June 20th, 2024 – Trump’s Convictions and the 2024 Presidential Election in Texas

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the Second Reading Podcast from the University of Texas at Austin.

[00:00:05] Intro: 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.

[00:00:24] Intro: At what point At that point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

[00:00:34] Jim: And welcome back to the Second Reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Uh, happy to be joined for a poll release podcast by my friend and colleague, Daron Shaw. Hello. Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. Thanks for making it Daron.

[00:00:52] Jim: Always a pleasure. And Josh Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project. and also friend and colleague, [00:01:00] uh, just coming off a big birthday. That’s true. Big birthday, 25, following up on Josh being, uh, able to drink legally now. Um, a relief

[00:01:12] Josh: at

[00:01:14] Jim: this point, especially for you, uh, cuts down on the anxiety.

[00:01:18] Jim: Yes. Um, so, uh, We’re joined here today, and we’re not getting married, but we’re joined together today here temporarily

[00:01:28] Josh: for our

[00:01:29] Jim: customary discussion of the latest UT Texas Politics Project poll, which was conducted May 31st to June 9th. So as it turned out, we started data collection the afternoon after Donald Trump’s conviction was handed down by a New York jury.

[00:01:48] Jim: And, you know, we could, we’re probably, I think we’ll have some occasion to talk about that timing and, and dilemmas that presented us, et cetera. Um, But today, as always, we’ll focus [00:02:00] mostly on our election related results. We’ve got Darren here with us, um, a little less than five months from election day, and a bit closer than that, of course, to the opening of early voting.

[00:02:11] Jim: So, you know, the thing that gets the most, uh, attention are these trial ballots. Let’s start with us. Josh, why don’t you give us a rundown of what we found in the presidential race trial ballots we did.

[00:02:20] Josh: Yeah, sure. So we asked this two ways. We ask a head to head matchup between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, partially just for trend and to be able to make comparisons across time and space a little bit more easily.

[00:02:30] Josh: And then we also ask a multi candidate item that includes Jill Stein, Cornel Westin, of course, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. In the two way trial ballot, Trump led Biden by seven points, 46 to 39%. This is pretty much comparable to where he was in April polling when he led 48 40 in February, he was at 48 41. So this seven to eight point lead has, has been pretty durable throughout much of 2023 and 2024.

[00:02:55] Josh: When we look at the multi candidate, uh, race, what we find is. [00:03:00] Trump leading by a slightly larger margin, nine points, 43 to 34%. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. comes in at 8 percent in this poll, the same place he was in April. And these poll, these numbers are also, you know, relatively durable. And obviously, you know, the context of that automatically kind of brings up in some ways is The trial and whether it had an impact or not.

[00:03:19] Josh: And I think we’ll serve to open up the discussion. I’ll say is, you know, this sort of top line numbers, although not very different, hide some movement under the surface for sure.

[00:03:26] Jim: Right, right. Um, yeah, I, I want to, you know, I think another thing that’s interesting to me about this that I, you know, Josh and you and I were chatting about this last night and Darren, I, you, you’ve, I’ve seen this is that, You know, I was going back and updating.

[00:03:40] Jim: our poll tracker that we maintain at the, at the website, that is all the state polling, not just ours. And there is an interesting, you know, slowly closing. I mean, I wouldn’t bet the house on it gap between Biden and Trump. In other words, if we look early [00:04:00] this year, You know, there was a lot of polling in the early, in the, in the low double figures.

[00:04:05] Jim: Now we’re kind of in the mid to high single figures. Now I don’t, I’m not, I don’t expect the slope to continue, but you know, we’ve been saying for months we expect that as people paid more attention, we’d see some change in this race, right?

[00:04:17] Daron: Yeah. And you know, I’ll point to a, a set of questions that, uh, that Jim and Joss have championed and that you guys can find on this poll.

[00:04:25] Daron: Um, that’s trade evaluations. Trump is essentially flatline sense. I believe we asked these in December. Yeah, 2023, Josh. Yeah. And Trump is essentially the same when I say traits. Um, that’s about, uh, you know, honest and trustworthy, uh, you know, strong leader. And in this particular matchup, we’ve added a few competent age, right?

[00:04:45] Daron: Well, the age one, you know, in particular is, is relevant to this Particular matchup in a way that it might not have been relevant with Romney and Obama or something like that. But, uh, but, uh, if you look at the numbers, Trump is basically flatline. So it’s not like Trump has really lost [00:05:00] much, but Biden is.

[00:05:01] Daron: Ticked up just a little bit. And by flatline you

[00:05:03] Jim: mean he’s steady, right? Steady, exactly. Not just contacts.

[00:05:08] Daron: The percentage of people who say that a particular trait describes him or that he possesses a certain trait has basically been the same. With Biden, the positive trait evaluations have Um, and in particular I think the one that’s that’s kind of a it’s not a great number, but you know sixty nine percent in December said he’s told to be present in 2025, and the number is 64 now now so the net.

[00:05:34] Daron: Well, the net, I’m, I’m, I’m trying to, trying to help my man here. Uh, you know, the net was plus, was minus 47 on that trade. That is 69 percent said he’s too old. 22 percent he was said, no, he’s not too old in December. Right. So again, minus 47. And now that number is, you know, minus 36. You know, it’s 64, say yes, he’s too old, 28%, so about, you know, five, six points on [00:06:00] either side of that.

[00:06:01] Daron: Again, not great, but if you look at the, the tabs, what you’ll see is these are Democrats coming home. Um, and I’ve seen this in, in the UT poll, as well as in some of the national polls I’ve been involved with. Um, Biden’s ratings are not necessarily, his job handling numbers are not necessarily improving, but his issue handling and trait.

[00:06:24] Daron: Evaluations are improving, but they’re almost entirely improving as a function of Democrats coming home. And, so, But that speaks

[00:06:30] Jim: directly to one of the big narratives out there, you know, not that we follow media narratives, but, We create. That, that, that, you know, that Biden was having trouble, you know, securing his base.

[00:06:40] Jim: Yeah.

[00:06:41] Daron: And it, well I think, so there’s a, a, It

[00:06:43] Jim: doesn’t

[00:06:43] Daron: mean

[00:06:44] Jim: the

[00:06:44] Daron: problem is solved, right? There’s a question in political science, obviously, and we always in political science come down, at least recently, on the side of voters will adjust their issue and trade perceptions to conform with their vote preference, right?

[00:06:56] Daron: So once I realize I’m voting for Biden, suddenly he’s [00:07:00] not too old. Suddenly he’s much better on border security. Did I say he was weak on border security? What I meant was, he’s okay on border security.

[00:07:06] Josh: I like his steady hand on Israel. Right, yeah,

[00:07:09] Daron: exactly. So I think, you know, And I don’t want to overplay this, but you’re seeing a little bit of that.

[00:07:14] Daron: And I think it’s a mixed bag on the one hand. Yes. I think it’s, it’s Democrats consolidating. That’s good for Biden. On the other hand, let’s not. You know, jump off a cliff. This isn’t Republicans or more importantly, independents who have suddenly decided, you know what, that executive order, he’s, you know, Normandy and he’s great on these things.

[00:07:32] Daron: It’s just, you know, a little less bad, mostly different bipartisan is coming home. I mean, you know, predictable in some ways, right? Yeah. And maybe a little earlier. Then

[00:07:40] Josh: that’s what I was going to ask. I mean, if you think about you’re saying, you know, he’s, he’s, you know, consolidating his support, but, but one of the weird things to me, just, you know, in the conversations I’ve had, especially, especially with reporters, but just generally is this idea that like, well, you know, here we are, May, June, this race is fixed.

[00:07:54] Josh: Everybody knows these guys, it’s all set. And so whatever we see in the, and I, I noticed this as a [00:08:00] pollster and it’s interesting these sort of two points. One, which is that everybody’s taking every number that we put out. I mean, not like, you know, trying to say, look at us and brushing my shoulder off here, but like, I mean, but everybody, I’m thinking like pollsters, everybody’s taking every number that pollsters put out is like, this is some sort of fixed thing.

[00:08:13] Josh: Biden’s got a problem with 18 to 29 year olds. Biden’s got a problem with this mix. Now, if you’re looking across multiple polls and seeing that there’s no reason not to think that that’s right. But the other side of this is to say, as a pollster, I’m looking at his numbers in May and June of 2020. 2024 among a cell size that maybe has 100 respondents, maybe 200 respondents, right?

[00:08:32] Josh: In a pretty big margin of error. And I’m looking at the same results from 2020 and they’re not really terribly different.

[00:08:38] Daron: That’s a really, yeah, it’s a really good point, Josh. I mean, I did this because let’s, let’s be clear. I’m not saying I don’t disagree with you. There’s a second point I should follow, but I’m open to this as well, which is when you see numbers like.

[00:08:51] Daron: You know, Trump at 25 percent with African American supporters, or 44 percent with Latinos, or, you know, 45 percent with people under 30 years of age. [00:09:00] You got two potential reactions. The first is, I don’t believe these numbers. There’s, you know, right. But we’ve, as Josh points out, we’ve seen them so consistently across both national and state polls, and we’ve certainly seen them in our poll.

[00:09:11] Daron: So the second thing is, okay, just because I believe them today, Does that really mean that, you know, Trump’s going to draw 45 percent of Hispanic voters in November? And that is an absolutely open question. And I think what we’re seeing a little bit of is maybe not, you know, and as Josh pointed out, I looked at the numbers with African Americans, Trump was drawing in the high teens with African American voters at this point in 2020, and he ended up getting in the high single digits.

[00:09:42] Daron: Right. So are people going to come home? And now that’s, that’s still an issue. The, the, here’s where we might differ, but Josh and I in particular might differ with our colleagues in political science, I don’t think it’s a foreordained. I think the Biden camp is saying like, well, it’s gonna happen. And my [00:10:00] response is maybe, unless you screw up.

[00:10:02] Daron: Um,

[00:10:03] Jim: right. I mean, just, well, just. Yeah, it becomes a self fulfilling, I mean, the Biden campaign has theoretically the, the wherewithal to make it a little bit of a self fulfilling prophecy. They can say, well, they’ll come home, but they can also say, cause we’re, you know, about to unleash a massive bout of spending to try and make that, you know, induce that outcome.

[00:10:22] Jim: Right.

[00:10:23] Josh: But one other sort of, just to follow this up then, I think the other key here, just as, you know, people who do this and follow this so closely is that even if we do see a, you know, mass. Coming home or even if we see something that we would consider a mass movement in this election. What are we talking about here?

[00:10:37] Daron: Yeah

[00:10:38] Josh: Like four points.

[00:10:39] Daron: Well, yeah Yeah, let’s let’s without completely losing it Let’s do the math if there’s 13 percent of your estimate electorate is Hispanic and you’re talking about the difference between American Yeah. Well, we’re actually, we’re actually up to 12 percent Hispanic in our national samples.

[00:10:53] Daron: And we’ve dropped, and we’ve dropped African Americans down to 12 percent actually. Now in the Texas area, you’re talking [00:11:00] about Hispanic populations in the mid to high 20s. Right. But, but, all right, well, let’s take the Texas, yeah, let’s take the Texas poll, right? Where you’ve got, let’s just, for ballpark purposes, yeah, let’s see, let’s see a quarter of our estimated electorate is Hispanic.

[00:11:13] Daron: And so we’re talking about movement of, let’s say, instead of getting, uh, 30%, Trump gets 40%. So that’s 0. 1 off of 0. 25. So it’s, as Justice, that’s 2. 5 points. Now that’s. A big deal, but that’s maximum movement

[00:11:28] Josh: amongst a big group. And there’s two things here also, and just to add to that, that would be a big deal, right?

[00:11:34] Josh: And that’d be maximum movement across a large group, and it would account for about two and a half points in the race. But also, we’re talking about a group that if anybody, again, we say this all the time, if anybody’s out here telling you exactly what Hispanics are doing right now, you say, how many Hispanics are in your poll?

[00:11:49] Josh: And we’re part of this too, and that’s why I want to say it clearly, right? This is why we should expect to see A, some bouncing around, But B, I mean, this kind of reminds me of some work we’ve done in the past, and [00:12:00] it reminds me of some of the limitations of social science methods, which is like, you know, ultimately what you’re really, everything is kind of based on, is it zero or not?

[00:12:06] Josh: And a lot of times you’re saying, is it bigger than zero or not? Is what we’re talking about. When you’re talking about movements of two points, three points in that sort of neighborhood, and you have a sample of 200 people, you know, again, a subsample that you’re trying to make comparison, you know, we’re just not very good at telling you, you know, Whether there’s actually differences whether there’s actually movement we just don’t have like the power

[00:12:28] Daron: you know I think one of the things just to again look under the hood is When you see a poll like we’re saying like Jim prefaces properly by saying like yeah It’s you know a couple points maybe moving back to But it’s moving to a place where we find the storylines plausible, right?

[00:12:43] Daron: So, rather than winning by, you know, 12, 13, 14, we’re talking about Trump, you know, maybe in the 7 point, 9, you know, 7 to 9 point range. And that’s,

[00:12:51] Josh: and that’s the key, and you see that, and the key here is, you know, that doesn’t necessarily make itself totally apparent in one poll, or in one survey result across multiple polls, where you start to see that is when [00:13:00] you dig into these results, and you start to see, Where there is movements and groups and where it makes sense, right?

[00:13:05] Josh: As you said, Democrats coming home makes a lot of sense because they’re not voting for Trump.

[00:13:08] Daron: But I think it’s the larger point though, still right, which is okay. So we’ve got movement, the small movement, margin of error type movement. But it conforms with our expectations. Yeah, it seems to be in the direction we would expect.

[00:13:21] Daron: But we still need to, you know, pour a little bit of salt on it and say, okay. Yeah. But it’s possible we’re going to be telling you a contrary story in our July podcast. Yeah. Well, it’s actually 12 points and, you know, that’s plausible.

[00:13:35] Jim: So, within this theme, so let’s turn this like, you know, just 90 degrees a little bit and say, Okay, so we’re talking about these, these, these shifts of two, three points here and there.

[00:13:48] Jim: I think you can see a little bit of that, but in an interesting way, in the questions that we asked about people’s views of, Trump’s conviction [00:14:00] and Their own account of its impact on their vote,

[00:14:04] Josh: right?

[00:14:04] Jim: Right. So what do we make of that? So judge tell us what we got So

[00:14:08] Josh: first and foremost we ask people, you know, i’m holding darren

[00:14:11] Jim: back from

[00:14:11] Josh: the mic right

[00:14:12] Jim: now,

[00:14:12] Josh: okay I’m, just going to run through real quick I’m going to give you Six results total across the two items, right?

[00:14:19] Josh: Oh, look at this. So, thinking about the felony convictions of Donald Trump by a New York jury for falsifying business records, do you think Donald Trump received a fair trial? 48 percent of Texas voters said yes, he received a fair trial. 40 percent said no. 12 percent didn’t have an opinion among Democrats.

[00:14:33] Josh: 87 percent thought he received a fair trial. 75 percent of Republicans thought he did not 14 percent thought he did independence were split, but on the side of a fair trial 4434 added. I’m adding two for the independence. I decided that we also asked people just to make choices. Then we also asked people.

[00:14:52] Josh: Uh, does Donald Trump’s conviction make you more or less likely to support him in the 2024 presidential election? We agonized over this. Maybe we’ll talk about it. I [00:15:00] don’t know. And we allowed people to say it made them much more likely, somewhat more likely, has no impact on their support, somewhat less likely, much less likely.

[00:15:07] Josh: Overall, uh, 36 percent of voters said it made them more likely, 27 percent less. It’s obviously only interesting among partisans, Democrats. 51 percent said it made him less likely, about a third said it made no impact. Among Republicans, 62 percent said his conviction made them more likely to vote for him, including 50 percent who said it made them much more likely.

[00:15:25] Josh: So there’s

[00:15:26] Jim: And here’s where I’m going to pause and say you can follow along at home, since Josh so effectively ran through a lot of data quickly. If you go to texaspolitics. utexas. edu, um, You know, there’s a, there’s a link in the, in the kind of the marquee box on the page, go to the blog section or to our data archive.

[00:15:45] Jim: You can download all of these results, follow along at home. So

[00:15:50] Daron: the key, Darren Shaw, for me, the key is the one, the one number that Josh pointed out, which is more likely 36, less [00:16:00] likely 27.

[00:16:01] Intro: Yeah.

[00:16:02] Daron: So, you know, a nine point. So apparently getting convicted of a. Felony is, is really good politics. If you’re a Republican running for president of the state of Texas.

[00:16:12] Daron: Now, I think again, and I agree with the decision to ask everybody, because what we could have done clearly is ask people who don’t have a preference. Right. Because when people say, I’m like, do I really care if somebody who’s already strongly supporting Trump says now they’re more likely to support Trump.

[00:16:29] Josh: And I should say among the people who don’t have an opinion or said someone else, much, much more likely to say they were much less likely.

[00:16:36] Jim: Right. Support them.

[00:16:37] Josh: Right. Right. So what less likely number goes on? What’s

[00:16:40] Jim: the denominator?

[00:16:41] Josh: Oh, it’s time. Well, again, this goes back to the math, right? Yeah. And also, and also you have to think about who are the people watching this race right now who have no opinion between Trump and Biden?

[00:16:51] Josh: And are they likely to turn out in November? And I would say their turnout likelihood is probably lower than the other people, right? Well,

[00:16:56] Daron: that’s why this is and you see the [00:17:00] You know, just the fumbling on the part of pollsters and analysts to, to deal with when asked a question about the impact of this.

[00:17:06] Daron: And, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve had it from, you know, my bosses at Fox who say, well, what’s the bottom line? What can we say about, and they do not want a 12 minute. Soliloquy on this, but

[00:17:17] Josh: this is like the conversation we

[00:17:19] Daron: yeah, that’s right. Someone’s

[00:17:20] Josh: going to say well, what does this mean? What does this mean?

[00:17:23] Josh: What

[00:17:23] Daron: did it do? It’s just a couple of observations. One is the previous question We asked how much you have been have you been paying attention to a set? of political news events and issues. And the one striking finding is that 69 percent said they’d been paying a lot of attention to the Trump trial, the Trump convictions.

[00:17:40] Daron: Yeah. That blows everything else out of the water. Right. I mean, you know, we’re had, uh, uh, Question about how much attention you’ve been paying to the conflict between Texas and the federal government over immigration. That’s 55 percent. Um, uh, you know, we had a question about, uh, abortion access, how much it did, 44.

[00:17:56] Daron: So we’re talking about, uh, you know, 14 points, 20 [00:18:00] points, and in some cases 50 points higher. You know, the, the, the poor orphan here is the result of the runoff in the District of Representative Dade Phelan, Speaker of the Texas House. 14 percent said they’ve been paying a lot of attention to that. I think I know all of those people.

[00:18:13] Daron: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Compared to 69%. So, um, then you get to the, the actual reaction numbers. So ton of people paying attention and mostly through a partisan filter, um, which is, I, I think a reasonable storyline. I would say though, it’s probably useful to take those things in tandem, which is if I’m campaign.

[00:18:36] Daron: Would I rather the, the ambient conversation be focusing on. acuity, or would I rather the ambient conversation be about, you know, whether or not Trump is really a felon or not. Um, I think it’s a much, a pretty easy question to answer if you’re in the Biden campaign. Exactly. I think it’s just a much better.

[00:18:57] Daron: So, you know, I, I think, yes, it’s, it’s [00:19:00] appropriate to focus on shifts in the ballot and to try to figure out what’s driving that. I think it’s appropriate to look at the actual, you know, people’s responses to how it affects them. That’s why we do polls. We want the You know, the response to that question, but, but if you’re asking Jim and Josh and I hear kind of what we’re making of this, I think it’s a shift in the conversation that’s very welcome for the Democrats.

[00:19:20] Daron: You know, they want a conversation about honesty and trustworthiness. And, you know, I think this is an editorial comment they’re handling of the Hunter Biden episode in the wake of the Trump conviction struck me as being something they’ve handled probably better than almost anything else they’ve handled.

[00:19:34] Daron: Yeah. In this cycle. Right? Which people like us, we’re going, what are they going to do? How are they going to deal? Are they going to be hypocrite? And basically this is like, nah, you know. Guess he’s going to jail. Guess he’s going to jail. The justice system. No man’s above the law. The justice system is sacrosanct.

[00:19:47] Daron: It’s like, well, okay. You know what’s interesting? Dealt with

[00:19:48] Jim: that problem. Yeah. You know what’s interesting about that, Darren, though, and I don’t want to get us too far down this path, but is that 10 years ago, I think that would have been an obvious response.

[00:19:57] Intro: Yeah,

[00:19:58] Jim: yeah, right. We’d have [00:20:00] gone. Well, of course, he’s not going to pardon his son.

[00:20:02] Daron: Yeah, you know, I, you know, I think I actually thought that they would draw a distinction between pardoning and commuting this sentence, which would have been. dust off this for Clintonian, uh, adjective, I should say. Yeah. And I just think that’s

[00:20:18] Jim: not, um, and they didn’t, um, it’s funny. I was not particularly, you know, not, Oh, I knew I was not particularly surprised by this.

[00:20:24] Jim: I mean, I think they were going to have trouble doing anything here and it’s just too hard. I think it,

[00:20:30] Daron: you know, again, not to get too far paced, but, um, they like the focus being on, On Trump and, and defending the jury system and the judges and things like that. And they’re quite content with that. And they’ve said all along they want this to be a choice between them and Trump and, you know, um, so it’s, it’s probably, probably works slightly to their advantage, even if the numbers haven’t shifted.

[00:20:54] Jim: Yeah. I mean, I want to, I want to go back to the nature, just one more beat to the nature of the question and our own [00:21:00] internal debates over it. And because, yeah, I know you do Josh. And, and I, and I think that one of the, yeah, I’m the one holding this time. It’s you with the hook. Yeah. Um, you know, I, you know, I was talking to a reporter about this, that we gave an advance a couple of days ago, um, about this and just kind of landed on.

[00:21:20] Jim: You know, I think you can’t be too trapped by your expectations going into something like this from our perspective, because even though it is hard to explain, to me, it’s worthwhile to be able to just kind of say, look, you know, yeah, this doesn’t illustrate what. People, some people thought it would illustrate that it would change a bunch of people’s minds.

[00:21:41] Jim: That it was, you know, it’s essentially, you know, grounds what, you know, the reasonable expectation that it was confirmatory of people’s pre existing beliefs in most cases, and particularly in the case of partisans. And that tells us something, you know, uh, without, you know, and again, [00:22:00] You know, I think it’s the more we have from our perspective, the more we have to explain it, the theoretically any way, the better we get at it.

[00:22:08] Jim: You know, I mean, well, let me test

[00:22:10] Josh: that you were deeply

[00:22:12] Jim: ambivalent about this going not deeply, but I think you’re ambivalent about this going on going in. I was deeply

[00:22:17] Josh: ambitious. I think that’s fair. I mean, so I was deeply ambivalent because one people are very bad at describing the reasons for their own behavior and the idea of asking people to describe the The reasons for their future behavior seems even more problematic, right?

[00:22:29] Josh: Like most, most people are going to vote for Donald Trump or Republicans who would have voted for almost any qualified Republican nominee for president. Most Democrats likewise. So like, let’s, you know, the idea that this really. Fundamentally change people’s decisions. Most people’s is, I just think not true yet.

[00:22:47] Josh: It’s still worth asking about. And so the why for me that it was still worth it is because I wanted to see, uh, especially, you know, on the Republican side and among independents and some other key groups, how many people were willing to say, no, this is a problem [00:23:00] for me like this, because we’ve asked, we’ve been asking this a lot about the liabilities of each candidate.

[00:23:04] Josh: You know, we asked a question about, you know, the nature of the support of each candidate. And we saw most of Three quarters of Republican voters saying they’re voting for Donald Trump as opposed to against Joe Biden, right? And likewise, we saw a much more mixed Democratic electorate when we look to the nature of their votes.

[00:23:18] Josh: This is something we’ve been exploring for a while. So you do want to see what is the share of, you know, Republicans for whom this is a problem. And it is meaningful at 14%, like, That’s a lot of Republicans, but it doesn’t really manifest itself. And this kind of comes back to this other discussion we’ve been having all along about, you know, the way this may have impacted things, which it is about the ambient message.

[00:23:37] Josh: I mean, one of the things that’s notable is that, you know, Donald Trump in the last two polls in Texas has pulled pretty well among under 30 and among Hispanic voters, which has been a lot of the discussion and consternation among Democrats. And it flipped back in this poll now. That could have happened for a million reason.

[00:23:51] Josh: When I say flip back, I mean, flip back to kind of where the numbers were through much of 2023 and prior. So they’re familiar, but it puts Biden in a better position. [00:24:00] Is that because something fundamentally happened in that period? Is that the data kind of, you know, mixing back in the sample, just kind of moving, you know, just the nature of sampling?

[00:24:08] Josh: Maybe. It’s also the case that, you know, if all you’re hearing is convicted felon, convicted felon, convicted felon, like for those people who are, you know, ambiently aware of what’s going on. And to your point, the most sort of The biggest political story right now is still his legal problems and this trial and everything else.

[00:24:23] Josh: Maybe that’s just enough to move, to sort of explain some of that movement. So, worth checking in on. I mean, the thing that’s interesting, I think, to me also is what effect time has on this, right? I mean, we were in the field. Literally, we were already going to go in the field the Friday, you know, the conviction was Thursday, we’re going to feel Friday, we did this to the extent that the Biden campaign, you know, throughout basically from now until, you know, November is saying, Can you put a convicted felon in the White House?

[00:24:52] Josh: He’s a convicted felon, the convicted former president, the felon felon over and over and over again, this could have more of an effect than we’re picking [00:25:00] up right now. But I do think that everything we’ve talked about here says, It’s still going to be in this limited range, right?

[00:25:06] Jim: Right. And if you look at the fav unfav, I mean, that’s one of the things, you know, we were interested in, you know, I, I don’t have it right in front of me, but I, I think Biden’s favorable, you know, I think I’m, I’m not Trump’s favorables among Democrats or, you know, his numbers got about two or three points more negative among Republicans.

[00:25:26] Jim: He got about two or three.

[00:25:29] Intro: Yeah.

[00:25:30] Jim: Makes all the sense in the world to me, to the degree that that even comes out in the wash, given our MOE.

[00:25:35] Josh: Well, and the other thing, just to say, is like, none of this Reflects well on Biden in any direct way. So there’s no reason that Trump’s conviction means that Biden’s numbers, like the underlying numbers, favorability, none of that stuff should matter.

[00:25:47] Josh: And that’s, but that’s also goes to this where we started, which is, I think that if nothing else, all this has done is kind of accelerated the start of the campaign a little bit. It’s reminded some Democrats, Oh yeah, this guy. Right. And so you’re seeing them move back. [00:26:00] You’re seeing some young voters move back, some Hispanics move back, but not in like, not in some sort of direction that would go and change again, the trial ballots or really change the fundamental, like.

[00:26:08] Josh: You know, orientation of the race so far, but it just kind of puts Democrats back where they were before there was a little bit of uptick in the numbers for Trump and other Republicans kind of in the beginning of this year.

[00:26:18] Daron: Yeah, quick, quick observation as we close this out, but, um, the first is the next thing is the, you know, the sentencing.

[00:26:25] Daron: So people who were waiting on this with bated breath are now saying, well, the sentencing though is going to be, you know, that’s going to be the big deal. And, you know. Okay. Maybe. Um, I also think this is a side note that it would be, you know, legal malpractice for the Trump team to allow that to actually get to sentencing.

[00:26:42] Daron: There’s a whole series of grounds by which, but, um, but that’s sort of the small point. Um, uh, the, the, the sort of larger point is what I’ve seen in a lot of the national numbers I’ve been running is that the two campaigns have very different, um, uh, uh, strategic imperatives. The Biden team’s imperative is to convince people [00:27:00] that he has been a good steward of the country for four years.

[00:27:02] Daron: His whole claim was a return to normalcy, stop the craziness. And it’s a president that’s presided over, you know, record setting inflation, two new foreign conflicts, a crisis at the border. And I think his imperative is to go out and tell voters a story that, that assures them like, no, no, these are okay.

[00:27:22] Daron: We’ve got it under control. And by the way, this is the editorial note saying that we’ve already fixed the economy is probably not the best way to do that. But

[00:27:28] Intro: yeah,

[00:27:29] Daron: um, the Trump team’s problem is completely different. The Trump team’s problem is that people think he’s got a big mouth that he talks too much that he’s divisive and that’s something he needs to do better on.

[00:27:41] Daron: And this. is a problem for that. That is these numbers about the conviction. I think a lot of people go, Oh my gosh, here we go again. You know, he’s in, he’s in, he’s on trial for goodness sake, you know, because of this business stuff he can’t, you know, and I think people who remember the [00:28:00] fatigue, you know, so, so I think, I think both sides have very different things they need to accomplish.

[00:28:06] Daron: And I think this makes the, the Trump task. A little more difficult than it was, and by the way, the functional expression of that is that people think, and I think I agree with this, that there’s a kind of an upper limit to what Trump can get in, you know, nationally, he bumps up against 47, 48%. And he never really gets above that.

[00:28:27] Daron: He’s cracked 50 in a couple pulls, but it’s really a problem. And Josh, I think that ceiling got harder with the conviction. In a state like Texas that, I don’t know, what would you guys say that upper limit is? 51 maybe? Something like that? Uh, yeah, but,

[00:28:40] Jim: but you know, he hasn’t even hit that. I don’t think.

[00:28:43] Jim: And you know what he’s not getting? He’s been in the high

[00:28:45] Daron: 40s. Yeah. You know what he’s not getting is 55. Right. And in a state like Texas, that’s something that a popular Republican can aspire to. to do. And Trump is nowhere near there. Right. I think that’s right.

[00:28:55] Josh: I want to add just one thing, just a separate point just from this data, because I thought it was interesting.

[00:28:59] Josh: It’s been really [00:29:00] popular in the national discussion lately about the role of sort of more less engaged voters and the idea that, you know, Trump is relying on, you know, in the polling his, you know, to the extent he’s doing well, it’s based on sort of the opinions of less engaged voters. And I’ll just say in Texas, that does not repeat itself unless your only definition of engagement is education level.

[00:29:17] Josh: But that obviously sort of picks up reinforcements and party identification. So you tend to see, you know, more educated voters tend to be lean more towards Biden than Trump, but across the other items that we do, that we asked to assess engagement, interest and participation rates, Trump’s leads are actually the biggest amongst the most engaged voters in Texas.

[00:29:34] Josh: And so, and they actually tend to decline as you go down to the less engaged. So. You know, that’s an interesting story. I was wondering, does that repeat here? There’s been, it’s got a lot of news lately, you know, I think a lot of Democrats are like, wait, you know, wait, it’s okay. It’s like, well, maybe not, not here.

[00:29:48] Josh: Okay. Sorry. I want to throw that out there. I think

[00:29:49] Jim: that’s good. Um, so let’s talk at least a little bit about the U S Senate race, um, between. incumbent Ted Cruz, Democratic challenger Congressman Colin [00:30:00] Allred. Um, tell us about the numbers in that race, Josh, and let’s see what we think.

[00:30:04] Josh: Yeah, sure. So, in this most recent survey, Cruz led Allred 45 to 34 percent, so an 11 point lead.

[00:30:11] Josh: Uh, this is, you know, pretty close to where he was in the last poll. It was 46 33, it was 46 32 before that. So, we’ve been in a pretty, you know, steady state, uh, up until this point in that race. Um, you know, I can go into some of the other numbers if you want just real quick, or you, well, I mean,

[00:30:28] Jim: I, you know, I, I think on one hand, I think this race is kind of self explanatory.

[00:30:35] Jim: On the other hand, I think that there are, you know, Hopeful Democrats out there that are kind of looking at this and thinking, you know, this cannot be a double digit race, you know, right? But I, I think there’s kind of obvious explanations for that to my mind.

[00:30:48] Daron: Yeah, it’s a, we’ve got Cruz at 45%. That’s not a good number for an incumbent at this stage.

[00:30:55] Daron: Um, certainly not an incumbent with Cruz’s reputation and name recognition in the state. [00:31:00] 14 percent undecided, 6 percent other. Um, you know, he’s chasing nine points. So let’s. Um, you know, and I think that as we’ve talked about many times before, it continues to be a problem of getting on the map and, you know, just breaking through, um, you know, the noise about Trump and Biden and that conversation, but, um, you know, what we’re showing in the generic ballots, so for state legend, for us house is about a five point Republican lead with lots of people basically saying, you know, we don’t know yet.

[00:31:37] Jim: Yeah.

[00:31:37] Daron: So. With all the incumbency, with having run for president and everything, Cruz is basically a point better than that. Against a guy who remains at this point an un basically a generic Democrat. Um, I’m not sure that’s great news for Cruz at this point, which I think you were kind of hinting at a little

[00:31:55] Jim: bit.

[00:31:55] Jim: Well, I, you know, I mean, I, I, you know, I, I agree with most of that. Yeah, I agree with most of that. Nine points [00:32:00] is nine points. Let me be clear.

[00:32:01] Daron: Yeah.

[00:32:01] Jim: Yeah, but I, but I also think, um, you know, on one hand, Allred has, you know, has room to grow. I mean, Josh and I were talking about the internals and, and he’s not, You know, he’s not doing appreciably worse than Beto O’Rourke was in, in 2018, right?

[00:32:19] Josh: Yeah, I mean, that’s sort of the interesting thing we kind of keep going back to, and it’s, you know, because that was the high watermark for Democrats, you know, whether that’s because of O’Rourke’s candidacy or the environment, uh, doesn’t really matter. Reasonable

[00:32:31] Jim: people can disagree. Reasonable

[00:32:32] Josh: people can disagree, but for the point of comparison, it doesn’t make a difference, right?

[00:32:35] Josh: Because, you know, In terms of fave, unfave in June of 2018, O’Rourke was 37 fave, 24 unfave, Allred’s 34 fave, 24 unfave. So he’s literally three points off, I mean, within the margin almost of where, that’s overall, so he’s not within the, well, it is within the margin of where Cruz was, or I’m sorry, where O’Rourke was during that race.

[00:32:55] Josh: And so, you know, we’re, Jim and I were talking about this a little bit this morning about how, like, you know, you can kind of [00:33:00] hold these two things that are contradictory, but true, which is on the one hand, Allred’s doing fine. And on the other hand, O’Rourke is doing fine. Like, I mean, if we just take a step back and say it’s June, he’s got the rest of the summer, he’s got, he’s going to have,

[00:33:10] Jim: you know, enough money,

[00:33:11] Josh: close to 100 million probably to spend, you know, whatever.

[00:33:15] Josh: Maybe he’ll get some money from outside groups, but like, you know, he’s not in a bad place at the same time. It doesn’t change the fact that Democrats haven’t won a race in Texas and plus decades.

[00:33:25] Daron: And so like, it’s a good question about what your standards are. Yeah. If the standards are winning. And, and, and maybe, you know, maybe keeping the Senate blue, uh, I’m not so sure how much enthusiasm I’d have.

[00:33:36] Daron: But if, but if you’re talking about the potential for a race that’s under five points and, and that attracts, you know, A lot of attention in late September and early October. I’m, I’m, I’m looking at this going, Hmm, um, and we come back to the fact that there’s only two potential Democratic targets really at this point in the Senate, given the skewed nature of the map.

[00:33:56] Daron: There’s so many Democrats who won in 2018, [00:34:00] who are defending this time around. Democrats have a lot more exposure than Republicans this cycle in the U. S. Senate. So you’re looking at Texas and Florida, you know, Rick Scott and Ted Cruz is the obvious targets. And I think we might’ve mentioned this last time.

[00:34:11] Daron: But. Honestly, if I were a Democrat looking at these data and said, and someone asked me, you’ve only got money for one race. Would you go on the offense in Florida or Texas? I think I’d choose Texas at this point. Um, again, a long shot, but

[00:34:26] Josh: if you’re looking, but you know, but if you’re looking at the trend lines, one’s going away from you and one’s going towards you.

[00:34:30] Jim: Yeah.

[00:34:30] Josh: Potentially, I mean,

[00:34:31] Jim: I guess, you know, from a strategic point of view for the all red campaign You’re just trying to get close enough that when and you know We have to remember that you know, it won’t be just them fighting for democratic money Whether it’s florida or texas because they’re playing defense defense in so many places John testers gonna have a lot of claim on some of that money.

[00:34:50] Jim: Well, heck even even maryland now, right exactly so but I mean, you know, I you know, I mean I just You know, I think what I’ve said last time [00:35:00] is that I, you know, all red is just starting from a pretty, you know, from a pretty low benchmark position here and because they haven’t made up all the ground yet, they’ve made up a little incremental ground.

[00:35:12] Jim: You know, if you look back at his at his favorability ratings going back, you know, three, four polls since we’ve been asking, maybe even a few more than that. You know, he’s,

[00:35:21] Josh: he’s inching up. He hasn’t done much with Dem, he hasn’t done it. I mean, look, and this, I don’t want to say like, and there’s no normative statement here.

[00:35:27] Josh: It’s just an observation of the facts. He hasn’t seen much movement with Democrats since claiming the nomination. He got up to a certain percentage. He sort of sat there at about 54 fav, I think among Democrats, uh, along those lines. As I recall something like that. He’s kind of sat there for a few balls now I mean, I think that’s what

[00:35:45] Jim: some still like something like 30 percent with no opinion of him,

[00:35:47] Josh: right?

[00:35:48] Josh: And that’s the thing and I think you know, you kind of get this mixed sort of thing I think you’ve got certain sort of Democrats who either don’t believe it or sort of feel like he should have been spending tens of Millions of dollars, you know during the last couple months and then you talk to some [00:36:00] professional Democrats really say We’re just gonna get he’s in trouble You know, and kind of like, it doesn’t matter, but the other side of this too is, you know, campaigns have limited resources, right?

[00:36:08] Josh: Like, this is not the time to be doing this. At the

[00:36:10] Jim: Darren’s point, you know, you’re, you know, you’re in trouble, but you know, how much trouble and, you know, when, you know, when does it make sense to start addressing the obvious issue? And I, you know, I mean, I think there’s a, there’s a reasonable argument to be made that.

[00:36:30] Jim: You know, you plug along, you know, you plug away and then after your party’s convention, you know, you start spending more money.

[00:36:36] Daron: Yeah. I, I think there’s a couple of interesting things that are, you know, versus at Cruz, we had noted, I think in the February and the April polls that Cruz’s favorability, or I should say his, his job approval.

[00:36:47] Daron: Yeah. His job approval had ticked up, and it ticked up kind of appreciably. He’d gone from kind of net negative ratings last year, and he ticked up to barely positive, two or three points, approve over disapprove, his job handling in the fall polls that we [00:37:00] conducted. But in the spring polls, and here I’m referring to the February and then the April poll, um, he was up, uh, he was plus nine and plus eleven.

[00:37:06] Daron: Yeah. Which is as high as we’ve had crews on his job ratings. Mm hmm. Well, that’s down to plus three. And it’s mostly positive. You know, Democrats, I think, and independents. But, um, that’s slightly encouraging. I do think if, if you talk to Republicans and you talk to the Cruz people in particular, I think they’re very concerned just about, um, Republican infrastructure.

[00:37:27] Daron: In the state of Texas, um, that they just don’t think that the blocking and tackling that needs to happen is being done. They’re concerned about not capitalizing on potential in the RGV, um, you know, with Hispanic voters. Um, and it’s odd, you know, on the one hand, they almost want a competitive race. to do the things they think they need to do.

[00:37:47] Daron: Because, let’s just briefly game plan this out. Let’s say Trump wins. And the Republicans take the House and the Senate. I think there’s an argument to be made that Republicans will be, in Texas, will be extremely [00:38:00] vulnerable in 2026. Um, I mean, you look race by race at that State House. And But the fact that a normal kind of average, you know, ebb in the in parties vote could make them very vulnerable.

[00:38:15] Daron: I know, and I know smart Republicans are thinking

[00:38:17] Jim: about it. A little more pressure than they’re used to, at the very least. Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s interesting. I mean, I, yeah, I think, I think that makes sense.

[00:38:25] Josh: And to some of your, you know, the points you guys make, and just to throw the numbers out there, you know, his favorability numbers now compared to June of 2018 are essentially unchanged.

[00:38:32] Josh: You know, he was basically, I think, plus one or zero net favorability in 2018 and he’s unfav in this poll. So he hasn’t really done anything. So, I mean, he’s been trying mightily to sort of be a by pretty presidential. I think we talked about

[00:38:46] Jim: this last time. I had a very concerted effort by the Cruz campaign and I think, you know, the Cruz senate office to reposition him a little bit.

[00:38:56] Jim: A couple of, you know, high profile efforts to work on bipartisan [00:39:00] legislation and to really, and they really promoted that.

[00:39:02] Josh: Yeah. Or traffic controllers. Yeah. There we go, I remember it. Well, he was on,

[00:39:06] Daron: you know, I know it’s a small thing, but, uh, Fox News runs this thing with Brett Baier on special report called Common Ground, in which they have a Republican and Democrat talk about the things they’re doing, and Cruz has been on that, and I believe more than once.

[00:39:17] Daron: Yeah, right.

[00:39:18] Jim: I think that’s a,

[00:39:18] Daron: that’s

[00:39:19] Jim: a, that’s a. Beautiful example, I think, and you know, and not the only one. I mean, you know, his appearance at the Tribune, at the Texas Tribune Festival last fall, which I saw part of, um, it was being interviewed by Patrick Svitek, I think, you know, was a, you know, a much, I don’t want to say kinder, gentler, that’s too unkind or, you know, a little too extreme, a much more

[00:39:42] Daron: modulated Ted Cruz.

[00:39:44] Daron: Yeah. You wonder if he’s moving almost into, you know, I think he’s more ambitious than this, but almost into Ted Kennedy. Status, right? Where maybe my future You heard it here first? Yeah. I was gonna say Ted Cruz. Like Ted Kennedy from Moving The Lion. He wants to be the new lion of the Senate. [00:40:00] spit. I don’t believe that, but I think

[00:40:01] Josh: it’s a highlight, but it’s worth kind of spit.

[00:40:03] Josh: Take take two.

[00:40:05] Jim: You know, and I, you know, I, we, before we close out, I want to, um. I want to do one, you know, it’s, you know, your report about concerns about Republican blocking, blocking and tackling, I think is very interesting, Darren, because I, you know, as, as we were thinking about this and I was thinking, you know, doing the various write ups and taking notes and thinking it through.

[00:40:27] Jim: I was thinking a bit about the transition from the very tumultuous year we’ve seen at state level, state and below state level Republican politics in Texas in the last year and thinking about the transition to a more broadly speaking kind of reunified approach in the general election. And I am wondering, you know, it feels to me like most of the.

[00:40:54] Jim: internal kind of communication, messaging exchanges that we’re seeing, [00:41:00] you know, amongst Republican stakeholders, activists, officials in Texas has been still as much more about colliding with each other internally than it is about the upcoming general election.

[00:41:12] Daron: Right. Even, even the, you know, the dispute over, uh, chair of the, uh, RPT.

[00:41:19] Daron: Um, which the, uh, kind of contentious Republican back and forth over who is going to be the chair of the Republican party in the state of Texas. Um, You know, involved this disparate set of factors. I mean, I, I think the Abbott people largely set it out, but the Paxton people and the Patrick people were involved and everybody wanted to get Trump’s endorsement, but the Trump people had also, you know, and then there’s, there are Trump donors who were involved.

[00:41:47] Daron: Um, and some people, when I say involved, I mean, some people were, some people said they wouldn’t be involved, which is actually a statement of involvement sometimes. I don’t know that. What they actually had was a serious conversation [00:42:00] about who would best lead the party forward in the election. Instead, it was about various factions competing.

[00:42:07] Jim: Yeah, and

[00:42:08] Daron: I think in terms of a, also

[00:42:10] Jim: a

[00:42:10] Josh: Well, that won. I mean, that argument won. A kind of, yeah, but

[00:42:14] Jim: also I think the, just in a very in a practical kind of way. A lot of energy resources effort went into the extended runoff season in the legislature. And that was, you know, I mean it was both the intensity of those fights in the scope of them, cause there were so many races.

[00:42:34] Jim: And then I think, you know, the primaries were over and, you know, a certain amount of sniping went on, but I also think a lot of people probably just took a breather. You know, I mean, I think generally you see

[00:42:45] Daron: evidence of that. Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s going to be interesting. I mean, I know people on, on both sides, the Republican and Democratic sides who will say the same story.

[00:42:53] Daron: The voter file is a mess. We haven’t got people in key positions. Right. Um, we’re starting late. I mean, [00:43:00] again, this is a bipartisan Yeah. Set of grievances.

[00:43:02] Jim: A moment of bipartisanship in Texas. Yeah. Right. The party apparatus on both sides are in, are, are disrupted and in, and in shatter and in tatters. And I think they’re both right by the way,

[00:43:13] Jim: So, uh, you know, we’re gonna run out time. Let’s go and do a little bit of a, of a. Dealers choice as we often do so let’s go back and you know, each of you, you know, tell me something that you know Interested you in this poll that kind of spins out of this discussion Darren, let’s start with you because I think you want to talk about something that kind of related to what we’ve been talking about Anyway, no Joshua.

[00:43:32] Josh: Well, yeah, let me just I’m gonna follow up right on what you guys are talking about with mine Just jump right in I was gonna say, I mean, Darren Do what you want. Thanks, boss. So, I mean, Darren already mentioned this result, but I think it’s one of those things, especially for this audience, just to highlight here, which is, you know, we asked a battery of questions like we usually do about a bunch of topics that are either in the news or fighting for attention or being pushed forward by key figures to see how much people are hurrying [00:44:00] about them as a way to kind of figure out if they’re paying attention, if it’s, you know Salient is the word we use, right?

[00:44:04] Josh: And I think we asked about at least maybe 10 different issues. And the very, very bottom of the list in terms of what people had heard a lot about was the results of the runoff election in the district of Representative Dade Phelan, Speaker of the Texas House. Only 14 percent of voters said they had heard a lot about.

[00:44:18] Josh: This only 13 percent of Republicans, 7 percent of independents, 15 percent of Democrats. So this was just just to put this very bottom of the list, bottom of the list across every single group that we looked at, and it’s just a reminder real quick that, you know, as much as these sort of internal politics are important and sort of royal, you know, us and our discussion, the people who are, you know, participants in the process, most voters.

[00:44:43] Josh: No idea this is going on, just not even on the radar.

[00:44:47] Jim: And then a state where the, you know, there’s not a ton of party competition. Exactly. So

[00:44:50] Josh: whatever. Anyway.

[00:44:52] Jim: Yeah, no, I think that’s, I think that’s a good point. It was good for you to like, just follow up. I just wanted to, I just want to

[00:44:56] Josh: highlight that one.

[00:44:58] Daron: Um, I was [00:45:00] tempted, uh, to, to talk about, uh, some of the items we have on, uh, um, who do you think faces the most discrimination because there’s a, as, as people might imagine, given the. current political conversation with respect to Israel and Hamas that, uh, we asked about, uh, the extent of its Jews and others too.

[00:45:16] Daron: But, but the number for Jewish people in the United States was, was pretty high, higher than, uh, I recall it being lately. So that, that I was tempted to go there. But instead, I, I, I wanna point people’s attention to a small battery questions that we asked about, uh, confidence in the election result and whether they personally will trust the election.

[00:45:33] Daron: And then, uh, another item that, um, and I’ll highlight it because I think it’s fascinating and because I, I want. to let the viewer into our world a little bit, which is, you know, our, our ambivalence about asking questions about political violence. Um, it’s, it’s really a tough item. So the, we asked, uh, are you confident Americans will trust the result of the election?

[00:45:53] Daron: And the numbers in 2024, actually pretty comparable to 2020. Um, you could argue maybe even a little bit better. [00:46:00] Um, but 43 percent currently say they are either not very confident, not at all confident. Then Americans will trust the result of the election. So not quite half that number is not unprecedented.

[00:46:11] Daron: We had similar numbers in 2020, but, but it’s, it’s a disturbing number. It’s a tough number when asked about you. So not do you think other people will you trust the result? People basically said, well. Not so sure about a third said, you know, kind of don’t know unsure, which I always take as sort of, it depends, but, but the number saying they would trust the result is 55 percent in 2020, it was 41.

[00:46:34] Daron: So it’s a 14 point uptick in the percentage that they trust the result. Now I probably should have been advanced a little bit. This looked at the crosstowns. it’s Democrats. It’s all Democrats. Say like, I really trust the election given what happened in 2020. So Democrats in 2020,

[00:46:47] Josh: 45 percent said they would trust the result.

[00:46:49] Josh: They’re personally would trust the results regardless of what happened. 44 percent were unsure. Today it’s 84 percent of Democrats say they will trust the results regardless. Among Republicans in October, 2020, 39 percent said they would [00:47:00] trust the results regardless. June, 2024, it’s down to 33%.

[00:47:04] Daron: Yeah, which is unsurprising, but, you know, and I do think that in the conversation, especially with people’s recollections of January 6th and, and the problems there, I, you know, I don’t want to be a pessimist, but I would say, yes, January 6th has this, you know, infamous, you know, infamous, you know, kind of reputation American history, but, Let’s not kid ourselves.

[00:47:27] Daron: Um, if Donald Trump wins a razor thin election and there are, you know, say court cases about the polls not being left open long enough in Milwaukee or in Philadelphia, do we really think that there will be no protests, uh, you know, for the certification of that election on the left? I mean, I. You know, I think I

[00:47:45] Josh: think I highlighted in our write up, you know, another way to look at the result is what percent of people think it’s not at all likely.

[00:47:52] Josh: And it’s minimal. I mean, across all groups, it’s under 10%. And that’s the thing. I mean, to some extent, I mean, that’s a, you know, that’s kind of what you pick up. And you can kind of get stuck into the [00:48:00] specific categories and how like, but the main point here is if you go around nine and 10 registered voters right now, you know, you think.

[00:48:06] Josh: So no violence after the election in America, right? It’s like, well, I don’t know. Yeah, you

[00:48:11] Daron: know, I was just going to say, and I, I’d point to the particular results where we’re getting, um, right now, 58 percent of people saying is either somewhat or very likely that there’ll be violence. So almost six in 10 say they expect it’s, it’s quite possible is what they’re saying.

[00:48:27] Daron: And I would also, not just the result I think is, is interesting and disturbing, but But the question about our responsibility in asking a question like that, um, do we want to normalize

[00:48:39] Intro: that?

[00:48:40] Daron: If we find that result, it’s a fascinating result, it’s an important result, but what responsibility do we have as pollsters to tell people or perhaps not tell people that?

[00:48:50] Daron: And we’re struggling with that. So we just wanted to.

[00:48:54] Jim: Yeah, I wanted you to put some meat on like where you, where you saw the, how you felt that ethical dilemma.

[00:48:59] Daron: Yeah, I [00:49:00] think, um, I think we. The question is responsible. I think the results speak for themselves. I think I would rather know that and help shape the response.

[00:49:11] Daron: Yeah. Then, then pretend it doesn’t exist and be caught unawares or, you know, surprised. Yeah. When, when that, when that Yeah.

[00:49:23] Josh: And to put some meat on that further, I think the question that we’re not asking just straight up is to say, you know, do you approve of political violence or do you think political violence is justified sometimes or things like that or under

[00:49:32] Daron: what circumstances,

[00:49:34] Josh: whatever, anything that sort of, again, he said, normalizes the use of political violence.

[00:49:38] Josh: I think, you know, the environment is such that, you know, and I’ll say, you know, not even pointing fingers, any one party, it doesn’t really matter. There are politicians out there who would take a result of, you know, Like that and use it as fodder for mobilization for very bad things and so I think there is an ethical Yeah, I

[00:49:59] Jim: mean, I think, you know, [00:50:00] like a lot of things that we do it, you know, it’s the degree, it’s keeping in mind for ourselves, the degree to which it’s incumbent on us to explain it and to explain it well and carefully,

[00:50:12] Intro: you know,

[00:50:12] Jim: um, You know, I, I’m going to go small in a way, or small and local in terms of what I, I really noticed and, and, you know, I was interested in the grid questions that we asked and, you know, it’s summer and, and also, I mean, there’s been, you know, this is one of those things.

[00:50:30] Jim: I mean, if we had put on, you know, our, our salience battery, uh, How closely have you been following, you know, hearings in the Texas legislature on the implementation of grid reliability improvements? You know, we, we’d have found more people paying attention to the speaker’s race, even though that was all, but nobody, but that said, there’s been a lot in the, in the air in the last few months.

[00:50:55] Jim: And, and I know, you know, based on our You know, we [00:51:00] know based on our previous, you know, uh, polling in this area, you know, that, you know, and I was thinking about this when you mentioned January 6th, I mean, the, the aftermath of winter storm Yuri left a pretty deep impression, a deep and broad impression on people, I think, in that, you know, the experience was so widespread that, you know, so we asked people, you know, some of it, you know, was, you know, we asked people three items.

[00:51:27] Jim: So, you know, I’d like you to think each of the following is this summer, you know, you’ll be asked to conserve power, you’ll experience rolling or temporary blackouts. Interesting question for Josh Blank this morning. I lost

[00:51:37] Josh: power last night. He lost his power

[00:51:39] Jim: last night during the storm. Oh, that’s fine. Uh, or the storm ish.

[00:51:43] Jim: I don’t know, I

[00:51:44] Josh: don’t know. Or do you think there’ll be

[00:51:45] Jim: a widespread failure of the electric grid? Now, You know, it’s a tribute to, to ERCOT messaging that, you know, 84 percent said it was very likely or somewhat likely that they’d be asked to conserve power. Now, ERCOT, it has already [00:52:00] been very clear, we’re going to be doing this again.

[00:52:01] Jim: It’s, it’s part of what we do. Uh, you know, went down about, what, 63 percent expect, thought it was very likely or somewhat likely that they’d expect rolling or temporary blackouts. But to the point, about half, 51%, said it was either very likely or somewhat likely that there would be a widespread failure of the electric grid this summer.

[00:52:23] Jim: Now, you know, I think if you’re trying to say, Hey, we’re past this, let’s not be alarmist. Only 17 percent said it would, was very likely 34 percent somewhat likely. And that’s just edging. And maybe in some ways, but I think you have to, you know, I’m just struck by, for all the stuff we talk about politically, something that has been really durable.

[00:52:46] Jim: And that I think the Behavior in the legislature and the behavior of the state leadership illustrates that they know this that you know people’s trust in In the electorate grid was really eroded [00:53:00] by that and all the action on the part of the legislature much of it well intentioned and really, I mean, making a real effort to try to make the grid more reliable within the parameters of the legislature and their ability to do so in the interest group environment, um, is still really kind of out

[00:53:17] Josh: there.

[00:53:18] Josh: Trust is hard to rebuild. You know, I mean, I just, you know, we talked about this briefly, and I think this sort of relates to some other work that Darren and I did with the Texas Lyceum poll we released a little while back, and there is something out there that I’m just sort of noticing, which is, you know, we’ve talked a lot about the negative economic attitudes, you know, the fact that people’s views of the Texas economy, you know, are more negative than we’ve seen historically that we haven’t really seen the rebound, you know, since the COVID 19.

[00:53:42] Josh: pandemic really, you know, kind of to where we were pre pandemic in terms of for just, you know, Texas bullishness. But then you see these other things too, which is like, well, how about the electric grid? And you see, you know, lot of real lack of confidence or, you know, in the Lyceum poll, we asked about water reliability a little bit.

[00:53:56] Josh: And we asked people if they were concerned about the reliability or the safety of their water supply. And there we [00:54:00] saw about two thirds of it. Adults saying that they were in a third who said they already had, you know, sort of a boil water notice at some point in the last year, and I think these things, you know, you do wonder about the future of how you think about 20.

[00:54:10] Josh: You said, you know, 20. If Donald Trump wins, 2026 is gonna be tough. What’s the Democrats messaging going to be besides Donald Trump? It’s like it’s going to be this stuff, and they’ve been mobilizing this argument election after election, this idea of stewardship and whether they’re taking care of the state.

[00:54:23] Josh: And you do, you see this floating around back, and this is just something that like you raised this, but like, I think it’s interesting. You’re like, I’m watching this, you know, this sort of just basic functioning, how the state is being run for like, you know, education, roads, electricity, you know, the infrastructure.

[00:54:37] Jim: Yeah. I mean, I, you know, it kind of was like something else I wanted to talk about that we’re not going to have time, but that, you know, we’ve talked in the last couple of times that we’ve had Darren with us and we’ve come back to it, this notion of issue publics and, you know, The fight for agenda management in a campaign, but this is just something that’s just sort of out there.

[00:54:54] Jim: And I think there was, you know, the O’Rourke campaign signaled in the gubernatorial race in 2022 that [00:55:00] they were going to try this because of the relative recency of the grid failure. And it was the dog that didn’t bark. So I don’t want to overestimate the political force of this in this moment, but it just does feel like it’s something that’s trembling out there.

[00:55:15] Jim: And it’s connected to a lot of these other. You know, uh, infrastructure, you know, it’s a little bit, it’s both concrete in terms of this effect, but it’s also gotten a little bit amorphous, this sense of, you know, tomorrow never knows, as we said before we started, that there’s a, there’s a sense of something kind of hanging out out there that’s not quite found us

[00:55:36] Daron: that

[00:55:36] Jim: people are waiting

[00:55:36] Daron: for.

[00:55:37] Daron: Yeah. I mean, you know, there’s a terrific article in the economist about probably five years ago at this point, California versus Texas. And it was actually a really interesting sort of balanced account of which state was better positioned to deal with some of these fundamental issues. And they’re, they’re both sort of quasi one party states and, and the, the economist eventually comes down by saying, they’re saying the Texas [00:56:00] is probably slightly better, you know, positioned because it’s not quite as.

[00:56:06] Daron: You know, uh, there’s not quite as much of a one party monopoly here as there is in California. And secondly, that California has overbuilt its government and has this huge bureaucracy. Texas has completely underbuilt its government and that’s probably, now it’s not going to deal with issues, but that at least puts you in a position to, and I thought that was sort of an interesting and I think good self critical.

[00:56:28] Daron: Yeah, as I remember,

[00:56:29] Jim: I kind of remember that piece.

[00:56:30] Daron: And

[00:56:30] Jim: as I remember,

[00:56:30] Daron: it was kind of like, and that’s been a benefit

[00:56:32] Jim: so far, but it,

[00:56:33] Daron: Exactly. I do think, you know, look, count me amongst the people who says, yeah, somewhat likely grid failure, water problem. I’m worried about water problems. And I do think that it’s, I don’t know that the Democrats have done a particularly effective job at sort of laying the groundwork for these sorts of arguments, but look, there is a basic competence issue.

[00:56:52] Daron: And when you have had the keys to the car, like the Republicans have had since 1994. Anything that happens along those lines, [00:57:00] you own it lock, stock and barrel. Um, and I do think that’s, you know, you look at the issue environment and I think that’s been the problem for the Democrats for years here, which is we talk about a potentially good year for Democrats, but it’s, it’s kind of unclear where they have a big advantage over the Republicans in the state of Texas.

[00:57:16] Daron: You look at immigration, you look at, you know, energy, you look at the economy. It really does kind of, you know, I don’t want to skew right in terms of the basic opinion structure now, the sorts of things that Democrats need are things like healthcare, children’s healthcare, stuff like that. But as you said, politics is dynamic and if stuff changes and it could, and we as pollsters should really be attentive to the possibility, something that looks like a low incidence probability.

[00:57:42] Daron: That’s exactly the kind of stuff that we need to be. Low incidence, high impact. Bingo.

[00:57:47] Josh: Yeah. I mean, and you know, just to round that out, I mean, just one last thing, just want to say something, but it’s like, I don’t want to say, I’m just thinking about it. I mean, you know, the, about the California, Texas thing is interesting because in one way, you know, the argument that like, well, you guys did too [00:58:00] much.

[00:58:00] Josh: I mean, that’s hard, right? I mean, it’s a little bit of a hard argument. Like you guys have built this up, you know, you’re doing too much to try to address these issues that we may or may not agree are issues, but some of us think they’re issues, whereas the idea that you didn’t do enough or you haven’t done anything to deal with these multiple issues, the problem there is an infrastructure, all those are like.

[00:58:15] Josh: Five, 10, 20 year builds, right? There’s nothing that, you know, you can’t cut a check and say, okay, here’s the, here’s the check. Everybody gets a check in the mail, big signature on it. You know who did it, right? It’s like, no, I’m going to make your traffic worse for 10 years so I can improve your traffic problem.

[00:58:31] Josh: Right. I’m going to shut your water off multiple days, you know, over the course of, you know, every day. quarter so we can replace all those pipes, right? So really it’s, it’s experienced in a negative way. And you know, what do you get to say? Like, just wait, it’ll be great. And so I think I’d rather, you know, to that whole point, like I’d rather be in the position of saying, Hey, they’re not doing enough.

[00:58:50] Josh: And I’d want to, like, we want to come in and I think that’s what Democrats are good at, right? We’ll spend more, you know, on this infrastructure. So,

[00:58:57] Jim: you know, and I would go back again to the 2022 [00:59:00] example, you know, it’s, you know, for Democrats to exploit that in Texas at this point.

[00:59:08] Josh: You

[00:59:09] Jim: know, things have to align kind of just right given the configuration, just right in a wrong way.

[00:59:14] Jim: Right. In other words, you have to have some kind of a fundamental event that shifts things or series of events that shifts public attention. But I think what we found in 2022 is that You know, Beto O’Rourke could talk about stewardship all he wants from a power failure that was a year and a half before the election.

[00:59:34] Jim: And it just wasn’t enough to overcome the organizational dis organizational resource disadvantages and the issue agenda advantages that Republicans still had with Biden in the White House and

[00:59:47] Daron: immigration and border security. Yeah. I think, you know, broadly speaking, it boils down to, you know, Incompetence and corruption.

[00:59:53] Daron: It’s a good use of boils. Yeah. By the way. It does boil, doesn’t it? Um, but [01:00:00] it, it, you need issues, you need events to, from a political point of view, to play in this notion that, you know, the party in charge is corrupt or the party in charge is incompetent. And I, I was a little surprised that, because both of those were out there a little bit in the aftermath of ERCOT, but it didn’t really stick.

[01:00:18] Daron: And I think that’s because there’s a general sense that, well, but the economy’s come up along. Republicans haven’t really. mismanage the state. But as I think Josh suggests, maybe you too, Jim, that that’s, that’s always kind of lurking. There’s that cynicism that Americans and Texans in particular have about their government.

[01:00:34] Daron: Um, and the Republicans have been pretty fortunate, especially in this last 10 to 15 year run. Uh, but that’s not manna from heaven, right? I mean, the, a good economy and the lack of kind of acts of God, um, that can change on a dime. Yeah.

[01:00:51] Jim: And so as long as we’re talking about comparisons and reading tips to close, I also want to point people to something.

[01:00:55] Jim: I don’t know if you’ve, I’ve sent this or flagged this for Josh yesterday. [01:01:00] Great piece in the Atlantic right now by George Packer about Arizona as kind of a crucible for a lot of the issues we’re talking about. The politics, the strain on infrastructure, you know, the consequences of long period, you know, long period of growth.

[01:01:16] Jim: Uh, really, really, really great piece by George Packer that, and if you’re from Texas, it’s hard not to, you know, make comparisons in a way in terms of the politics there. So, with that, Josh, Darren, thank you both for being here. Um, thanks for the, the very thoughtful discussion, I thought. This was pretty good today, I thought, um, and, uh, for what it’s worth.

[01:01:36] Jim: Don’t be so surprised. I’m not. And, and also for, you know, all your work, uh, uh, on the poll for such a long time. Uh, thanks again to our excellent, excellent production team at the Dev Studio and the College of Liberal Arts here at UT Austin. We’re waving through the glass booth here. Um, thank you for listening.

[01:01:54] Jim: Uh, make sure that you also go to the website. Lots more that we haven’t talked [01:02:00] about that. We’ll probably try to get back to we’ll be off next week Because i’ll be out of town, but we’ll probably be back the next the week after I think if we can convene Um, you can find all the documents uh In toto thousands of graphics that are free for downloading.

[01:02:16] Jim: Uh at texaspolitics.utexas.edu So again, thanks for listening and we’ll be back in a couple weeks with another second reading podcast

[01:02:31] Jim: the second reading podcast Is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.