

Josh: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting. So again, you know, we get to this point and we say, okay, you know, we understand there’s a dissatisfaction.

We should come back to that. To that point, you know, I think really sort of just have, spend a minute on, you know, whether, whether we’re talking about like dissatisfaction or a turning away from, or an inflection point or where we might be at the moment, and then in this broader context, but, you know, as trying to explore sort of, you know, where, you know a little bit more of the why we asked about, you know, [00:14:00] different features of elections in the US and basically, you know, how important they.

and then how well, you know, these features describe elections. So the idea is, is, you know, is does the reality meet, you know, sort of the, the assessed importance? So, Across says, you know, one of the sort of interesting sets of results, at least to me, and I think, you know, I think it fits in a couple interesting ways, is, you know, we found that the, the thing that Texan said was the most important among the things we tested to be fair, was that all eligible, all eligible voters be permitted to vote.

74% of Texan said this is very important. Um, only 41%. This describes elections very well, for what it’s worth. Now, the flip side of this coin, you know, again, in Texas. Preventing ineligible voters from voting. Right now, only 56% of Texas said that this was very important and there was also still a gap, a good, you know, 30 point gap, similar gap actually in how well people said this described Texas.

But when we look at partisans, I think what’s interesting is that it’s not surprising to find that, you know, Democrats think it’s very important for eligible voters to [00:15:00] vote. I think it was like 74, it was similar, about 76%, you know, a significantly smaller share. I think, you know, close, you know, maybe around a majority, uh, but about 20 point.

said that it was equally important to prevent ineligible voters from voting Gives me 40% in that range, right? But then when we look to Republicans, what’s interesting is somebody, again, given sort of the popular conception, uh, , basically indistinguishable shares about 75%. Three quarters said it was very important both that all eligible voters be permit to vote and that ineligible voters be prevented from voting.

And it’s interesting, this is something you and I have talked about. We’ve written an op-ed about at one point in time about the fact that, you know, there’s sort of this, you know, this room here for, you know, some horse trading in this space. But to some extent, you know, this is like sort of another example of, you know, in some ways I think, you know, a misconception about, you know, where Republican voters are on this in some ways.

But also, you know, in some ways a missed opportunity for Democrats to just, you know, try to advance some kind of common cause.

Jim: Yeah, [00:16:00] I mean, I, I, I, it was interesting to me how this looked pretty consistent with what we’ve seen before, but does underline, you know, that there are, you know, areas of commonality, but as you say, areas where there, you know, people see trade offs and there are.

you know, there are opportunities there, you know, and, and it, you know, if, if anything this is not too, you know, not, I mean, there were differences but not amazingly different from what you get among registered voters. I mean, though, I, you know, I am interested in the, in. the impact of having a larger pool of independent of, of true independence.

I mean, you guys had, I think mm-hmm. , little over 20% true independence among registered voters. We generally only get, you know, I don’t know what, between 12 and 15%, something like that. So it’s not a huge difference, but it’s enough to move the needle on a lot of these, and it, and it underlines, you know, what we say about independence all the time that.

you know, you know, they are more, you know, it’s almost, they’re, they’re more sensitive to [00:17:00] political currents. Mm-hmm. out there independent because they’re, they function well by definition, independently of strong partisan attachments and Right in the frames that come with them.

Josh: Well, and you know, and I, I think what’s, and I think what this also is, it’s a real life example.

I mean, looking to the republican. Portion of this, of, of something we talk about all the time, about how, you know, when we’re watching politics, you know, up close, you know, especially like in the legislature or especially, you know, in partisan primaries, you know, we’re watching a conversation that’s really directed at, uh, the most engaged and in many cases, sort of sometimes the most extreme elements.

of the party, right? And then you take a step back and you look along, you know, among registered voters or registered, you know, voters who are Republicans. And it, and it gets a little bit, you know, there usually tends to be a little bit more divergence of opinion, or at least you know, some, some, uh, at least some divergence of opinion and a little bit more moderation.

But then you kind of go out to this broader group of, of adults and all of a sudden, you know, you sort of get this picture that [00:18:00] says, well, actually , you know, at least when put in this context, they’re. equally important, these two things. Whereas if you were to sort of think about legislation, think about con, you know, the conversations and think about the policy, it’s 100% been about preventing ineligible voters of voting from voting.

And again, as you kind of, you know, expand the pie a little bit bigger and start looking at, you know, again, broader, you know, broader definitions of Texans to the point where you get to adults, you know, you do again, find more moderate views. Yeah, I mean, you know, this is a great example of that.

Jim: Yeah. I mean, this is, you know, the’s the, you know, the not to, not to go back to the explanation for everything, but it really does clarify or, you know, I mean, at least point to the impact of what happens when you dilute the electorate, you know, when you dilute the electorate in the way that Texas voting rules and, and to some extent habits of voting do, and the degree to which that.

That in, you know, for lack of a better [00:19:00] term. I mean, that just increases the influence of the more intense ideological wing that makes it through that filter. Right? And that happens in both parties to some degree. And I, I think that’s probably, I think that’s, that’s evident in the tags even on the Democratic side to some extent, though, a lesser

Josh: extent probably.

Yeah, I think that’s right, man. I, you know, I mean, I don’t have a direct example kind of off the top of my head, but you know, for example, I think when we. , uh, you know, let’s say adult democrats in Texas, you know, the share who think like immigration in the border is an important issue, is gonna be significantly higher than the share of registered voter Democrats, and that’s gonna be significantly higher than the share of.

You know, primary voting Democrats, among whom almost no, almost none would cite the border or immigration is, is a primary issue or an important issue. Yeah,

Jim: that’s a, that’s a great example for Democrats, I think. Um, well that’s,

Josh: well, that’s the issue. I honestly, I mean, I’m, I’m thinking of, you know, if we were we were sitting in the same room, uh, this is where, you know, it’d be a twinkle of eye on this part.

Cause this is sort of the, the example I was thinking of, which is, you know, in some ways Democrats would be wise to just, you know, take some, uh, some aspect of the [00:20:00] debate. Voting and sort of election integrity seriously. So is not to, you know, in some ways disqualify themselves amongst a large share of the electorate for whom it’s still important.

And the same is true on immigration and the border,

Jim: right? Right. Well, you know, and you know, we talk a lot about the, you know, the impact of Republican primary voters on, on Republican elected officials, and in Texas with good reason because it has the most direct impact on. On governance, but you know, did, Democrats are subject to the similar dynamic, although, you know, I mean they’re struggling with that right now.

I think I, you know, belatedly, but I think, well, you know, I think there are a lot more rumbling, certainly in some conversations I’ve had with, with Texas Democrats of dissatisfaction with how the National Party has handled immigration and border security. And in a sense, you know, not giving them much to work with and, and really.

The opposite. If anything, burden them with things that, you know, left to their own [00:21:00] device with positions that left to their own devices. Many of them might not embrace as fully as national

Josh: Democrats are. Yeah, I mean, I think Texas Democrats ex, you know, in general, uh, exhibit a significantly greater range of, of diversity with respect to sort of orientation towards the issues of the border and border security and immigration than do national Democrats.

But

Jim: yeah, they, and you can make, and one can make that more complicated than it is. I mean, I think the, you know, the, the, the Democrats you’re most likely to hear Yep. You know that from, are the Democrats for whom it is an immediate local constituent problem in their districts. . Yeah. But the re Yeah, exactly.

And when that, and when that happens, I mean, you know, that, you know, you, you wind up having an impact on other members of the caucus, particularly in a, in, you know, in s in, you know, the smaller setting of, of the Texas legislature.

Josh: Yeah. Well, and the problem is, is that, you know, it makes, you know, the, the clear , I mean, the problem is, is that it puts the, the democratic position of essentially ignoring it as [00:22:00] a problem.

Uh, in the place of being ridiculous because you have a Democratic member in these areas who will say, no, this is an issue. Right. And so that, you know, so if anything, I mean, what ends up happening is that, you know, it, it sort of one way or another and usually it’s, you know, again, we’re talking about specific members, here’re like you representative.

Jim: Yeah. Fair. It’s a fairly stylized discussion.

Josh: It’s a fairly, yeah. We know we’re talking about, but ultimately this, it ends up being easy to dismiss those members. I think because of the fact that, you know, their ideological profile also doesn’t line. with the ideological profile of, you know, the typical Democrat, you know, nationally.

And so therefore it just becomes one of a bunch of issues where they can be seen as out of step when, you know, I think in Texas, you know, Democrats wanna be more competitive. We’ve been talking about this sort of on this podcast and a little bit amongst ourselves. Part of it, you know, begins with, you know, taking an issue, taking the issue seriously, that the members actually on the border take seriously.

And that also vast, vast numbers of independence take very serious. Yeah.

Jim: And so, you know, in a, in a, in a, in a, in a, you know, baldly [00:23:00] tactical position, it also helps, you know, to some degree you weaken the agenda advantage that, that Republicans so clearly enjoy. So we, you know, talking about legislature, talking about legislators then, I mean, I say you guys didn’t have a lot, but you did have, you know, in, in one area in particular, you, you asked some stuff about public.

Which is obviously on the table right now in the session, and gonna be central in one way or the other, or in any number of ways, I guess would be a better way of putting it. So what did you guys find in the area of public ed? Talk about that a

Josh: little bit. Yeah, you know, we did ask a lot about public ed, but what we did ask really turned up a pretty interesting result.

Now again, we’re looking at two results over time and a very short time period, but there’s a lot of reasons to, to believe them. So I’ll tell you what we did. You know, we basically, as part of a, a section of the survey that was really trying to look at reactions, uh, and the potential consequences of Texas’s rapid growth.

We asked about, we asked Texas Texans to. some various features of the areas where they live, [00:24:00] including like the economy, the availability of good jobs, the cost of living, opportunities for home, home ownership, and the quality of K through 12 public education. We had actually asked this just last year in response to sort of a different set of set of reasons.

Uh, and just last year, 63% of Texas adults said that, you know, the quality of the public education where they lived would either was either excellent or. more good than excellent, but that’s kind of common. So that’s a, you know, only 23% said it was poor or terrible, so we’d say, you know, so that’s a nice 40 point gap, right between 23 and 63.

So 63 rated at wealth, 23% rated poorly. So just a year later we asked it again and the share saying that the public education locally was excellent or good, has dropped to 55%. So a little drop from 63 to 55. The share rating at poor or terrible increased to 30. Percent so up, uh, 16 points, uh, from last time.

And so go from, you know, sort of plus 40 positive to negative to plus [00:25:00] 16 in the matter of a year. And so that was really a shocking result. Um, I think, and, and part of it is because number one, public education attitudes tend to be relatively stable. I think, you know, we’ve found over time, uh, but also, you know, to this broader discussion we’re having.

Public education is a pretty foundational institution along with democracy in America. And you know, it’s sort of easy to imagine, you know, again, if this, if this is a really durable result, you know why this might have happened or some of the causes. And I was sort of, you know, surmising some of the cause of pro, you know, one possibilities, of course, COVID, right?

And sort of the long tail of these sort of covid related closures and, and adjustments that were made for educat. But two, I mean, it’s kind of hard not to look at the politicization of sort of the public education system with culture war issues that, you know, now all of a sudden there’s a lot more negative use towards public ed out there than there were, than there were even just a year ago.

And [00:26:00] that’s pretty, pretty shocking.

Jim: Yeah, and I, and I think, you know, so does, as you say, I think sort of underline, you know, the degree to which the turn that the public ed discussion is taken. You know, it is a combination of covid, you know, the impact of Covid and, you know, the, the focus on content and, and.

Woke education, quote unquote, et cetera, you know, has had an impact, I think, and may, you know, and maybe not even, and you know, I think there’s a lot of, you know, we talked about this a lot. You have to be pretty careful in terms of, you know, sussing out what the, what the, you know, parents and non-parents and, you know, partisan attitudes and stuff.

You know, I mean, it’s been a little more static in, in our stuff. I mean, as I kind of look at it in the polling that we’ve done on these assessments of quality, Um, and I, you know, I, I mean, I’d have to think through a little bit more the difference, you know, that might be there between the adult sample and the [00:27:00] voter sample.

Mm-hmm. , you know, I mean, partisanship may be stabilizing these attitudes.

Josh: Yeah. But I don’t know, one thing I was just, I just, you know, just thinking right now, hot take on my own, on my own work. Days later, . But, but you know, I was thinking, you know, about the way that we normally talk. I mean, you know, I think one of the things that’s interesting in the public ed space and, and what’s, it’s a really great example of like the, you know, we talk about dimensionality and stuff and sort of what are the relevant ways that we’re thinking about something when we’re thinking about it.

And you know, public education is a space that seem like a real expansion of the dimensionality really quickly in terms of what we’re talking about. Right? And so if you think about, , you know, if you, if you can, if we could go back, you know, let’s just say five years, 10 years, whatever. And if you think about asking, you know, if you were asked a question to sort of, you know, thinking about the quality of public education, you know, usually you’re thinking about the quality of education, you’re thinking about outcomes, right?

You’re thinking about kids graduating, you’re thinking, you know, do people say locally, Hey, that’s a good school or is that a bad school? Do you think generally the schools are [00:28:00] good or bad? When you’re talking about good or bad, you’re usually talking about educational outcome. , right. I think,

Jim: I think that’s kinda, yeah.

The school are the schools doing the, the mechanic, the, the meat and potatoes of the job well, right.

Josh: Are they, yeah, exactly. And, and I think, I mean, again, I’m just, I think that’s the way that, you know, we think about it, or we did, and I think a lot of people still do, but when you ask people now to rate, you know, the quality of the schools, you know, the, the characteristics that are salient.

uh, are more probably now than used to be. Yeah. Right. And the sort of things that are accessible and, you know, up for evaluation can be different. Right. So the fact is, is, you know, you can be someone. Again, I’m, I think this is important in a lot of ways. It’s more to know here, you know, parents are a subset of the population, and they’re a relatively small subset.

So I mean, these attitudes are also largely coming from, you know, and the political attitudes are largely coming from people without kids in schools also. Yeah. It’s a, it’s a,

Jim: it’s a, it’s more of an institutional evaluation than an immediate experiential one for most. Right. And most of the people that are responding to [00:29:00] polls

Josh: and now, you know, The reality is, is that, you know, for some people the question may not, you know, when a evaluating school may not simply be, you know, are they doing a good job educating the kids, you know, sending kids to college or, you know, making them productive members, you know, workers and say, or whatever the purpose of education is.

You know, there’s this question, well, you know, do you think they’re indoctrinating them? And it’s like, whoa, okay, wait a minute. . Right, right. And it, and then, so. . And so I think that’s kind of, you know, to me that sort of speaks to why you could see, you know, an increase in the negative. You know, you don’t see a huge decline in the, in the positive.

Right. But I think you see a lot of people moving into sort of, well, you know, it allows for more ways to make a negative evaluation.

Jim: Right. I mean, I, I think that if you were, say a, if you were, if you were a non. Five years ago, what you’re bringing to bear on this is probably fairly different now for, particularly for Republicans, I think, than it was, you know, five years ago.[00:30:00]

Josh: Yeah. And you know, and, and I think the other thing too, and I mean this, if we’re gonna, are we, are we gonna talk about growth too? Because it, yeah. I’m gonna segue, I know I’m, I’m , this is not, this is not good production, but we’re, we can’t see each other, so I’m just gonna say it. .

Jim: Um, and I think, well before you segue into that, I just, I just do wanna like, yeah.

Oh, please. You know, a good piece of evidence for the kind of hypothesis you’re developing here. You know, the point you’re making is, if you look back at the, at the ut, you know, at the, you know, our Texas politics project data, one of the things that we’ve talked about before and we’ve noticed is, you know, in terms of the dimensionality that people are bringing to the table mm-hmm.

is that Republican assessments of. The quality of schools have consistently been higher Yeah. Than democratic ones, which I think we generally ascribe to all things being equal. The impact of class and race, you know, on. People’s, you know, experience direct or indirect with their schools. Yeah. Fun and fundamental.

[00:31:00] You know, if you live in the e school district, you don’t have to have a kid in school to be exposed to the fact that everybody thinks it’s a great school district. Right, right. Um, and I do wonder if, as, as we go, You know, further on as we go, you know, sort of down the road and, and we see, you know, the new, you know, the dimensionality of, of assessing public education that we’re seeing more prominent in.

Republican politics, which is, you know, mu, you know, adds other dimensions on top of what we would think of as, you know, sort of functionality. . Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Now, you know, they would, I’m, you know, the counter-argument to be with that I’m talking about functionality and I would say, yeah, ideological functionality rather than practical.

All fine. . Um, but I, I will be interested to see if that drops, but I think you’re right. This probably does connect and, and make for a good segway to the other. The, the last thing I did wanna talk about for sure, which is what you guys got on growth, which we’ve also been probing in the, in our polling at

Josh: ut, right?

Because I mean, and the [00:32:00] way these connecting, you know, in my mind is the fact that, you know, to the extent that education, you know, the education space has become, I would say, uh, You know, a policy area for offense among Republicans lately? I think it’s, I think it’s directly actually tied to growth. Um, and the reason I think it’s directly tied to growth is because, you know, while the cities in Texas tend to tend to be, you know, pretty solidly democratic and the rural areas tend to be, you know, very, very Republican, you know, the suburbs is where we really see a lot of electoral competition.

But the reality is the suburbs in Texas have been. , uh, dramatically, you know, more than any other place in the country. And, and another way to put it, they’ve been expanding kind of from the city out. And so it’s really easy if you kind of, you know, again, if you know Texas geography well, to imagine I’ll, I’ll just use Aus, you know, sort of the central Texas area where, where we are, you know, where Hayes County was, a reliably Republican county, Williamson County was, was also reliably.

Republican to the north and south of Travis County where Austin is. But as Austin has expanded to the north, to the south, more so than to the west, you know, you’re getting [00:33:00] people coming to Austin, but living in Williamson County, right. Or coming to Austin, but living in Hayes County. And so ultimately, you know, the people who are probably, you know, you know younger, you know, likely coming to Austin for.

Certain kinds of job opportunities, et cetera, you know, are putting their kids in the school system. And they may come with a different set of attitudes than the people who are originally moving and wanting to live in Williamson County because it wasn’t Travis County, right? Yeah. Because they want to be further out and in a more, you know, I would say, let’s say traditional, conservative, whatever, prototypical from some, some vision of it, Texas lifestyle or whatever.

And so I think because of that, you know, it’s not surprising that you’re seeing all this tension. around these public school issues and in particular, you know, I think it is targeted at where we are seeing a lot of growth because we are seeing, I don’t like this term and I’m gonna use it loosely, but it’s sort of, you know, we are seeing a, something of a culture clash as the cities push out into what wa were, you know, less so than suburban, even Exurban areas.

Right. [00:34:00]

Jim: Well, you know, and we’ve talked about that a lot of the podcast, I mean, you know, that, you know, I mean, And that, and that’s where Yeah, and that’s where the conflict is. And that’s where, you know, the kind of, a lot of the attention has been paid. It’s not, it’s not where, you know, Austin is meeting the, the closer in suburbs.

It’s in those farther areas, you know, farther out areas where a lot of these fights are really taking place. And, and where we’re seeing, you know, a lot of activism particular, you know, on both sides, but more aggressively, , you know, more, you know, and, and more effectively funded from the right in, right In moving fights to things like school boards.

Mm-hmm. , uh, you know, policy fights at, even at the school level, you know, that, that are involving, you know, a lot of mobilization and I think, you know, increasingly counter mobilization, but these fights are getting right. Pretty significant. And they were only, you know, and they were, and they were aggravated.

You know, I mean this is, this has been going [00:35:00] on in Texas for a long time, but you know, it’s obviously escalated and more widespread now. It’s a national, you know, issue. As we look, as we’re recording this, you know, we’re seeing a lot of the fallout from Governor DeSantis profiling on, um, You know, uh, AP African, African American, AP history, AP courses and, and the quote unquote, don’t say gay legislation, et cetera, et cetera.

So, you know, it’s, it’s, you know, we’re, we’re seeing this manifest in a lot of different ways. . But I think, you know, you’re, I think you’re right, ground zero for this is in those, you know, is in those, those geographic areas you’re talking about. And that’s gonna be only further complicated at the Texas level by the fight over vouchers.

Right. And they’re, and they’re now mutually reinforcing. I mean, I think we talked on the podcast a year ago about, you know, the degree to which.

the difficulties that we’ve seen in, in attainment [00:36:00] and, and, you know, various dimensions of just being able to carry out, you know, basic school functions was, you know, really brought into question. And to some degree just, you know, you know, got a lot of attention because of the, because of the pandemic and the shifts that were, you know, that accompanied that the back and forth and these curriculum areas actually do feed directly now into the voucher.

Josh: Yeah, I think, I think that’s right. I didn’t ask about on this pole , but Right,

Jim: right. No, I, you know, but yeah, that wasn’t, that was, that was more riffing than setting you up for that. Well, no, no. Okay. You know, we’ll have another, you’ll get another bite at the apple pretty soon. Well, and I’ll just

Josh: say, so, I mean, just, just to put, bring this back on the growth beat.

I mean, this is why it’s not surprising. You know, we, we asked the question on the sine pole that, you know, you and I have asked on, on. On the UT poll about whether or not population growth has been good for good or bad for Texas, and whether or not it’s been good or bad locally, you know, we find similar results to actually, you know, among the registered voters saying, please find a fair amount of ambivalence.

44% say it’s good for Texas. [00:37:00] 34% say it’s bad. The notable result, given the context of this discussion, is it among Republican adults, 40% say the growth has been good for Texas. 41% say it’s bad. 39% say it’s been good locally, 41% say it’s be, say it’s been bad. You know, this discussion makes me think the next thing for us to do in order for me to do is to jump into, you know, our data probably, or various bits of data and see what if we have enough to look at, you know, suburban Republicans versus other Republicans.

Cuz I think that’s sort of where the rubber meets the road on a little bit on this. As the cities expand, you know, who, who are the Republicans who are viewing this negatively? Right.

Jim: Right. I mean, cuz you know, presumably at least, you know, some, some significant share of them, you know, , you know, you know, not to blame it, you know, our part of the problem,

Yeah. Well it’s, well, and it’s interesting too, now, nobody ever sees themselves in these kinds of discussions. Is that, I mean, no,

Josh: and, and look, you know, and I think any, it is very silly in politics to get. Hung up on something as as trivial as consistency here, but like, you know, to the extent that growth has been [00:38:00] seen as both cause and consequence of Texas’s economic successes, you know, it’s, , it’s tricky to sort of have this kind of, you know, potential, let’s say anti-growth mindset at the state level.

Right, right. Um, so I, I do wanna finish with one result. Cause this is like the one that I think is almost like the most important to, I mean, I just, you know, as someone who’s sort of as a public opinion person kind of watching what’s going on out. There and sort of think, you know, what do I wanna know more about?

I mean, I think one of the most interesting things is housing, uh, right now. And it’s sort of, it’s a really, it’s, you know, whereas inflation is sort of the day, you know, the daily felt. , you know, uh, experience, you know, I say ex inflation is felt on a daily basis, I think in, you know, again, buying gas, buying groceries, all that kind of stuff.

But, you know, big changes in housing costs, you know, put people on the street, right? And so it’s sort of, this is sort of something I think is really, really interesting, really a big deal in Texas. So we’ve asked this question three times in 20 20, 20 22, and again in 2023, [00:39:00] we said, do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

I spent too much of my income on housing. And the idea is just to get, you know, again, an uh, an experiential, you know, is this something that you would say, you know, yeah, this is, I do. And if they do, that’s in my mind. That’s sort of a, a representation. This is something that’s on people’s mind. in 2020, majority of Texans disagreed 55% that they spend too much of their income on housing.

Although 44% agreed, which I thought at the time was, was still pretty high. Yeah. Um, you know, in 2022 we asked it again, 50% agreed, 39% disagreed. So now majority said yes, they do spend too much and the shared disagree and dropped, uh, significantly. 16 points. again this year we asked, now 55% agree, another five point increase and the sure disagreed dropped from 39 to 31% in one year.

So less than a third of Texans can affirmatively say, you know, I don’t spend too much of my income on housing. And that’s, you know, that I think is something that’s just sitting out there to me and it, and it’s not something that’s gonna get fixed. You know, I mean, I, you know, if you’re sort of reading a lot of [00:40:00] the stuff sort of in the, in the.

Press today. It’s about, you know, sort of the housing market is starting to, to, you know, at least settle a little bit as has been sort of the Texas discussion thus far. As, you know, interest rates at least go down a little bit, but more so as buy as the home sellers start to kind of like. cooler jets a little bit, but rents aren’t coming down right.

And you know, we asked this question, you know, 75% of, I think more than 75% of renters said that they spend too much of their income on housing. And regardless of what the legislature does with property tax cuts, it’s very unlikely that large property owners are gonna decrease rents that people are paying now because of property tax cuts that are not guaranteed to carry through much into the future.

And so there’s a big population out here that is. You know, I think desperate for some kind of of fix, and I don’t, I don’t, I just don’t know how that gets fixed in the short. Well, yeah,

Jim: I mean that’s, you know, and that’s entering into the, you know, the property tax discussion right now. Mm-hmm. about, you know, who’s gonna, you know, who’s gonna feel [00:41:00] that and who’s not, no matter how big the cut is.

Josh: Right. And I mean, and, and it’s interesting because I mean, if you think about this, you know, 20 20, 20 20, you know, between 2020, when we first asked this question in 2023, they increased the homestead exemption from 25 to $40,000. Um, at least for homeowners. Uh, so I mean, you know, technically, you know, they are doing, they were doing big things, but they were, as so we’ve talked about before, but they were certainly if, if, if those, you know, quote unquote, I’m just gonna say big things, that’s relative.

But if the big things they were doing at the legislature for, you know, uh, you know, relief for, uh, homeowners, I guess, uh, you know, had any effect, it looks like it was completely wiped out. By other pressures, inflation, other things. Right.

Jim: Well, you know, I think it’ll be interesting to see going forward as we, you know, pull on this, uh, you know, a bit more, you know, how pragmatic, you know, our [00:42:00] respondents and how pragmatic and knowledgeable to some degree Texans are.

uh, when it comes to the broader picture of tax relief, whether mm-hmm. , you know, people think, you know, whether there’s a belief out there that that property tax relief gets distributed broadly or not Well, yeah. I mean, you know, we certain, and particularly compared to their preferences on other kinds of taxes.

Josh: Well, and you know, we’ve talked about this and, and I mean, I, you know, we’re pretty, we’re pretty knowledgeable consumers of this kind of information. I’m not, you know, again, I think we talked, I. Sure. Where Texans, whether adults or voters, you know, who they hold responsible for their property tax burden and, and how they, you know, and, and further, you know, who they hold responsible for housing costs more generally, and whether those two things are even related.

Yeah. And so that’s sort of the, that’s sort of the tricky bit, you know, to this, you know, I, I just don’t really think that people probably have consistent or really well defined views. [00:43:00] where or whom to blame, you know, when the cost of housing goes up significantly.

Jim: Right. Although one thing, you know, I think that’s right, and one thing we do know is that, you know, a campaign environment is not helping them and have to clarify reasonably accurate information about that.

No , you know, which, which has always been an interesting dynamic to me here in that you know, that, you know, there’s a real effort to make pro, you know, to make property taxes an. Right. Um, even though it’s a very difficult issue to really do things about , you know, it’s kind of, it’s, it’s always all the little self-defeating to me, you know, but I think that, uh, you know, once the toothpaste has been out of the tube and that, you know, people are gonna talk about property taxes a lot in campaigns are gonna make promises.

Well, you know, you’ve just kind of grabbed that problem that you really have a lot of trouble addressing in meaningful. .

Josh: Yeah. I mean from, from, from our perspective is the ones, you know, measuring the public opinion on, on this, you know, I [00:44:00] mean, the question simply becomes, you know, more or less, you know, they’re gonna do something.

Right. And, and I, you know, we’ll see what it is. But the question really is, are Texans gonna notice? Yeah. And that’s really, like, that’s fundamentally what the question is, you know? And, and, and part of that’s gonna be do they notice because it, it fundamentally changes their property tax bill bills. Do they notice because their rent goes.

do they notice? Because you know, politicians tell them that they did it. Yeah. Incessantly. Incessantly, right. And, and the truth is, you know, all three of those are pretty tough. Yeah.

Jim: And, and, you know, and, and right now, I mean, I think, you know, I mean, we’re sort of getting off and then we’ll, we’ll be coming back to this.

Yeah. But we’re in an interesting moment on this right now as, as we see the leadership in both the House and the Senate. Pushing, you know, and promising for property tax relief, but the governor pushing harder on it. Right. Um, with the underlying dynamic, I think, you know, being that [00:45:00] these officials realize that it’s expensive to do this and it’s certainly expensive to do it in a way that at least has a shot, to your point of the voters actually noticing, right?

And being able to say, Hey, you know what? You did that, you’re saying you did it. I’m looking at. , you know, some aspect of my finances and I actually can tell the difference. Um, but it puts them in a spot that’s, you know, that’s very difficult right now in terms of the available funds.

Josh: Well, that’s the thing.

I mean, that dynamic is, I mean, glad you brought it up. I mean, that dynamic so clearly shows the challenge ahead of them in this weird kind of, you know, mirrored kind of way. Because, you know, it’s very easy for Abbott to say, You should, you should spend more than 15 billion on, on property tax release for Texan, even though it would require probably busting the spending cap.

Uh, it would also take away from all the other things that people are really excited about spending money on. , [00:46:00] but the reality is that doesn’t really matter. You know, if they passed the property tax cut, he can say that they passed it and he can say that he wanted more. And that’s really all that matters because ultimately, you know, again, for, for, you know, again, if you’re

Jim: Yeah, certainly in political

Josh: terms.

Yeah, in political terms. And that’s the thing, again, we we’re just saying this is what it is, is what this is about. But in political terms, it’s great because you basically get to say, yeah, I pushed them for her Pat Textless and I wanted more. So if you don’t feel like you got enough, it’s not my. . Right. I wanted more.

Now whether it was feasible to give more or to give an, or whether it was feasible to give more practically or whether it’s feasible to ever even give enough to be noticed in a state as large as Texas or two different questions. Right? Right. But that’s the thing about this issue is is, and I like, you know your point, I I as well taken, right?

Which is, you know, but once you’ve kind of let it out, you’re sort of, you are beholden to do something, but it’s also something that is almost. You know, it’s a big, big challenge to do something that will get noticed in the space. Right. And

Jim: it’s, and know, you know, and, and, and to connect with something we talked about in the podcast last week, uh, [00:47:00] as we get close to time here.

But, um, you know, it’s, it’s. You know, we talked a bit last week, or maybe it was the week before, about the degree to which, you know, one of the things that makes immigration and border security a evergreen issue in particular for Republicans is its intractability, uh, on one hand, and on the other hand, the ability to point to another level of government and, and blame them.

Mm-hmm. , um, for something that is intractable. You know, on property taxes, it’s different because. You know, you’ve assumed, you know, a, a degree of responsibility and, and will to action on an issue that you don’t have a lot of control over. But the only thing you can really point to, you know, if you’re, if you’re the governor and if you are or you’re members of the legislature are local authorities, , but in the way that you’ve talked about it, you’ve already taken, you know, a lot of that plausible deniability away from [00:48:00] yourself.

Well, and so it’s kind of a trap of your own making, which is an interesting contrast with, you know, the opportunities in the most cynical political sense that immigration and border security offer to Republicans. Well,

Josh: I know that, I mean, that’s a really, I’m sorry, complimenting you so much. I mean, that’s a really good point because if you think about they also.

I mean, they hamstrung themselves by, uh, capping the amount by which local entities can raise property tax revenue from one year to the next. So the reality is, is that, you know, that CUDL of the local government, you know, who’s sitting there and, you know, driving up your property taxes, well, they can’t.

Right, right. I mean, ultimately they’re, they’re re, I mean, right now they’re severely constrain. to a point that’s, you know, way below the rate of inflation , you know, at the same time as the Texas legislature has a 33 3 billion surplus, um, you know, the cities are basically required to only increase their revenues by three and a half percent or less.

Right. And so the thing is that, that, you know, the idea of the city is the bad actor you could blame is gone now because, [00:49:00] It’s right. I mean, practically so. And that’s actually, I hadn’t thought about the fact that, you know, the whole city is the bad actor. Kind of part of this discussion has just evaporated, but it’s evaporated because they took it away.

Jim: Yeah. You know, underline this is, is, you know, the time horizon of your play. I mean, to go back. Yeah. You know, it’s a, you know, it’s a, to refine your point, it doesn’t really matter. You know, I mean, obviously, you know, in political terms, Uh, you know, to go to the old cliche, you know, in the long run we’re all dead and, you know, that goes, you know, a magnitude more true in politics and particularly politics on stuff like, on, on issues like this, so, right.

Josh, thanks for spending time talking about all the work on the poll. , uh, good job. Uh, putting the poll together. A lot of interesting stuff in here. Um, where can people find this? I mean, we’ll put a link to it on our website in, in the link on the podcast, but for those who don’t make it to the site, where can they find this?

Uh, the more of the data and the results? Yeah,

Josh: just go to Texas live [00:50:00] cm.org and click on poll and

Jim: it’ll take, that’s L Y C E U M for those of you that are not into you.

Josh: Trained in Greek and Latin.

Jim: Greek. Yes. Greek and Latin. Titled Public Service Organizations. Um, right. All right. So thanks for being here, Josh.

Thanks again to our excellent production team in the dev studio and the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin for going back to the, we talked about covid. We referenced Covid here. It was a little bit of a flashback here. Being hold up in the house and recording remotely. So thanks a lot to, uh, the folks in the dev studio for making that happen.

Thanks to you for listening and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast.

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