June 18th, 2019 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party

[0:00:09 Speaker 1] because there was only

[0:00:10 Speaker 2] one party chart. 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

[0:00:32 Speaker 0] on Welcome Back to the second reading podcast for the week of June 17th. I’m still Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas. I should, I guess I should say, I’m Jim Henson, still director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas. I’ve been fired in the last week were demoted

[0:00:52 Speaker 2] for now

[0:00:52 Speaker 0] that I know of, I’m happy to be joined again by Josh Blank, who you heard Wayne and already knowing what a joke. What a good joke that was.

[0:01:00 Speaker 2] Well, I was thinking that don’t I move up then?

[0:01:02 Speaker 0] Yeah, I know, I know. I know what you were thinking. He’s the research director for the Texas politics project. Ah, today we want to focus on the latest UT Texas Tribune poll of public opinion in the states. The Texas Tribune will be releasing results all week. As you listen to this Monday through Thursday, you can see the stories on that which I would encourage you to read. They will all be by our friend Ross Ramsey, who hopefully will get in here before the end of the semester. Ah, and that is a Texas tribune dot org’s. Then at the end of the week Thursday afternoon, likely maybe Friday morning, depending on how hard Josh and graduate standing the graduate students work will be. All the data and stuff will be post and graphics stuff you can you guys can. Using your presentations and papers for other courses may be ah at the Texas Politics Project website, which is Texas politics dot utexas Thought e d u. So today we want to talk about what the first wave of results tell us about Texas politics at the moment, with a pretty strong emphasis on the election environment that will also circle back at the end if we have time to some of the issues we’ve talked about in terms of what the Legislature did in 29 in the 2019 session and how the public is now responding to it. But we start, as all political discussions seem to start with. Texas views of Donald Trump and Donald Trump’s position as the figurehead of the Republican Party has only grown stronger in Texas, I think, probably much to the chagrin and, if not expectations, at least wishes of Democrats both here and nationally, right?

[0:02:44 Speaker 2] Yeah, I think that’s fair. I mean, you know, there’s probably something in this poll for both sides if you’re a strong supporter of the president. On the one hand, I think there’s numbers in here toe, you know, buttress that point that he’s definitely the figurehead of the party here, and he doesn’t seem to be weakening. If anything has his hold on, it appears to be strengthening ever so slightly among Republican young Republicans. But right it slowly, you know. But there’s also stuff in here where if you’re a Democrat, you can look and say no. But there’s there’s glimmers of hope that maybe Texas will be competitive this cycle. Maybe, but I mean there’s a broader context here for all polling that I feel like duty bound to point out, which is dutiful. I am, you know, and I like to still, like, keep one foot in like of serious, rigorous political science camp and just point out like it is so early a decision, early period in the election cycle. And it’s kind of natural, I think, for us and our schedule for doing polling where, especially in a big presidential election year, we we kind of get to this June poll, and we both want to look back at what the Legislature did and see how that positions them. Which is kind of what we’ve been talking about the last couple weeks, but also firmly looking ahead to the next big political story, which is already the current big political story, which is this 2020 election cycle, Right? Having said that, it’s still super super early. So any sort of you know any polling, whether it’s ours or anybody else, is that you read that says, you know, here’s how Donald Trump looks against Kamala Harris, and here’s how Donald Trump looks against, you know Joe Biden. I mean, one of the important things I think we did in this poll to try to illuminate this. Which is to say most people are not paying attention to the election. At this point, most voters don’t know who the Democratic candidates or potential Democratic candidates are. So any you know, any results that we look at me to be taken to the context of the taken within the context, the fact that it is super super early

[0:04:30 Speaker 0] right and that you should and what’s going to be headlined in this poll in media coverage and rightly so, is the fact that when we ask people in Texas, would you vote to re elect Donald Trump if the election was today, or would you vote for somebody else? The split was about as even as you could get. We went down a few decimal points to make sure everything looked right in that the rounding wasn’t misleading. And it’s a 50 50 split,

[0:04:59 Speaker 2] right, with 39% of Texas registered voters saying that it would definitely vote to re elect Donald Trump and 43% saying that they would definitely vote for somebody else. Ah, you know, and so I mean, obviously there’s a pretty big partisan split. There you have 86% of Democrats saying that they would definitely vote for somebody else. You have 73% of Republicans saying they would definitely vote for Donald Trump. And, you know, And now that’s the other thing where, you know, if you were just kind of come into this, you might say, Oh, well, so Democrats are definitely Mawr enthused about this. You know, we asked of enthusiasm. There’s no difference in enthusiasm for 2020 election between Democrat between Democrats and Republicans. But, you know, the other thing you could say is, Well, why are you know Democrats so certain they’re going vote for somebody else? Whereas Republicans air a little bit less certain. And part of this is to say, Democrats are making an evaluation of Donald Trump, who we know that they dislike strongly. You know, in our last poll, 87% disapproved of the job he was doing, Ah, you know, as opposed to 89% of Republicans who approve of the job that he’s doing. And that kind of points out a little bit of of, you know, the issue here. You’ve got 89% Republicans giving him approval on his job, only 73% saying that they will definitely vote to reelect him. But part of this is also again the nature of the timeline. Who’s he running against? You know, I think that what you’ll find is that is we’re gonna continue asking this question, you know, probably for a little while. But is the Democratic field search to narrow and you start to see who an actual opponent is going to be? Republican support is going to solidify once they know, even if they’re once Republican voters know who the opposition is, cause even if they don’t agree with Trump 100% of the time or they, you know, maybe have a problem with style or whatever, It doesn’t mean that they’re gonna vote for Bernie Sanders, for example.

[0:06:38 Speaker 0] And one thing to clarifying that, as we said, it was 50 50 and then we gave you the numbers for definitely gonna vote for Trump and definitely gonna vote for someone else. So if you we also have these medium points that said, Well, I’d probably vote for Trump or I’d probably vote for someone else. The probably he’s the probably vote for Was 11 in the for Trump in the probably vote for someone else was 7%. You add that up, and that’s how you get the 50 50 split. Um, yeah, and I think the difficulty in interpreting this you kind of alluded Tuesday. You look a truck Trump’s drop approval and it’s, you know, on the high end of the band that we’ve seen him in in Texas, he was. So he’s 52. Job 52 Positive approval, 44 negative, only five. Didn’t you know? Said they didn’t have an opinion and that’s up a few points. He’s been mostly in the high forties. I think he’s hit over 50 maybe once or twice. I’m not sure, but but 52 is definitely in the high end of where he’s been. He’s been fluctuating, and you’ll also notice if you look at national polling, if you watch the news, that’s a little higher than his national level as well, which which we would expect here. But for Democrats, it’s not, You know he’s not, you know, basically creaming the unnamed Democratic opponent, so you’re going to see a lot of people interested in this as well. Um, you know, one of the other things that we saw that was interesting in this on the Democratic side is that we pulled in the Democratic primary race. A lot of interest in the native son bait O’Rourke right now. But Beto is running behind the what? You know, the guy who’s having a moment because he’s more nationally well known, and he’s taking up a lot of media oxygen. Former President Joe Biden Reformer. Vice President Joe Biden.

[0:08:22 Speaker 2] Yeah, and this comes back to you. I mean, you know, look, is this campaign cycle plays out? It may turn out that Biden is the front runner for forever. Yeah, sure, Probably No, I don’t want to say for I was about to say for a reason, but I realize he’s a front runner for a reason right now, and the reason right now is the fact that he has the highest name identification of a Democrats when I mean by that is when you ask people, you know, there’s a couple ways you can do this. I mean, in our in our poll that we basically said was because they’re so there’s a couple reasons we did this. Traditionally, what you’ll do is you’ll say, Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of You know that Fill in the blank Joe Biden Better or Rourke? Julio Castro, You know so on and so forth, and that you and then people can basically decide whether they can have a positive opinion. Think I’ll say I don’t have an opinion or I’m neutral And this is a way to kind of figure out, you know, do people know who this person is? Can they have in the, you know, in a highly polarized political environment, we expect people if they know who a politician is to be able to say, I have a positive or negative you about them. That’s one way to kind of figure out what name ideas is just to see who can express a positive or negative view about this person. But in this case, when you’ve got 23 you know, sort of named potential Democratic candidates we know just because of, you know, we do this for a living because we know because we know that a lot of people aren’t gonna have any opinions about, you know, a large number of the cancer. We just basically as, hey, have you heard of these people? And the thing that we find is that, you know, not surprisingly, 82% of registered voters say they’ve heard of Joe Biden. 82% say that they’ve heard of Beto O Rourke, because, of course, he just ran, you know, pretty well publicized Senate campaign here, but only eight of the 23 candidates we tested had higher than 50% name recognition.

[0:10:03 Speaker 0] So unless we get accused of cutting out the and Bernie Sanders had 81. So for the Sanders fans among you out there, we are not selling Bernie Sanders

[0:10:11 Speaker 2] loss. And and you know the 1st 1 to surprise people in the poll in some ways. But this is actually going on a national point. Elizabeth Warren had 74% approval, so there’s definitely are not approval name identification. Um, but the main point here is, you know, out of 23 potential candidates, we tested 15 of them. More than half of the electorate just was like, I don’t know who that IHS never heard of them. And so that’s where someone like Joe Biden really benefits and a lot of these things in a lot of these early polls, because when you go and then say, OK, you know, you’re doing a political poll. So who, you know, you’re obviously interested in politics. You probably answered some questions for me. Hey, so who are you gonna vote for? The 23 people

[0:10:47 Speaker 0] have already identified as a Democrat,

[0:10:48 Speaker 2] right. You were identified as a Democrat. Well, you know, for a lot of people, you’re just looking for some way to make a decision at this point. And that’s most often going to be. Well, I know who this person is, and I don’t know who the other 22 people are or I know a lot more about Joe Biden than I do about Ah, you know, Bill de Blasio.

[0:11:05 Speaker 0] Now that we told you about the how and the why the what here is that Biden hat topped the list of 23% and this is just among voters. He said that they would vote. They plan on voting in the Democratic primary. Biden had 23% bait or work at 15. Elizabeth Warren had 14% Bernie Sanders had 12%. Another guy’s really kind of having a moment. I think nationally and that the with these Democratic debates come primary debates coming up has a lot on the line. Pete Booty judge had eight, Kamala Harris five and then by way of transition, the other Texan prominent it at least no legit Texan on the ballot. Julio Castro only had 3% and we will pause there and note that Julian Castro has been somebody who has gotten a lot of attention from Democratic elites. In the course of his career, he was the mayor of San Antonio. He was thesis terry of Housing and Urban Development during the Obama administration. I think we talked about it a little bit. Last

[0:12:08 Speaker 2] keynote speaker. The 2012 Democratic

[0:12:11 Speaker 0] National Convention. He’s been heralded as the next big thing from Texas for over a decade now. And these air, frankly, not next big thing numbers.

[0:12:19 Speaker 2] Right? So he came in and only 3% you know, in the Texas polling, which is not really far off from where he’s been a national polling, but obviously his home base is supposed to be intact. This against you mentioned, I mean, is the mayor of San Antonio. People should know at least here more than anywhere else who he is. But what we did is theoretically. But But you know, what we did here was like I was just talking about We actually asked sort of these favorability items. You have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of, for both better O Rourke and Julio Castro. We chose them because they’re obviously sort of tech to the to Texas based politicians in the presidential election. We wanted to see where they were. And the thing is, we’ve asked these before and that allows to see you know, whether either of these candidates are gaining graining, gaining or losing ground both overall and, ah, with subsets of voters. And the thing that sort of notable about Castro is we asked people what they thought of him back in February, and you know, we didn’t take the four months between then and June, and his numbers have not changed at all. So I mean his I mean, you know not to be too harsh here, but it’s hard to look at these numbers, and especially in a state

[0:13:24 Speaker 0] where you’re about to be harsh,

[0:13:25 Speaker 2] you know, It’s like no offense, but ah, but I mean, basically, it’s not clear that any of the campaigning that he’s done over the last four months has done anything to really raise his profile, at least among Texas voters.

[0:13:38 Speaker 0] Yeah, and I think that you know the contrast here with O Rourke. Although work you better work has his own problems. That here is notable in that bitter or works numbers have not moved very much, either, into the extent that they have. He’s eroded a little bit, you know, within the statistical margin among Democrats, but or works numbers are also amazingly, you know, static in the same way that Julian Castro’s are Your work still enjoys a little bit of a Texas premium here, in the sense that he ran about 10 point, you know, 10 to 12 points higher in his home state, that he’s running nationally and in most other states, the problem for a Rourke and for Castro’s that, at least among insiders and certainly in their appeals to donors to their campaign, part of the argument is were from Texas. If we can put Texas in play, this is a in the presidential General election as the Democratic candidate. This is a huge asset. Texas is a huge chunk of electoral votes in the Electoral College. If somehow Texas is seen as very competitive or at least competitive enough at the national level in the presidential race that the Republican Party and the Republican candidate President Trump, have to put, resource is in Texas. It’s a huge benefit for the Democratic ticket, and it’s part of the argument. This is not helping. These numbers like this are not helping their argument at all. Ah, and in fact, I suspect, you know, we got these numbers. There was another Poland in Texas couple of weeks ago by Northeastern University that also got, you know, pretty similar numbers showed neither of them really tearing things up. And, um, it’s it’s a problem for their campaigns, even know it’s early. It’s not fatal. But, you know, a strong poll for either one of them would have been a real shot in the arm.

[0:15:31 Speaker 2] Yeah, I think what you can see here. I mean, one of the interesting sort of I would call this a very pretty nuanced and if you know, storyline for those of us paying really close Attention is is, you know, when a rock entered the race, I think one of the I don’t know if I call, I mean one of the question. One of the questions that sort of emerged after he entered was like, Well, you know, what kind of candidate is are working? What I mean by this is you and Jim and I talked about a lot how this this metaphor is significantly over used when people talk about the lanes in the primary, whether you’re sort of someone who is looking for the most progressive and we’re just in the Democratic primary now, this is true in the Republican primary to in different ways. But like you, are you just looking for the most progressive voters? Are you looking to be the person to pick up the moderate votes? You know, there’s definitely a lane for, you know, the people argue, you know, for African American candidates looking for African American votes, but really also for everybody, you know, in a lot of cases. And the thing about our work was like, Where does he fit in this? You know, And one of the thing was in Texas he seemed almost, I mean, he was mean. That campaign against Cruz he’s portrayed is basically the next coming of socialism, which is not uncommon. But the idea was that he was this extremely left leaning candidate. When you jump to the national stage, there was a lot of attention. Well, maybe, maybe, but it was not as liberal as we thought, you know, And some of this had to do with some, you know, probably pretty Texas specific votes you talk about offshore, took having with offshore oil drilling and things like that. But also look at his record kind indicate. Well, you know, he’s liberal in the sense he’s a Democrat, but he’s not so liberal.

[0:16:56 Speaker 0] He’s definitely left of center. And so that became part of this conversation

[0:16:59 Speaker 2] that’s become part of this conversation. But what you see in these numbers in our favor in favor ratings. And even if you look across where his support is potentially in the Democratic primary, it’s striking these numbers that he looks a lot Mawr like Joe Biden. Unlike Bernie Sanders,

[0:17:13 Speaker 0] in terms of in terms of the politics of the people that are supporting them,

[0:17:17 Speaker 2] right and what we saw was and have paved on Faith numbers, you know? And I always say, This is that. You know, you can take a really popular candidate and then you throw them into a presidential primary and you’re forced to differentiate yourself. I mean, better work. Running against Ted Cruz is different than depend O. Rourke running against Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden. And so what you see from the last poll to this is you see a drop in his approval ratings among liberals by 10 points, not a huge drop, but is but basically, you know, well, it will his overall number, state, even if master of under the surface, you know, a pretty good uptick in his in the view of him among independent voters, but also a pretty big drop in his view and the views of him among liberals. And that sort of you know, how using the mechanics of the primary process and this sort of playing out in actual views.

[0:18:00 Speaker 0] Yeah, and I think one of the things it’s to step back and to notice about that is that this is not new. Part of it is simply contextual in the sense of that better work is gonna look different by contrast, running against Ted Cruz than he is running against on array of candidates across the spectrum from the more or less far left to the center left in the Democratic primary. But the other thing for the you know, for people thinking about Texas is that this happens, you know, in general, and that somebody that looks pretty liberal in Texas in a national context is a Democrat. You know, the center of the Democratic Party in Texas has moved somewhat to the left over time, but it’s still not. But it’s still till the more toward the center than the center of the Democratic Party nationally. So all things being equal, you take somebody who looks pretty liberal, pretty lefty in Texas, and you put him in the national in the national context. And there’s gonna be a lot more candidates and a lot more discourse on the left. Because of the the differences in the political culture in Texas versus the overall country. I mean, Texas, as much as it’s becoming more urban as much as it’s becoming more competitive, is still to the to the right of the center of the rest of the country, you know, certainly the Northeast. But even, you know, overall.

[0:19:29 Speaker 2] Yeah. I mean, Democratic party overall nationally. Yeah. I mean, there’s still no support here for, like, a statewide income tax toe, you know, fund broad based social programs or anything like that. And even among Democrats. And so they just you know, that’s just not the case. So I mean, why don’t we? Then you think about how John Cornyn’s about our work

[0:19:46 Speaker 0] doesn’t move us. The corn to the back In this discussion about the comparisons, that’s where I was going. Was the put us now a little bit back in this state? This poll is pretty good news for I mean, John Cornyn’s had some good news. Generally, it’s not all good news for John Cornyn, but you know the incumbent U. S. Senator John Cornyn, who is running for re election in 2020 you know, there was an extended discussion. I think we’ve already referenced here about whether better O’Rourke should run against Cornyn for the Senate seat in Texas, having just built a basin and a bunch of a tool kit and a bunch of voters and experience in Texas should have run against John Cornyn and challenge John Cornyn right away for the 20 for the U. S Senate seat. He chose to run for president. He’s having the experience we’re talking about. That’s turned out to be pretty good for John Cornyn. And, you know, and it’s good for him, not just that he seems to have a clear field, but that he still also is showing comparative weakness compared to the most successful in well known Republicans in the state.

[0:20:49 Speaker 2] Yeah, I mean, part of the, you know, part of the argument against a Rourke running for Senate here in Texas again was the idea was to things. I mean, the positive argument is basically to say, you know, when you get the opportunity to run for president, people think you should usually you take it. I mean, if especially, think the environment favors your party. I mean, and that’s how I mean, look, whether you agree with that or not, I mean, I think that’s that’s the argument that you know that one the day here, which is to say that a rock raised $80 million you know, was basically thrust onto the national stage, etcetera, etcetera. Again, we don’t We don’t agree with that argument. You can read, You can see it. Boy can see it. The other argument. If you were in the negative case to say, Well, you know, cruises so particularly disliked amongst Democrats that running against him is just different. It’s not the same thing. John Cornyn is a much, you know. I mean, I would never call him a moderate Republican. I mean, I don’t think he’d want anyone to call him that, per se. But you know, he’s Mawr in the He’s a Republican in

[0:21:47 Speaker 0] the pre tea party move.

[0:21:48 Speaker 2] Yeah, he’s a pre tea party, Miller, Republican. You know, Senator, So he’s much more involved in the and I would say, you know, he’s involved in the leadership team in the Republican Party in the Senate, you know, is much more of, Ah, probably Douglas in the US that prime much more of a dealmaker. You know, that kind of thing. But that’s also hurt him over time, where we’ve always seen that his numbers were never as strong as Ted Cruz is or even Greg Abbot’s, you know, and some of the other people you consider to be at his level. But in this poll, we actually saw an uptick for him. You know, we saw that his approval rating overall went up to 42% which is which is pretty high, you know, for him is pretty order for corn, and it’s pretty. It’s well, it’s comfortable with, you know, his His numbers 42 proved 39 disapprove 29 with no opinion is pretty close to comparable to Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. Ah, but I mean, this other side of say, you know, Dan Patrick just escaped a pretty close election and, you know, sort of most importantly. I mean, the big changes have really increased corn and ah, name idea here. So people who could actually, you know, make a positive or negative assessment of him. It’s really mostly among Democrats. Among Republicans, 68% approve of the job he’s doing, 13% disapprove. Um, you know, again, that’s, you know, pretty close to where I say Dan Patrick is, you know, among Republicans, Lieutenant Governor, Lieutenant Governor. But among Democrats, you know, the share who had a negative opinion of him went up 10 points since the last since the last poll in February from 60% to 70%. And what kind of notable, you know, to me and all this Acorn has always been kind of a little bit a little bit below the radar, right? I don’t think that’s the case anymore, you know, no matter what he looks, you know he’s as negatively viewed amongst Democrats, you know, with, you know, within a couple points as Ted Cruz has been. And so I don’t think that, you know, from the perspective that Cornyn is just such a different candidate for Democrats run against in this environment. At this point, based on the data we see like, I don’t think that’s the case anymore.

[0:23:42 Speaker 0] It’s not, and in that underlines again that you know or work might have been in a better position than they thought to run against corn. And he just to put a little meat on those bones. I mean, when we talk about corn in doing relatively better, his approval rating was it mean as low as 27% positive, 39% negative overall as recently as one year ago. And so now if you fast forward to where we are now. One year later, he’s 42% positive, 39% negative. As you say, more people have an opinion of him, but it’s a it’s a better position to be in. And I do think that the Corning campaign and Corning himself have done this on purpose. I mean, they have raised his visibility. Ah, as they’ve seen the chances of a more competitive race Ah, increase over the last year and certainly in the wake of 2018. So, um, you know, if you look at Cornyn’s position, that race looks to be probably closer than they would like. Depending on who the Democrats agree upon is a candidate. But now and and you know they’re still rumbling. I mean, I had a conversation late last night with AH political reporter about the possibility of just not just gaming out. So say Basara work goes into this weekend’s debate, where next weekend’s the Democratic debate. He’s on the less crowded stage. He’s not on the on the stage with Biden. I don’t think with the front runners and he doesn’t do anything, and he continues buried well, being buried in kind of the second tier at best of Democratic candidates may be lower. If somebody else does well in that debate, does he come back and decide he is going to run for Senate? How viable is he? Have damage? Dizzy.

[0:25:34 Speaker 2] You could say the same thing about Castro to I mean, it doesn’t seem it seems less likely. Ah, that Julio Castro would drop out. The president’s racing for that for that Senate seat. But, I mean, he’s in a similar position. I mean, for both of them, it would be a I don’t say it would be a challenge, but I mean, since there is already at least there’s already more than one name Democratic candidate interested in challenging corn and the most prominent of which is M. J. Hager, who run unsuccessful ah, congressional race but a close one against John Carter of Round Rock in the last cycle. And she’s, you know, she brings a lot of money and got a lot of us for viral attention for some, some ads that she did you know, the idea of, you know, one of Texas, you know, one of Texas is to sort of most known male Democratic candidates putting their foot in the presidential waters and then coming back into that Texas race,

[0:26:23 Speaker 0] talk out a a rising woman in the party who’s more or less well liked and appreciated. It’s a little rough.

[0:26:30 Speaker 2] Yeah, maybe a little bit rough.

[0:26:31 Speaker 0] This is a rough game, though.

[0:26:32 Speaker 2] Yeah, it’s true there

[0:26:33 Speaker 0] now, and, you know, it would be unwise. But I would also say that they haven’t made a raft of wise decisions thus far.

[0:26:42 Speaker 2] Yeah, as they say, if you can see if you could see Jim and I right now we’re we’re shrugging shoulders with

[0:26:49 Speaker 0] Yes. Oh, yeah. Where I think we’re edging into snark so we’ll move and we’ll move on to one last topic here quickly. Which is We also had approval job approval numbers for this state leadership, including the Texas Legislature. And we’ve talked in the previous weeks about the leadership, the state leadership, particularly Governor Abbott and, uh, and the Legislature’s efforts to provide kind of a fallback strategy to shore up their position in the midst of all these national politics and the churn that we’re talking about. And,

[0:27:21 Speaker 2] you know, we

[0:27:22 Speaker 0] can talk about this more as we go on but because we’re gonna run out of time. But this was a good poll for Governor Abbott of honestly, almost everybody here. This is probably best for Governor Abbott in terms of individuals. Those whose political situations we touched on governor abbots approval ratings were as high as we’ve seen them since he’s been governor. 54% overall approval, only 32% and disapprove, 14% opting out, including 85% job approval rating among Republicans, which is in the middle of the bed he’s been in for a while. Ah, the Texas Legislature had a 43% positive job rating and a 33% negative job rating, which is about where they were at the end of the 2015 session, but about 10 points more positive than they were at the end of the of the 2017 session, which we reference in the podcast before as that kind of kind of a rough session for the Legislature in terms of of public reception and what they what they actually got accomplished. So as you come out of this, it looks like the strategy that we’ve talked about in here, in which the Legislature tried to give some give people what they wanted, quote unquote and and provide bread and butter things would by increasing funding for public education and at least taking some arguably but still pretty concrete steps toward at least lowering the rate of increase of property taxes in the future. Moving forward seems to have served them pretty well.

[0:29:03 Speaker 2] Yeah. I mean, I think the interesting thing in both abbots approval numbers and in the approval numbers of the tax ledge is the fact that, you know, overall for for both groups, for both Abbott and the Texas Legislature, Republican approval remained basically static. And I wanna meet Static is here. You know, Abbott’s approval remains pretty stack among Republicans. Looking back over the last number of cycle our last summer polls, we ask every poll, you know, when we look at the Texas Legislature compared to the end of the last two sessions, you know, again, the sort of approval among Republicans and you know, and also among conservatives looks pretty, pretty consistently within, you know, a priest, narrow range of variability. You know where you’re seeing. The increase, honestly is, you know, is among Democrats and independents and independents. So you know you mentioned you know, Abbott’s approval numbers. I mean, what puts Abbott at 54 32 overall, to some degree is the fact you have almost 20% of Democrats who approved of the job that Abbotts did me. And while that’s a little high, you know, there’s usually about somewhere between 10 and 20% of Democrats who approve, You know, Compared to the end, the last session often referred to sort of the bathroom bill session. Only 8% of Democrats approved of the Legislature’s job performance. You know, this time it’s up to 22 so it’s up 16 points. You know that’s our 14 points. So that’s you know, I mean, that’s where you’re seeing. And that’s actually, you know, as we’ve been talking about the framing of the legislative session, this is where the you know there’s gonna be some conflict, especially within the intra party primaries. Going forward is, you know, did the legislative leadership and also the members moved to Farrah react too strongly to 2017 and then the 2018 elections, and then do things that you know, Democrats appreciated, but not Republicans. There’s a case to be made for that. Although it’s there’s also a case we made against that because Republicans look equally happy.

[0:30:45 Speaker 0] Yeah, I mean, I think that case it is actually not very strong at this moment. In terms of, you know, Republican, you know, groups that are cut white should put it this way. Conservative groups that air claiming to speak for Republican voters, saying that somehow the Legislature betrayed them. I see zero evidence of that in these numbers. I mean, not only not skimpy evidence zero, particularly in the legislative approval numbers, because Abbotts numbers went up a little among those groups, but they went up appreciably. Um ah ah, in terms of people’s assessment of the Legislature and for legislators, you know that are all you know, Remember Abbotts not gonna be on the ballot in 2020. All most of these legislators are all of the House members and no big bunch of senators. And so the legislative approval numbers are particularly good news for them as well. Um, I mean, I kind of put Abbott at the top of that heat because Abbott remains the figurehead of the party, but it’s also very good news. If you’re a Texas legislator running for re election, so next week we’ll have a still two as yet. Undetermined guest. Um, I’ll be out of the loop. Josh will be in control. Maybe he’ll just take control and you’ll never hear from me again. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll Maybe I’ll go off and not come back. Um, in one way or the

[0:32:09 Speaker 2] director one way Or now there

[0:32:10 Speaker 0] s o enjoy the week. Uh, go see a poll results as they roll out in the Texas Tribune. And Josh and somebody will be back next week. Second reading Podcast is a production of Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.