January 9th, 2024 – Public opinion and 2024 primary politics in Texas 

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the Second Reading Podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution, they have become the norm. At what point must a female senator Raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

[00:00:33] Jim Henson: And welcome back to the Second Reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Belated Happy New Year to everybody. We’ve been on hiatus for about a month.

Um, happy to be joined again today by Josh Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project. Welcome back, Josh. Thanks for having me back. Um, how was your break from the podcast? From the

[00:01:00] Josh Blank: podcast? Well, miserably, because I love the podcast. Oh, I see, okay. But just in general, the break was very nice.

Very relaxing. Kids are back at school today, which is it’s time as any parent knows. It was lovely and I’m glad it’s

[00:01:14] Jim Henson: over. Yeah. And I think that’s the, that that’s really the overarching, one of the overarching holiday sentiments, I think. So, you know, there’s a lot we could do today, having been gone for a while.

Um, you know, as some of you may know, we soft launched a December poll. About what? Four days before before we disappeared. Like maybe the, you know, second, like the last day of Hanukkah. I

[00:01:42] Josh Blank: think it was, well, it was, I think it was the week, it was the week before Christmas. I think we did it right. Yeah. And that’s when we released it, which is, you know, a good way to bury your own work.

So we thought, but not really.

[00:01:52] Jim Henson: Well, and you know, we can go behind the scenes on that at some point if we need to, but uh, that December date is out there if you missed it. I mean, if you’re on our email list, uh, you would have gotten an email or a couple of emails about it, uh, day of release. Um, so two things, if you haven’t seen that poll, you’re not aware of it, texaspolitics.

utexas. edu. Uh, follow the polling link on the front page, you’ll see the latest poll link, the archive link if you want to dig down a little deeper. Um, And, you know, so, you know, have a look at that, uh, if you are so inclined, um, and also a post on the, in the blog, in the blog area, the site that kind of drills down into, you know, kind of a first cut at the release and we’ll be coming around to that.

So we’ll talk a little bit about that. you know, without trying to talk about old news in a little bit. But, you know, we’ve been gone, Josh. It’s a new year. I thought I’d stop by just saying, you know, we, we ended the last few podcasts, as I recall, of, of last year, you know, kind of mulling the end of the, of a very long legislative year with all the special sessions and the Paxson impeachment, all the.

things that colored Texas politics last year. Um, you know, with sort of a, at the time, kind of a distant eye, if you will, or just, you know, the very beginning of a pivot toward the 24 election season, which starts in Texas, of course, with the primary election season. I’m wondering just kind of what’s on your mind, you know, I mean, sometimes I think, you know, we tend to get inherently a little bit myopic, particularly when we’re trying to do the podcast on a week to week basis.

Right. When we’re trying to produce some content, not quite on a week to week basis, but you know, we’re doing one poll after another now that we’re doing six polls, I think, you know, one benefit of having a little bit of a holiday break is to get a little bit of breathing space and a little bit of contemplation.

I’m just wondering what, you know, what kind of your You know, when it comes to the, you know, politics, what, what’s on your mind as we start a new

[00:03:53] Josh Blank: year? Yeah, I mean, I think like most people, I’m probably, you know, focused on the thing that’s right in front of my face, which is the primaries, you know, to a large extent, more so the state level primaries than, than the presidential primary election, partially because the state level primaries are a little bit more interesting at the moment to me.

Um, but the other thing that I’m sort of Thinking about, you know, at a higher level, you know, in the same area is just, you know, this is the part of the year where it’s like, you know, I think we need to be careful, you know, we talk a lot about, you know, not over interpreting data or, you know, making sure that when you are looking at data, you’re.

You know, you’re applying it to, you know, the appropriate use case, let’s say, and, and at the moment, it’s sort of like, you know, you need to sort of keep your data, the arguments that you draw from that data and the focus of the competition you’re talking about aligned. And what I mean by that is I see right now there’s a lot of things flowing around in the atmosphere, sort of talking about these primary elections, and sometimes there’s sort of these.

Basically like general election arguments, you know, sort of these, these things that kind of make their way and it’s like, well, what are Republicans going to, I mean, this is a terrible example, but it kind of proves the point. Like, what are Republicans in the primary is going to say about abortion and the answer is.

Nothing, you know, or, hey, look, we bandits. I mean, that’s not an issue in the Republican primaries, right? And so there’s a little bit of this kind of, you know, we’re already kind of have one foot in the general election, especially with the presidential kind of campaign almost seeming maybe set in some ways.

But we’re still very, very much in this primary season right now, where, you know, we really are talking about competition amongst a small group of Republicans for a small group of Republican voters in the Republican primary. Yeah. I don’t really even have anything much to say about the Democratic primaries at this point, outside of the Senate race.

And so I just, and even that’s pretty quiet at this point, but I think it’s just sort of, you know, it’s interesting in that, you know, there’s this two step process, right? We have to get through the primary season first and then move to the general. But I think a lot of times at this point, there’s a lot of munching that goes on.

It’s like, January’s here, it’s 2024, it’s an election year. What’s going to happen? And it’s like, Ooh, let’s just, let’s, let’s get through these primaries first. Right. Cause there’s plenty right here in front

[00:05:52] Jim Henson: of us. Yeah. I mean, I think that. I mean, I, you know, there’s a, I think there’s a real tension in that between knowing full well that particularly in a state like Texas, the primaries are, you know, very important, you know, for, for many, if not most offices.

[00:06:11] Josh Blank: Determinative is a strong word, but it’s not. I was

[00:06:14] Jim Henson: just, they’re determinative. Right. So. You know, I mean, I get that I also, you know, we were talking about this beforehand a little bit. I mean, the, you know, the, the, the sense of people that follow this and those of us that read about it all the time and are, you know, the buildings building or and or reading spreadsheets and looking at endorsements and campaign contributions and all this, you know, in a struggle for a very small share of voters.

You know, in a, in, as we were all, we’re saying, and we’ve been saying in here a lot recently, I think, in a very crowded environment, um, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I started the year and this is probably just an, to some degree, an accident of timing that, you know, the calendar flips and just about the time and kind of emerging from the holiday stupor indifference, you know, whatever you want to call it, you know, we now have the January 6th, anniversary is now a date in the political culture that I think will be marking for a long time.

Right. And I think that really did get me thinking a lot more about, you know, attitudes on January 6th and the larger, you know, I mean, you know, simply put, it got me thinking about the presidential election and probably, you know, the stakes of the presidential election, how it’s framing politics more. And just, you know, just, you know, just how important that election is going to be in this year and I, you know, I sit here and I kind of, you know, want to sort of hunch over a little when I say that, I mean, you know, because I, but there is a strange dynamic out there in the discussion of this and that the, just making that point.

Is, you know, implicitly political, and I think, you know, implicitly gets gets read as implicitly political or biased because I go. So you just want to talk about January 6th again. Look, I’d be happy to never talk about January 6th again. If I thought we didn’t need

[00:08:23] Josh Blank: to. Yeah, you know, it’s fine. I’m sort of laughing because it’s funny.

I mean, we’re sitting here and it’s like, on the one hand, I’m saying I just want to look. I mean, I just so much just happened. We just had this whole year of legislative. We’ve got this whole So much going on just within the Republican party of Texas and so many cross currents, just, just right there. And I’m, and I’m, I’m like, Hey, let’s just focus on this.

And I, and you know, and you’re totally right because there’s another side of this, which is like, yeah, but do you remember, I mean, like, and I can say this as a pollster, as someone who follows politics, like you, it’s like, do you remember what it was like when Trump was center stage? Yeah. Like in terms of the environment, I’m just talking about the information environment and it was overwhelming.

I mean, it was like, you know, being a pollster during Trump’s first term was like drinking from a fire hose every day. Cause we’re like, do we need to ask about this? No. Yes. Maybe. Yeah, you’re kind of, you’re juggling this. And the truth is as much as I might want to say, you know, as much as I want, maybe this is just wishful thinking as much as I just want to focus on the primaries right in front of me right now, there is an aspect of this that would, I think as reasonable as it is like, look, Okay.

You know, that may not be the focus, right? I mean, we kind of have to wait. I mean, we have to wait and see how this all plays out. But I mean, but there’s going to be a big, big, you know, a favorite term is going to be, you know, in a big exogenous force here. It’s not exogenous. Actually, it’s endogenous now.

Right. Good words. Look up, you know, which is Donald Trump and his impact on just everything going forward for the rest of this year. I

[00:09:42] Jim Henson: mean, and I think, you know, we made it, you know, I mean, we got a great example of that. And we talked about it probably in the last podcast we did last year. I mean, You know, at a time of all the kind of, you know, overinterpreted or not tumult within, you know, that is going to be expressed in the Republican primary in the state and after, you know, the end of a, you know, a very rocky legislative session for Republicans, you know, Trump, you know, former President Trump appeared in Texas, Governor Abbott endorsed him and, you know, that, You know, illustrated that endogeneity that you’re talking about, right, I think in a lot of ways.

So, but I mean, I, you know, and I think, so I think, you know, the things they are connected, right. But it also gets, you know, very tricky in terms of, you know, your, your well taken caution about over interpretation. But, but I mean, I think these are the things that are really front and center, you know, right

[00:10:44] Josh Blank: now.

Yeah. And part of it just to be mechanical just for a second is just, you know, it is just thinking about, you know, there are different things Messages for different groups of voters and subgroups within those groups of voters. So the Republican primary that’s sort of, you know, messaging, you’re hearing from Abbott, from legislative candidates, from legislative challengers is geared towards a very narrow slice of the Republican Party within a very narrow geography within the state in most cases.

Right. And at the same, that’s, that’s all true. At the same time, you know, Donald Trump’s influence. Overrides all of that right

[00:11:18] Jim Henson: took that terrain has really been influenced by

[00:11:22] Josh Blank: him. Yeah. And it’s been heavily influenced by them. But then again, you, this at the same time, you know, I don’t think, you know, I think given the fact that Texas has become, is trending a competitive direction.

It’s kind of the way that I’ve been putting it recently. It’s trending competitive, which means it’s not competitive, but it’s trending towards competition. It does raise the question about, you know. The impact that Trump has on the Republican party, the impact that has on the primary and whether or not that has any hangover or, or carry through to a general election environment that may be pretty different, you know?

And so there, that’s still matters, but I do think at this point it is still useful to try to keep these things relatively distinct, at least for our own selves and try to understand the moves that people are making and what the consequences might be. Because if you just sort of think of as, well, you know, you know, for example, you know, water vouchers, you know, a big issue, you know, are they going to be a big issue in the general election?

And it’s like, well, I think, whoa. Slow down.

[00:12:12] Jim Henson: Yeah. And, uh, yeah. And, you know, we’ve talked a lot about the relative, you know, salience of these issues and how much voters are hearing about them. And, you know, I think we’ve gotten in the habit of checking in on that a little more regularly, which I think has been a good move for the poll.

You know, and I guess, you know, to the degree to which this is now internalized, and I guess, you know, what really made me think about it more was a very mechanical thing. I mean, you know, we hit January 2nd and, you know, the holidays were over and January 6th was coming. So we started putting together a post, just collecting the.

public opinion data in our polling of Texans on views of January 6th and the attention of the rioters, um, views of Trump, views of the 2020 election. And, you know, I mean, I, you know, clearly I found it difficult to look at that data and not say, you know, we really do need to pause and think about the implications, whether directly or indirectly manifest in the Republican primary and state legislative races.

That, you know, a majority of Republicans don’t think that, you know, the, the riot was intended to overturn the election. A majority of Texas Republicans don’t think the 2020 election was legitimate. And even, you know, a much larger majority of Republicans still have favorable attitudes toward Donald Trump.

And I think you can’t look at those numbers, you know, to me and not pause a little bit, but, you know, in reflection on. You know, whether it’s front and center in the primary or not, where the psyche of Texas Republicans are and, and, and Trump’s presence there.

[00:14:02] Josh Blank: But I think this also is what proves the point in some ways that I was trying to make, which is that, you know, when you’ve got nearly, let’s say around two thirds of Republican voters in Texas who think that the 2020 election was basically illegitimate, the Biden’s victory was illegitimate, about two thirds who think that, um, essentially the protesters were not trying to overturn the election.

I would assume, I think it’s fair to guess, and I think it’s probably that those percentages are higher among Republican primary voters in Texas. You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s closer to 80 or 90 percent among, again, Republican primary voters. Yeah. But that’s actually the point, right? Right. So to the extent that there’s, you know, you know, the.

You know, Trump is in court today, you know, making, making, uh, you know, claims of broad, broad based claims of immunity that a lot of Republican elected officials are going to back because right now they’re in primary season. I mean, regardless of whether they agree with it or not, or the politics of it, they are in a primary season right now where that view is overwhelming.

It’s not an area of contention among anybody. Doesn’t matter whether you voted for Paxton’s impeachment or not. Doesn’t matter whether you support vouchers or not. Trump is your, is your guy, as far as the Republican primary electorate is concerned, as far as your public projection is concerned, does that become a liability later?

Potentially, right? And now when I say liability, I don’t mean a liability like you’re going to lose a bunch of voters here. I don’t think I think anything. Actually, this is an important point. It’s a little more indirect,

[00:15:17] Jim Henson: probably.

[00:15:18] Josh Blank: Well, it is more indirect because I’d actually say, you know, the data showed actually that a lot of legislative incumbents in Texas overperformed Trump in the last election.

So, I mean, this is not to say that they’re going to be losing, but But the issue here is that the electorate expands, the Republican electorate expands, and some of that sort of full throated endorsement of whatever. And, you know, however, could become problematic later, but that’s why we need to like separate these things out a little bit.

The moves that they’re making right now are not indicative of, and of

[00:15:43] Jim Henson: course, there’s a lot of, you know, so much uncertainty in that. I mean, and going back and looking at the data for that post, I mean, I was. You know, struck and I mean, I mean, I, and I shouldn’t be, and I, we weren’t that struck at it at the time, but, you know, I mean, Trump’s job approval rating among Republicans before the last election was 90%.

Yep. Yep. And, uh, you know, so one might say, well, it’s favorability ratings and, and we have a piece that’s on the site that’s in the blog site that talks about this, you know, on one hand, you know, his. His favorability ratings are a little lower than that there in the 70s, but his favorability ratings when I went back and checked have always been his personal favorability ratings have always been a little lower even among Republicans when we asked both than his job approval ratings.

You know, obvious kind of reasons for that.

[00:16:30] Josh Blank: And I would just say a quick one is, you know, outside of office, he has less control over the narrative surrounding.

[00:16:35] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, there’s a lot of plausible reasons that don’t necessarily have to do with big changes in attitude. Yeah. Big changes in attitudes among Republicans.

So, so with that, let’s, let’s go back in the direction you started with, with all of that and kind of look a little bit about it at a particular, I want to talk a little bit with the time we have left. about some pieces that we’re working on now or some data that we’re working on some pieces for. We’re not sure exactly how we’re going to parse out a very large text file right now in, in posts, but it will probably be more than one.

But, you know, I want to sort of start by focusing or talk today on a couple of batteries of questions that we did, the kind of, and we articulated at this when we roll, when we rolled the poll out. You know, the shows legislative incumbents in the Republican Party facing a primary electorate that on one hand, you know, was clearly in significant numbers supportive of many of the, you know, the policies and the agenda, the problems that the 88th legislature attempted to take on.

But in some of them. You know, potentially most important areas was not so optimistic that the legislature, that what the legislature had done would actually successfully address the problems.

[00:18:02] Josh Blank: Right. So, you know, I mean, just to give a couple examples of the former here, you know, And we’re going to focus on just to be clear, we’re focused on the Republican primary here.

Mostly we’re focused on Republican voters, um, for the reason we’ve kind of already laid out. But, you know, we look at some of the quote unquote divisive issues of the last session, you know, 94 percent of Republicans supported, you know, require athletic participation in colleges and colleges. You know, higher ed institutions be based on biological sex, you know, 91 percent supported, you know, requiring armed security guards and public school campuses, um, you know, 90 percent supported, you know, increasing punishments for violations of election law, uh, you know, more than 80%, almost 90 percent supported, you know, living discussion of gender or sexual identity by public school teachers and so forth.

You

[00:18:43] Jim Henson: should look at this in time, right? Because this, because these results are from the end of the

[00:18:47] Josh Blank: regular session. Yeah, this is the end of the regular session. So if you think about, I mean, this is actually good to say, if you think back, all the way back, go back a year and think about, you know, what were they really, you know, what was, uh, was the focus of a lot of the coverage and a lot of the contention during the, the, the regular legislative session is around a lot of these issues having to do honestly with like gender identity, LGBTQ plus issues, children broadly.

Right. Broadly construed. Right. And the fact is those issues had overwhelming support among, you know, Republican voters. Now when we kind of. At the time,

[00:19:14] Jim Henson: it did seem like that was the section of the agenda that let a lot of people say, Hey, look, this is a session seemingly fundamentally concerned with the upcoming Republican primary.

Right. I

[00:19:24] Josh Blank: mean, what’s, you know, what’s, and we’ll kind of kind of back to this, this dichotomy here between the Republican primary and the general election, because I think it actually right. Dovetails us really well. Now. When we jump ahead to the end of the year, and we look at, you know, we’ve gone through four special sessions now, and we looked, sort of, in the December poll, we asked about support for, essentially, the major proposals, broadly, around the special session call, at the end of, at the end of the fourth session, and, you know, what we found again was we found Generally pretty supportive, right?

We found first and foremost, the main result from that was the most support by far were for the education policies that never passed now, not including vouchers, I should say, right? The public education publication, increasing school funding, increasing teacher pay, right? Increasing, you know, funding for school security.

Those were extremely popular, extremely popular among Democrats or very popular among range from very to extremely popular among Republicans. Also really popular, but only among Republicans, the COVID vaccine, uh, pro, you know, mandate prohibition, I guess those are the right word, order of words, word salad there, right?

Uh, you know, very popular. Obviously, anything having to do with border security, if you listen to podcasts, you know, incredibly popular among Republicans. You know, these are two things that were not popular among Democrats. And, you know, vouchers were sort of kind of, you know, Floating somewhere in there a little bit, you know, Republicans were supportive majority Democrats were, you know, somewhat unsupportive, but that was about it.

It’s not as 71, you

[00:20:47] Jim Henson: know, in the item, you know, which was kind of the, you know, non trade off wording of the item. 71 percent of Republicans, only 25 percent of Democrats. Now you can say only 25, but as much as 25. Yeah. Supported establishing a voucher ESA program. Now, compare that to put a little more meat to get backtracking on what you said.

You know, when it comes to increasing teacher pay. 76 percent overall in court, you know, three quarters supported increasing teacher pay. And that was 91 percent of Democrats. No big surprise. 78 percent of independents. Um, And oh, that was 78 percent of actually that was a 78 percent was Republican. So, you know, three quarters of Republicans, I think overall it was about 80%.

And so, you know, three quarters of Republicans, 91 percent of Democrats. That’s a pretty popular

[00:21:40] Josh Blank: idea. Pretty popular idea. Didn’t happen. And so then we also asked at the end of the session about, about some of these sort of big, big issues that we’d asked about multiple times. We asked about. Uh, basically confidence in these legislative efforts to address some of these big issues.

So, so again, focusing on Republicans here, you know, again, the lack of confidence was kind of, I don’t know if I’d say surprising, but notable, right? Yeah. I mean, yeah. Because we had seen this lack of confidence earlier. Right.

[00:22:05] Jim Henson: We’ve used this general structure

[00:22:07] Josh Blank: before. But only 27 percent of Republicans said that they were either extremely or very confident, uh, that the legislature had increased the reliability of the electric grid.

26 percent were extremely or very confident that they had increased the reliability of the water supply. Uh, 35 percent said that they were confident about the legislature’s attempts to improve school safety. And even despite all the money that’s gone into this, I mean, I would say border security is the most interesting one in some ways, because there’s so much Public spending public effort communications on all that they were doing to address the border now at the same time You know, this is where kind of the national local dynamic is a little tricky, right?

But only 32 percent said that they were extremely very confident that legislative efforts are gonna improve security along the Texas Mexico border And again, these are, these are high watermarks because Republicans are the most confident. Independents are a little bit less confident. Democrats are significantly less confident.

And so, you know, you’ve

[00:22:54] Jim Henson: got to, let’s, let’s sit on that for one second. I just want to, you know, because we can’t help but dwell on border security, but I mean, you know, I think unpacking that is really interesting. I mean, I, you know, the key point you make, I think is really important that border security is the most inherently now, you know.

At least, you know, in some contexts, you know, I, the most inherently national issue here. Um, and, and very, you know, expectations are no doubt interspersed with expectations cultivated by Republican leadership. And to be fair, the facts on the ground and the media coverage of those

[00:23:30] Josh Blank: facts on the ground. And especially the partisan media coverage of those facts on the ground.

Right. So, I mean, if, I mean, on the one hand, you know, I think, you know, you can look at, I mean, you can look at these in a couple of, that result in particular in a couple different ways. I think one, you can look at it, which is what. Shock and say, you know, we’ve gone from hundreds of millions to many billions of dollars that the state has spending on border security.

Uh, you know, really the one, I wouldn’t say, I mean, the main banner success of the second set of special sessions was to, you know, increase, you know, just create a state penalty for being, you know, an undocumented immigrant, essentially in Texas to increase funding for, you know, more, more, more wall building, colony ridge, legally empower

[00:24:05] Jim Henson: and legally empowering state

[00:24:07] Josh Blank: enforcement.

Right. Legally empowering state enforcement. That’s what I meant on the first one. At the same time, you know, so you could look at that and say, Hey, shouldn’t, you know, they, they did a lot. I mean, they really did. I think, you know, full stop at the same time, if you’re watching any sort of right leaning media at all, all you see is the crisis at the border.

All the time, the federal crisis, the border, Biden’s border, Christ, whatever you want to call it. And so, you know, there’s this little bit of attention. I mean, I don’t even think it’s not attention. I mean, it’s an opportunity in a lot of ways, but there is sort of a tension here between saying, look at all that we did for the border on the one hand, but on the other hand, the fact that it is presented as it’s not presented as intractable, but it is.

Almost well, I mean, I

[00:24:44] Jim Henson: seemingly intractable, you know, what I was thinking about as we were talking about this and as you’re writing this piece, you know, it also becomes another exhibit in, you know, in one of the things we’re flogging in here all the time, which is, you know, it’s another example of why immigration and border security, whatever you think of the empirical piece of the problem.

Or, you know, who’s doing what, or who’s failed, or who’s whatever. Um, why it’s just such a good, in strict political terms, a good issue for Republicans, because they’re able to demonstrate a lot of action, and they actually benefit from the low ex from the skepticism that anything can solve this, that anything is going to solve this problem.

[00:25:27] Josh Blank: You can always respond to the, to the demand, because the demand’s not going

[00:25:30] Jim Henson: anywhere. And the base always wants more. in a kind of perpetual sort of hungry cycle of, you know, do more, do more, do more. That’s not working. That’s not working. It’s not working because the federal government is failing. Do more, do more, do more.

I mean, as recently as October, after all, you know, as we’ve said in here before, after all the spending done on border security during the regular session and in the three or four previous sessions of drastic increases, we had yet more funding added during the special session. And then after that, we still have.

Only 32 percent saying that they’re extremely or very confident

[00:26:08] Josh Blank: at least 60 percent of republicans saying that we should be spending

[00:26:11] Jim Henson: more right Exactly. And so I just kind of want to flesh that out a little bit because I think you know We talk about that a lot of times in terms of just the public opinion support at any given time And there were the patterns of public opinion that show, you know, strong Republican support and non trivial amount of Democratic, a minority, but still a non trivial minority of Democrats supporting these kinds of issues, the salience of it among Republicans, but there’s also this anticipatory element, right, that You know, whatever you’re doing, the problem still needs more,

[00:26:45] Josh Blank: right?

So, uh, just taking a step back, then it’s really interesting, actually. I mean, thinking about the conversation we had at the top of this and then thinking about through the way this data was laid out, it really does actually illustrate what we were talking about in some ways, right? You know, in the sense that when you look at the individual policies that were the most controversial during the regular session, we’ve talked about this for, you know, a few sessions now where, you know, if there’s an activated constituency within the Republican primary elected for something that has a unified desire.

You better believe that it’s probably going to at least get a hearing if not some kind of legislation passed and you know You can kind of point to abortion restrictions You can pour it point to the loosening of gun laws here in recent years even In even you know, I would say in response to but in the wake of mass shootings Um, you know some of this stuff having to do with gender and sex and you know people might even say sometimes, you know solutions in search of problems But these are very popular policies so that when you go to the republican primary electorate and someone says what did you do for?

Us gun owners, what did you do for the homeschoolers? What did you do for the most, you know, committed evangelical Christians who show up in every primary, right? We can say, we did this, HB fill in the blank, SB fill in the blank, so on and so forth. Now, because the session went on for so long though, you get to this end point and you say, okay, you kind of got to this last piece.

And again, they can still point to immigration and the border. Uh, and that’s sort of, I think the, we sort of, we talked about this a lot, but that is like a good catch all backstop, no matter what you can say. Do you know how much money I voted to, to spend on the board? Do you know how much power we’ve given to this governor to go after undocumented immigrants?

So that’s sitting there too. At the same time, that all speaks to the, um, To the, to the primary election perfectly at the same time. And we talk about, you know, Texas trending competitive. There are these other things, right? You know, we ask about what, you know, people’s view of the direction of the state of Texas.

And, you know, for many polls in a row now we’ve seen at least 50%, sometimes more saying the state’s on the wrong track. And that’s not all Democrats, right? Obviously it’s overwhelmingly Democrats, but there’s a good share of independents, a good share of Republicans who feel the same way.

[00:28:46] Jim Henson: Right. Yeah. The other way, you know, the overwhelming share of Democrats say that.

[00:28:50] Josh Blank: But it’s not, but it’s not being driven entirely by Democrats. You know, more interestingly, when we look at views of the economy and we’re looking kind of at the end of the year and over the course of the year, uh, you know, it’s not surprising to find polarized view of the national economy based on one’s party and the partisanship of the White House.

So Democrats tend to view the national economy much better under Biden than they did under Trump. And that happened immediately when the office switched and we can show you that and the data. So that’s, that’s not to be taken too seriously. I mean, you have to sort of take it with a grain of salt. But usually the, that doesn’t apply to the state economy as much.

And when we look at views of people’s views of the state economy and also their own personal economic situation, Republicans look a lot more negative in their views of what’s going on than do Democrats. Now, now this could be the same dynamic we’re talking about. The border could be going on here too, right?

Where a national sort of, you know, right leaning press, and when I say that, I mean the the share of the national press that leans right, whatever you want to call it, or those that constellation of networks and websites and everything. Talk radio, everything else is saying that Biden’s economy is the worst thing ever.

And so that is partially going on here. But also if you’re, you know, a Texas statewide elected official or even a house member who wants to say, Hey, we’re good stewards of government. Like you certainly don’t want the Democrats in here. We’re the pro business, you know, party, you know, we’re here, you know, to make sure the economy is running smoothly.

It seems problematic that so many Republicans. Or let’s say the Republicans hold more negative views of the Texas economy than Democrats. They hold more negative views of their own personal economic situation than do Democrats. And then you get to this other piece that we finished on, which is after an entire year of legislating, when you say, are you confident that they made schools safer?

And the majority answer is no. Are you confident that the grid is more reliable? No. Are you confident that the water supply is reliable? No, and even on this border thing, and again, the service, this probably speaks more to the broader sense of just degrading views of institutions generally and all sort of sources of, you know, everything, you know, it is, but, but this, but this is, but this is how these, but these two things are going on at the same time, there’s a sort of, you know, okay, the Republican primary electorate, I mean, I, you know, we talked about this, I think at the end of this, at the end of the year, our last thing is, you know, if you’re an incumbent legislator, and you do have a lot to campaign on, right?

You have a lot you can campaign on for that electorate. Yeah. Move it, you know, and to the extent that, you know, you are, uh, an income, you know, let’s say someone, a challenger, you know, you basically have a couple possibilities. You can say this person voted, you know, to impeach Ken Paxton, you can say this person didn’t support vouchers, which again, you know, we’ll see what the effect of those two things are, if any.

And you could point to this sort of institutional, Hey, look, you know, do you really think the state’s being run as effectively as it could be? You know, and there is something there that you might be able to grab onto. Is it enough to topple an incumbent?

[00:31:25] Jim Henson: It’s going to be hard. I mean, look, I think, I mean, I agree with a lot of that.

And I think that, you know, in working and kind of reviewing the December data and kind of thinking about the kind of, you know, you know, 2024 launches, we’ve been going through the December data and looking at the, at the sort of arc of the, of, of. The 2023 data overall. You know, there is something to be kind of more, you know, articulated a little more clearly here, maybe in something we write about, you know, where the nationalization of politics, where and how the nationalization of politics, you know, uh, Somehow, you know, in Texas and given the particular configuration of the political system here in the partisan universe, winds up on one hand, producing these kinds of numbers you’re talking about that look bad for Republicans, or if not bad, but at least You know, might might lead one to say, Well, maybe there’s an opportunity.

And look, I mean, lest we forget. I mean, this was kind of what better or worked right in 2022. Now I don’t want to open the new can of worms of, you know what? Beto did right or didn’t do right or whatever. But that was clearly I mean, stewardship was the argument. Certainly in the lieutenant

[00:32:47] Josh Blank: governor’s

[00:32:47] Jim Henson: race, right?

And and so, you know, I mean, I think that point and I think you’re right in that the the similarity between border security and, and the economy in here and the way that the national, you know, gets filtered through state politics. But in working on this, one of the things I did go back and look at, and you know, this is something we probably just need to think about a little bit more, but you know, like Greg Abbott’s not, Taking the heat for those economic numbers, you know, in the way that Joe Biden is taking the heat for the, for the economic numbers.

And so there is kind of a, you know, I mean, I, I think it’s, you know, want to just think about different, you know, we haven’t talked about it that much. I’m thinking about ways about, pardon me, looking for this and looking for this in the data, but in which these negative attitudes exist, but You know, the distribution of partisan control nationally versus state serves to insulate state level leaders a little bit.

Well,

[00:33:52] Josh Blank: you know, and you made a really good point in some, some piece we wrote and it was in an assignment. And when I say that, I mean, I wouldn’t say anyone would notice it per se. I mean, I noticed it because we’re writing together and yeah, and I may not even have made the final piece. And I don’t remember where it was, but you’d sort of offhandedly at some point pointed out, you know, when speaking of sort of, you know, Abbott and Patrick’s sort of involvement and prodding and pushing and especially in the force, you know, for a special session.

Reminding our readers that they won’t be on the ballot in 2020. Yeah, and I mean there is something as we’re talking about this That makes me sort of think about the fact, you know What impact does it have on someone like abbott? On abbott’s willingness to involve himself in these primaries the fact that he’s not on the ballot now part of that is just even A resource there’s a resource answer that’s like well, yeah, of course because he’s not you know He’s not spending that money on his own reelection so he can spend you know, right But there’s also part of it that, you know, would you really pick a fight, you know, with multiple members of your own party during, well, you’re also kind of fighting for your own reelection campaign.

Like, is that really? And so in some ways he has the space, you know, to operate, you know, there. And, and the fact that he’s not on the ballot means that, you know, it is less, you know, less of a consideration really about his stewardship, because really we aren’t talking about that. We are

[00:35:00] Jim Henson: talking about. And then the direct thing I meant there is that, you know, I mean, we’ve, we ask people, how do you assess how Abbott’s handling the economy?

And, you know, the numbers, his numbers have not, have been fairly

[00:35:13] Josh Blank: predictable. They’ve fallen along kind of the similar partisan lines as other issues. Right. Exactly. And I think that’s kind of what, you know, what happens if there’s nothing

[00:35:20] Jim Henson: specific. Right. I think that’s right. And, and same with border security.

Right. I mean, and so, you know, these, these, you know, these issues lend themselves to a nationalization, you know, I mean, they are nationalized in a way, but they are manageable given the leverage that Republican incumbents in the state have to do that. Yeah. You know,

[00:35:38] Josh Blank: it’s interesting. Yeah. I mean, you were saying.

You know, some ways that, you know, O’Rourke had sort of had pursued this route, you know, in, in the last election cycle. And, and, uh, you know, it’s interesting. Cause I mean, one of the things I’m thinking, this is just, you know, you’re saying we haven’t really talked exactly about this and there’s something that kind of strikes me about this.

And I’ll put this observation out there and you can decide whether it’s true or not. I think there’s some political science that might back this up somewhere. I’ve talked about this before, probably in this podcast, but you know, you know, as the state becomes more competitive, it’s not necessarily the case that the majority party starts to like, try to appeal.

To different voters. Yeah, right. So, you know, I just think it’s important to point this out. You might say, well, the states get more competitive, but if anything, it seems like Republicans are actually doubling down in a lot of ways on what got them here in the first, doubling down on their primary electorate, doubling down on the sort of Republican, you know, really, really, really, especially, you know, extreme conservative Republican priorities.

And sometimes even at the expense of Really broadly popular policy. So in the obvious example here is, you know, if you know, if no vouchers, no increase in teacher pay, no increase in school funding, right? Overwhelmingly pie and you think

[00:36:43] Jim Henson: I don’t think that was a purposeful strategy,

[00:36:46] Josh Blank: but no, but but this but this is I but I think, you know, again, looking from the outside would be really easy to say, Hey, look at the states becoming more competitive and you’ve got these, you know, kind of slam dunk Policies out there.

Why why isn’t the majority some downs in movement? Yeah Why wouldn’t the majority party just go and do this and the answer is that we don’t actually see that happen very often Well, we actually see is the opposite which is you see this doubling down on Your electorate, you know the

[00:37:10] Jim Henson: people who brought I guess what I would say about that is that i’m not sure You know i’m thinking about this in real time.

Yeah now, um You know, i’m not sure that That, you know, when somebody doubles down, not to be too gambly about this or too subjective about this, I mean, you know, that’s a, that’s a, that’s, that’s a strategic decision in the metaphor, the figure of speech. And I think what’s, you know, what’s interesting about this and that, you know, and this, and this really came to the fore in the discussion of abortion policy.

2022 and early 2023. And then, you know, for the reasons that we’re talking about, I think we didn’t hear a lot about it in 2023 from Republicans. And that is, I mean, I think Republicans are in a, and you know, and we’ve injected this into a couple of pieces and it really needs to be the focus at some point.

I think that, you know, what we’ve seen is, you know, this doubling down quote unquote has been injected into politics, but it’s not entirely Purpose of now, I mean, I’m not letting Republican legislators off the hook or not saying that people are keeping an eye on the primary. But I think that, you know, some of these legislators and, you know, you, I, very few people will talk about this on the record while they’re in office, but they are, you know, they feel jammed up.

Yeah. Right. And, and I think that’s part of the interest, you know, that is one of the most interesting characteristics of the moment in Texas politics, I think does tie a lot of this together. Yeah, no, I agree with that. Which is that, you know, yep, Republicans are leaving themselves open to the fact that they are servicing their primary electorate.

at the expense of, you know, depending on the setting, you know, if you want to be analytical, the currents of broader public opinion, public opinion overall, the good of all Texans is more of a primary kind of argument, or in some cases like abortion. Even the carrying capacity of public opinion among Republicans themselves.

Well, you

[00:39:23] Josh Blank: know, I think you’ve answered the question. I think, you know, you know, I, I proposed this possibility that as it becomes more competitive, you know, instead of seeing an opening up to more voters, if anything you see, and I, I shouldn’t have said doubling down because I knew, you know, you’re, you’re a poker player and everybody, you know, and I’m a math guy and I was like, no, that was a mistake.

I shouldn’t have put that in your mind. But you do see this, you know, whether propulsive, whether thoughtful or not, this, this, You know, uh, you know, reinforcement of sort of certain existing positions. But what you don’t see, and this is what you’re not seeing, is any attempt to expand the electoral coalition, even in a, even in a moment in which I think there’s a lot of, I wouldn’t say fluidity, but there’s a lot of uncertainty about, let me call it like, you know, the party system in the state, right?

And in the nation in a lot of ways, right? And here’s the thing is that the one thing we do know is that if things were to just say, kind of stay ossified as they are, the Republican party would get smaller and smaller and smaller because they’re relying on it. Older voters who are, you know, basically exiting the electorate by which I mean dying.

And you have a huge, huge young population in Texas that looks very, very different. Now again, do they think differently? Depends. So we’re not going to say that, that they, you know, again, we’re not going to go around the demographics as destiny track because that’s obviously kind of stupid. To the extent that, you know, the Republican Party, you know, just took a, were to say, you know, Republican leadership were to just try to take a clear eyed look at the situation and say, boy, you know, we’ve got these policies that would really like give us a toe hole, you know, with many, many more groups of voters, but you know, politics doesn’t.

Really easily accommodate that and that’s kind of what we’re and that’s why I think going back to kind of where I started saying Like I really want to focus on The primary right now because when you start making these general election arguments about you know, well, what about It’s not really applicable at this point because if that member can’t get through the republican primary none

[00:41:04] Jim Henson: of it matters Well, yeah, right.

That’s exactly right. And and you know in that sense look you know, everybody’s, you know, you don’t get to make the conditions of your own action in most cases, right? Um, in some ways I would say in all cases, just physics experiments, you know, not, not, not to use a word that, you know, yeah, not, you know, not to use a word that’s become problematic, but, you know, context matters, um, a lot.

Uh, and you don’t get, you know, you, you know, you do your, I mean, look successful. You know, strategy, you know, successful political strategy is, I think, is generally mindful of context and when, you know, you have, you know, and recognizes the ability to help shape the context you’re going to act in. Yeah, but I think And I, and I think a lot of Republicans have, you know, Republicans in Texas right now, there are all these elements of the context that are really favorable to them, obviously, but they’ve You know, there have been some unintended consequences that are largely structural that have to do with in, in large part being the only game in town a lot of time and you get, you know, we’re been using a lot in here.

I got to, you know, but you get myopic right now. I mean, I, I, you know, but I think to your broader point

[00:42:26] Josh Blank: and I can say one thing about myopic piece. I also, I also think it’s important to point out that like, if you expect any elected official or, or, or want to be elected official to look at context beyond.

That cycle. You’re going to be disappointed and that’s something that comes up again and again and again, so that feeds that myopic view because there is what we’re talking about here is we’re talking about long term trends. We’re talking about, you know, what happens is these people after the electorate over multiple election cycles and these people come in and yet the still focuses on a smaller and smaller share of the electorate.

So again, that’s going to have downstream consequences, but I’m not going to sit here and tell you that, you know, that anybody is Anybody even even Greg Abbott with all the money in the world and all the time really to kind of focus on this is thinking about the Republican Party of eight years from now.

Yeah, that is not his job. That is no elected officials job. That’s not what they’re

[00:43:10] Jim Henson: doing. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, yeah, the time horizon, you know, broadly speaking, given the way that, you know, we have, you know, election years and legislative years. You know, there’s a couple of years, you know, um, you know, maybe four and that doesn’t mean that, you know, they don’t, I don’t want to oversimplify.

I mean, people, especially I think effective people, you know, have the ability to strategize a little bit further into the future, but you know, As an input it has a lot less weight than as you put I mean you put it, you know Succinctly five minutes ago, you know, you got to survive the primary before you survive the general

[00:43:51] Josh Blank: I totally agree with you because I think that the the the longer term things I mean for for good effective people that happens in the legislature Those are those people who are like, they’re working on these issues session after session, like they’re, I’m not saying that a hundred percent.

I

[00:44:04] Jim Henson: mean, I think there’s some, you know, you know, but I think, and I think it’s less so, I think you’re right. It’s, you know, it’s much more immediate. That’s what elections are sort of designed to do. So, you know, with that, I want to close out pretty soon, but I think we also just said, and so, I mean, I think one of the upshots here and one of the questions, and we were talking about this a little bit before the podcast pursuant to some of this, this writing we’re doing is.

You know, it’s also good to remember as we, you know, we’re saying a lot, I think at the end of last year, and that was confirmed again in the December poll, you know, not a lot of people are paying attention to the legislative stuff that we pay a lot of attention to. And I think it’s a fair question to wonder.

And it’s, you know, it’s. It’s, it’s a, it’s something that we’re wary of asking on polling because we know that you can’t really get these kinds of attitudes out of people because they probably don’t have them very clear in their mind when you ask them. But you know, how much of this are people thinking about when they go to, when they’re going down their ballot and they get to the box for their state representative?

You know what? You know, how many, how many, how active is the decision making? What are the inputs? And I, you know, I, you know, that’s a pretty, that’s a pretty tough question.

[00:45:32] Josh Blank: I think a lot of ways. I mean, yeah, it’s a very tough question because I mean, I’ll just, just, it should

[00:45:36] Jim Henson: temper us. It should temper our conclusions and our analysis all the time, I think.

[00:45:40] Josh Blank: Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, I think that’s one of these things. I mean, one of the things that I sort of started kicking around in grad school and then, you know, left as you do, you know, is this notion of, you know, like political knowledge. But the knowledge is an interesting subject and of its own right.

You know, sort of what people kind of what are the facts that people have and bring to bear about. Politics, there could be all kinds of things could be, you know, civic information. It could just be basic knowledge. It can also be, you know, things about legislation process, whatever. And, you know, we always say is, you know, the mean for this is pretty low.

Most people don’t know a lot, but the tail goes on forever. There’s people, you know, a lot of you read, listen to this. You’re out on the tail because you are listening to this. You’re already so engaged and you have to think about voters in that way to, you know, for a lot of voters, it’s as much as, you know, do I, do I remember the incumbents name?

And that’s part of why incumbents are, you know, so successful in some ways, because they’re there. They’re, you know, we say, you know, if you’re doing, if you do any sort of brand work or if you’re aware of brands, it’s like, look, one of the things that brands work so hard to do is just to be in the consideration set, just to be on your mind when you’re making a decision.

And there’s plenty of

[00:46:38] Jim Henson: research about incumbent advantages and name recognition, as you say. Right.

[00:46:42] Josh Blank: And so there’s that, but then there’s this other piece, which is like, okay, yeah, but like, you know, they just, but you’re like, but I mean, if you want to be skeptical to just kind of that. Real kind of flip dutch.

And I’m just and the point I should make is a lot of variance among voters. We can’t say one thing applies to everybody. But then you say, well, why did they spend all this time doing all this stuff? And you know, none of it matters. And then that brings up this next year. Well, yeah, but then they want to selectively highlight based on what they think, you know, highlight different accomplishments that they think are going to put them in the best position in that district to be renominated to win election again.

Um, I think the thing that’s sort of that’s sort of sticking out in my mind right now. So first and foremost, with that in mind, as we’ve Pointed out, there’s a lot of things that these Republican incumbents can, can hang their hats on. Multiple things. Yeah. We

[00:47:24] Jim Henson: made a big point of that. I think in the last podcast or the second of the last one, I think

[00:47:27] Josh Blank: what I’m kind of curious about is, you know, to the extent that, you know, I’m going to, I’m going to just going to go say to the extent that Republican politics has become, you know, less tethered to like even shared facts among Republicans.

Right. Yeah. I wonder what impact that has, you know, on kind of these legislative dynamics, you know, to the extent that, you know, someone can, you know, let’s say they can assuming they can generate, you know, enough resources to, to compete with an incumbent. You know, legislator, is there any penalty for saying something completely false?

Right. Is there any penalty for saying, you know, not, I mean, because I mean, you saw it a lot this year. I mean, how many, you know, there’s a good Texas Monthly article piece you put on it. How many conservative Republicans are being described as basically Democrats right now? Or have been in the last year?

You know, people who no one would consider to be anything but a very clearly conservative lawmaker. Yeah. Being described as anything but. Can you convince

[00:48:21] Jim Henson: Briscoe Cain’s voters that he’s a rhino? Exactly. And, and will that be how they make their voting decision if you

[00:48:26] Josh Blank: can convince them? Well, and that’s, and that’s kind of the question, right?

And, and, but it does overlap with your question, which is, well, what are people even bringing to bear to this? And if they’re not bringing much, which is actually what we think, you know, maybe there is a

[00:48:39] Jim Henson: little more room. Well, that’s the, you know, that’s, that’s the ironic thing about this all the time. If they’re not bringing much, then is there any, you know, what does that say about the latitude you have?

Yeah,

[00:48:50] Josh Blank: it says you have a lot of something

[00:48:51] Jim Henson: to that, to whatever it is they’re bringing. And I, you know, and, and where I kind of wanted to bring that to is, you know, cause we’ve also got, you know, we’ve spent the last, you know, half hour talking about issue positions and assessments of the legislature and expectations of, you know, the general environment.

You know, and then, you know, you put in there all these cross currents that have got the political press in Texas and, and people like us, to be fair, I don’t want to throw stones here and looking at well, and then you’ve got, you know, Paxton out there running around and you’ve got Governor Abbott having endorsed opponents as, as of today on Tuesday, I think six, you know, incumbent legislators, um, you know, having probably contributed to the departure of a couple of others.

Yeah. Um, you know, I’m still a little skeptical. About what the effects of that are going to be aside from you know an influx of resources in those races Yeah, now, I mean that’s and that’s like well, duh. Yeah, you know and I get that but I mean I think there is a the problem is that there’s to my mind is it’s a tendency in the coverage you know like right now there’s you know, a real trope is taking place and I think we’ve Referred to it, at least in quotation marks of, you know, you know, Attorney General Paxton’s vengeance tour, you know, and the fact that, or the fact that, you know, this was Governor Abbott, you know, is embarrassed or somehow needs to, you know, recoup admiration, you know, because, you know, he invested heavily in vouchers and the legislature didn’t get it done for whatever, you know, for a whole set of reasons, you know, there’s a part of me that I just think, yeah, we know a lot about that.

I am very skeptical. Now more true of, again, your, your distinction between the primary and the general election critical here. Yeah. You know, these things are much more likely to be salient among Republican primary voters who are, you know, as a group, older, more attentive, more conservative, and, and more intensely, you know, they identify more intensely, you know, more closely and strongly as Republicans, meaning that they probably pay, you know, more attention to this stuff.

And yet, you know, when the primary day rolls around in a couple of months, a little less and too much from when we’re recording today. You know, some of that I think is going to matter indirectly as a, as, as, you know, as we talked about finding, you know, campaign financing and things like this, but I, you know, I, it’s, it’s a little unclear to me what, you know, how you really model the fact that, or, or even conceptualize that those factors are really going to be that, you know, Are really gonna be decisive.

I’m just not I just I’m just a little skeptical Well, you

[00:51:47] Josh Blank: know again and not to preview I mean, I don’t know if it’s still in one of the versions of what we’re working on here to try to make this clearer And writing but you know you referred to the cleavages in the rolling party is kaleidoscopic, right?

Which is not just not only to say multiple but as you turn it They can, they can shift in a Jeff. Right. And I think that was a really good way to put it. And one of the points that I think you were making in that section, which I think was really, was really spot on is, and I’m going to add to it a little bit here, which is to say, you know, if we were having this conversation, whatever, four election cycles ago, eight election cycles ago, you know, the cleavage in the Republican party was very clear, right?

You’d kind of say, okay, we’ve got some, you know, some, we’ve got basically the, the center right of the party seems to have, you know, the, the, the, much of the gravity. Yeah. Uh, and then there’s sort of this sort of dissident far right faction that, you know, kind of causes problems in the house usually, but kind of goes along with things.

And then they have backers who are supporting these sort of far right, uh, candidates who are basically being sold as more, you know, more clearly conservative than whoever they’re running against. Right? Um, but when you get to this kaleidoscopic nature, that’s, Just more confusing now, right? Because sometimes Paxson’s on this guy’s side and Abbott’s on the other guy’s side.

Sometimes you flip them, then you’ve got Texans for lawsuit reform, and you’ve got Phelan spending money over here. You’ve got ART, you’ve got the, you’ve got the state party. Did you vote for or against

[00:53:01] Jim Henson: Paxson?

[00:53:04] Josh Blank: Did you vote for or against Boucher’s? And all that stuff. And it’s kind of like, you know, to the extent that there was an easy sort of decision rule, that was, you know, again, we’re talking about for most voters or even the more sophisticated are still looking for easy decision rules.

That’s all kind of being thrown up in the air here a little bit, you know, I mean, I

[00:53:20] Jim Henson: think it’s thrown up in the air, you know, you know, by all these immediate, yeah, go ahead. Well, I was going

[00:53:24] Josh Blank: to say, so, but on the one time, because going back to this data, I mean, what’s interesting is that, you know, you sort of depends on how you think about.

The primary electorate on the one hand, you think, you know, if you think of it as a, as a collection of issue issue publics, we call it, you know, people are really motivated because they’re abortion is their issue. Guns are their issue. School choice is their issue, right? Ultimately, there are votes they can look to.

There are things that happen. They can say it’s either this or it’s that. That’s one way that we could look at that electorate. Another way we could look at that electorate is, you know, I mean, not to get all social science. I’m already like, Oh, my God. Yeah. Don’t do it. But I mean, you could think of it as in an ideological space and you’re looking for the member who’s closest to you, right?

You’re far right. This person’s closer to me on this, you know, dimensional act as one uni dimensional access. Here I am, this is the person I should vote for. But even if that were the case, this kaleidoscopic cleavage thing really makes that hard to, like, where are you? Where am I? Where, I mean, not where am I?

I may, I might know where I am, but where are these candidates now? I’m hearing one thing from the governor. I’m hearing another thing from the attorney general. This incumbent who’s been in this district, you know, for multiple cycles who I know is telling me something else, right? What does that do? And I don’t think we know.

I mean, just, you know, to be quite, quite honest, I mean, my, my gut is to say that, you know, incumbency is a pretty big advantage and most people who’ve, who’ve supported challengers even in very loudly and even with resources have generally failed in Texas in recent cycles. I think that that’s kind of my, my modal expectation.

At the same time, a lot of these sort of underlying facets of what it means to be conservative and, and what the markers are or the litmus tests, which it depends on who you talk to or who you listening to just make this a lot harder, I think, to, to, you know, really right. Well,

[00:54:59] Jim Henson: game out. And, you know, to the extent that, you know, it’s interesting we, we end here because the things that we talked about, long term consequences and decisions, but that emerge from short term strategic considerations and actions and, and the tactics that come out of that is that, you know, the success, you know, of some of those fringe groups in conjunction, again, to be consistent with the, you know, with changes in the national environment.

Have you even further muddied what was 10 or 15 years ago, you know, the tea party, you know, busting in and, you know, wanting a seat at the table? Well, you know, uh, you know, I think I’ve broadly speaking, the tea party that has sort of morphed into. you know, quote unquote, a kind of, you know, for lack of a better term, a kind of mega Republican ideological formation, if you will, you know, have changed that terrain in some ways.

And it does mean that, you know, we saw a legislature that. You know, as we said last time, can both effectively ban abortion in the state ahead of when we should say ahead of, you know, constitutional validation, um, do a, you know, pursue a lot of the kind of very far right policies we’ve been talking about, remove licensing for gun requirements, but still.

Transcripts provided by Transcription Outsourcing, LLC. Um, you know, there’s clearly a problem here. We’ve done something about that too. Lowered your property taxes. Right. And so, you know, it will be interesting to see if these, these kind of kaleidoscopic cleavages, you know, what they look like once the primary elections are behind us.

And again, in all probability, Donald Trump is the presidential candidate at the top of the ticket. Ted Cruz is the Senate candidate at the top of the ticket. And then you’ve got this, all this other stuff going on in the general election. That won’t be settled before we get through the primary, saying the primary terrain is, is, is very different.

Um, but I, you know, I, I, there’s more action in the primary. That means more people are engaged. More people in the legislative interest group media community are paying more attention and have more to do There’s more engagement and it’s it’s cranking up attention to it and it’s cranking up, you know, the drama or melodrama Associated with all this.

Mm hmm.

[00:57:53] Josh Blank: Yeah, and it’s and it’s also gonna crank and the thing is I mean the worst part is it’s gonna Crank up, you know over interpretation by interested parties of what everything means

[00:58:01] Jim Henson: but I think you know and I don’t want to speak for you, but I think one of the Things that, you know, I, I’m kind of feeling this both edging towards here and, you know, making predictions is a rubes game, but, you know, if I had to bet I wouldn’t double down, but if I had to play some a bet, I would bet more on continuity than change in what we see coming out of the Republican primary.

[00:58:22] Josh Blank: Yeah, I, you know, I’d have to, we’d have to settle on, on how our criteria. Yeah. I mean, that’s just to be fair. Cause I mean, you know, I think someone could come back later and say, Oh, well, you know, they knocked off, you know, three incumbents and I’ll say, okay. Does that count or not? But, you know, well, I would say, you know.

It’s not

[00:58:38] Jim Henson: enough, you know, if you, if you want to look at incumbent success rate, not much more than a standard deviation off of the last, not more than, not more than a standard deviation of the, you know, what we saw over the last 20

[00:58:50] Josh Blank: years, even without looking specifically at those numbers, I’m comfortable with that.

I would even say

[00:58:55] Jim Henson: plus, you know, even anyway. So with that, um, well, fun to be back. Welcome back. Good to see our friends in the studio again, too. Thank you. Um, thank you for listening. Uh, as always, more formally, thanks to the staff in the, our production team here in the, uh, audio studio in liberal arts, uh, instructional technology services in the liberal arts dev studio at the university of Texas at Austin.

Uh, thanks again to Josh for being here. Thank you for listening, and again, we will post a version of this podcast with supplemental material at Texas politics dot u texas.edu. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back again next week with another second Reading podcast.

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