June 22nd, 2023 – Mixed Reviews for the Texas Legislature in a New University of Texas/Texas Politics Project Poll

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

[00:00:36] Jim Henson: And welcome back to the second reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. And it’s that time again of already? Yeah. Um, today’s subject is the latest University of Texas, Texas Politics Project Poll. And this time we released this in two steps.

[00:00:57] Jim Henson: So we released, uh, the data from a few items that we did related to the situation of Suspended Attorney General Ken Paxton. Um, It just seemed like we had a historic occasion happening in the Texas Senate as the Senate was considering rules. Now, you know, it’s a great exercise in planning that we released the, the data early on Tuesday when the Senate was slated to review and, and theoretically passed the rules.

[00:01:27] Jim Henson: Well. If you’re listening to this, you probably know that it took the Senate a little bit longer than planned to do that. So that actually didn’t happen till Wednesday night. We’re recording here Thursday morning. Nonetheless, we recorded, we, we released that batch of results, uh, on. Tuesday, early in the day, um, and then released everything else this morning, uh, again on, on Thursday as we record this.

[00:01:52] Jim Henson: So, to do this, uh, as is generally the case, happy to be joined by my colleagues on the UT Texas Politics Project polling team. We don’t have jerseys or anything. Oh, maybe we

[00:02:04] Jim Henson: should. It’s hard to get those approved. Here it

[00:02:06] Jim Henson: is. You’ve gotta go through a lot of paperwork steps. Unless we steps just bootleg the deal.

[00:02:10] Jim Henson: Yeah, we

[00:02:11] Daron Shaw: can do that

[00:02:11] Jim Henson: separately. I can’t. A purchase order. So, uh, joined by Darren Shop, professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. Uh, know you’ve been out of town and been busy, Darren and, and teaching. Yes, that’s right. You’re Committ active. So thanks

[00:02:24] Daron Shaw: for being here. My, my pleasure. Just got back from a conference in DC on, uh, response rates in polling, which, uh, we could also have a very fascinating five hour podcast On.

[00:02:33] Daron Shaw: My

[00:02:33] Jim Henson: pulse is racing, as I’m sure many of our listeners. Um, And Joshua blank, research director for the Texas Politics

[00:02:40] Josh Blank: Project. My pulse is actually racing Well, I would have that. There you go.

[00:02:45] Jim Henson: Uh, that, that kind of, that, that, that captures it. Yeah. Um, who has been in town, unfortunately, missed the MLS game last night for weather purposes.

[00:02:53] Josh Blank: Right? It’s too late. This? Yeah. The Austin FC game was, you know, this heat dome, all this water, the lightning, and then it was like, oh, kickoff is gonna be at like 10, 15. And I said, Nope. Yeah, that’s not, that’s not for me. That’s right in, that’s

[00:03:05] Jim Henson: right in the range of bedtime. Yes.

[00:03:06] Josh Blank: That’s very, it’s about a minute from bedtime.

[00:03:09] Jim Henson: Okay. That’s what I thought. So now that’s why I texted Josh. So I said going kind of incredulously. I, I saw on Twitter how late it was going, like, Are you at the game? Are you at the match? And I, I was just proud of myself for saying Match Match. That’s pretty good. Yeah,

[00:03:21] Daron Shaw: that’s right. Is is it still nil nil?

[00:03:22] Daron Shaw: That’s, that’s, that’s excellent for me.

[00:03:24] Jim Henson: Is what? That’s, you know,

[00:03:25] Daron Shaw: beyond good. You know, cuz every game is a novella on the pitch. There

[00:03:29] Josh Blank: you go. This is good. We, so we’re starting the soccer podcast now. That’s right. Yes. There you go. I’ve been waiting for this.

[00:03:33] Daron Shaw: Hi. I see Novel. The Pitch is las novel. On the Pitch is a good name for the podcast actually, but yeah,

[00:03:39] Jim Henson: it’s to too.

[00:03:41] Jim Henson: Yeah, I don’t know. I’m trying to think of a good name for soccer all. I’m gonna stop now. So let’s start with with some of the results from the poll. Uh, that touch on what’s currently in the news that I’ve already kind of flagged. You know, the Texas Senate yesterday released after extensive deliberation behind the scenes released its its rules and the schedule for the trial of Ken Paxton.

[00:04:03] Jim Henson: This version of the poll entered the field just after Paxton’s impeachment by the Texas House. Um, and we measure job approval, attention to the ags legal problems, and to the impeachment, and then views of the impeachment itself. Josh, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what we found?

[00:04:21] Josh Blank: Sure. Well, I mean, I think the, the, the biggest sort of top line result that people are certainly to be most interested in was, you know, we asked people whether they thought that the Texas House of Representatives was justified in its impeachment of, of Ken Paxton.

[00:04:34] Josh Blank: 50% of voters said that they thought the house was justified. 17% said it was not in a third. So 33% held no opinion over this, which is not surprising. I mean, this, you know, had just happened. And also, you know, just to be very clear, we don’t expect everybody to be paying a ton of attention to this, even though it is a big piece of news.

[00:04:52] Josh Blank: Uh, overall, you know, Democrats were obviously lopsided in their support of, of impeachment nearly three quarters. Thought the house was justified. But really, I think, you know, maybe, maybe most interesting in this set of results was how divided Republicans were, uh, over this, so about equal shares. 31% said that, you know, the house was justified in impeaching packs and 30% said that it was not.

[00:05:14] Josh Blank: And I think really importantly, we come back to this. 39% of the plurality had. No opinion or we’re unwilling to offer an up in an opinion yet. Um, you know, but looking a little more broadly, a couple of other just points from this set. You know, we’ve been asking for a long time about whether people have been paying attention to Ken Paxton’s legal problems, and for the most part, the people have been paying the most attention have been Democrats.

[00:05:33] Josh Blank: That’s shifted a little bit. Now there are, you know, more republicans are paying more attention and about three quarters of voters say they’ve heard either a lot or something about, you know, his legal problems generally and impeachment. In particular, I think most notably because we did poll just before the impeachment, and now just after we get a nice little, little snapshot here, and Paxton’s job approval ratings did decline, uh, since polling that we conducted in April before the impeachment.

[00:05:56] Josh Blank: So in April, Paxton had 39% of, uh, Voters, uh, approving of his job performance and disapproval was 35, so net plus four, now 30% approved, 41% disapproved, so net becomes minus 11. And yeah. Well, and Mo and most importantly, his job. And look, most importantly, you’re actually to pull out of this. His job approval among Democrats did not change because Democrats already did not have positive views of Ken Paxton.

[00:06:21] Josh Blank: Rasha approval did change was among Republicans. Uh, so between April and June it went from 65% approving among Republicans and 13% diff disapproving to 51% approving. So a 14 point drop and 19% disapproving. So he went from a net of plus 52 among Republicans to plus 32. And that’s where I think, you know, if you’re Ken Paxton and his people, you know, the alarm bells might be sounding a little bit, although there’s some, there is some support in there only because one of the arguments I think we’ve made a lot is about Ken Paxton and his sustainability and the fact this has been going on, so for long, so long is you say, well, yeah, but he’s really popular among Republicans.

[00:06:55] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:06:56] Jim Henson: Darren, what did you make of this?

[00:06:57] Daron Shaw: Well, I mean, Josh laid out all the numbers and yeah, I was looking at the, uh, the approved disapproved numbers and, you know, I, I think. The nature of the drop is interesting. The first of all, the magnitude of the drop, but then where it’s coming from. Um, and, and that’s worthy of comment.

[00:07:12] Daron Shaw: I’ll, you know, I’ll kind of telescope back a little bit and say, I was trying to think of an instance in which a majority party had impeached one of their own. I, I’m, yeah. Confidence happened somewhere in a judicial case, in some instance in American history. But boy, it’s rare. And, and as students and kind of followers of public opinion, it’s fascinating to us because, you know, one of the main theories we have or kind of controversial theories in public opinion is, is sort of in a, whether public opinion is elite driven.

[00:07:42] Daron Shaw: That is, is it the case that people out there, voters generally simply are paying attention to cues provided by partisans about how they should respond to political events. One of the, you know, things that’s been very reliable recently in American politics is an event occurs. Republican elites go one way.

[00:08:00] Daron Shaw: Democrats go the other, and their followers pick up on those cues. It’s easy for the

[00:08:04] Jim Henson: voters, actually. It’s easy, yeah. For

[00:08:05] Daron Shaw: Protestants, and we don’t have many instances in which there’s a split split within the party. Over something like this. And, um, as, as, again, as someone who observes politics, it’s fascinating to watch this interesting tango between voters and elites.

[00:08:21] Daron Shaw: Where our expectation is, is if Republicans came out sort of forcefully against Paxton, if the Republican leadership generally did that, Republicans would respond. That’s our theory. Um, but it’s not clear. Republican leaders trust the public to follow them. On these issues. So our theory predicts that they would be really important, but you could see the reticence of Republicans to take positions like this because they’re concerned they’re gonna get too far out in front of public opinion, or that other Republican leaders won’t join them and you’ll get a split.

[00:08:51] Daron Shaw: The, the stuff we see here with Paxton, honestly guys at the state level is exactly the kind of thing we’re looking at at the national level with Trump. Um, that is. Do you know who’s gonna be the first or the credible Republican leaders that sort of, and you’ve seen it at the national level a little bit, but, but that’s split.

[00:09:08] Daron Shaw: And do Republicans split, or are Republicans so attached to some of these very MAGA or conservative Republican figures that there supports stands even in the absence of

[00:09:21] Jim Henson: there’s so much to untangle there? Well, there’s just so many interesting things going on with that. Right. But I mean, you know what, I’ve been thinking about a lot in watching this and you know, You get the typical reporter questions like, well, were you surprised by this?

[00:09:35] Jim Henson: And I’m like, well, you know, honestly, I don’t know. I mean, the fact, but, but I, but you know, Josh and I were talking, when we first looked at this data, I wasn’t terribly surprised because I think. You know, this is actually a, a good case for elite driven public opinion, but since the elites are, are split right.

[00:09:56] Jim Henson: You know, it’s not helpful. And now in terms of that circuit of elites in, in, in public opinion, if you’re an elite right now and you’re trying to figure out what to do about the Paxton situation, this is incredibly unhelpful.

[00:10:09] Daron Shaw: Yeah. Yes, that’s right. Because you look at the, you know, Josh mentioned support down.

[00:10:14] Daron Shaw: But it hasn’t collapsed. And you know, I’m looking at the strongly approved, it went from 17 to 12 concerning if you’re Paxton, but not, and that move movement didn’t really go much to somewhat approve it. You know, somewhat approve was 22 last time, it’s 18 this time. So these numbers have sort of moved a few points across the board and, and if we’re talking about some kind of standoff where Republican elites are frozen because they don’t want to get too far out in public opinion, I’m not, I agree.

[00:10:39] Daron Shaw: I’m not sure how helpful this is in. Well,

[00:10:42] Jim Henson: you know, helping you make a decision. Right. Well it’s helpful in kind of, you know, I, I think if you’re a Republican especially, you know, let’s just say it, if you’re a Republican senator, that’s gonna be part of the jury, you know, part of the, you know, the quote unquote jury.

[00:10:54] Jim Henson: And I’m, you know, reminding myself to keep doing that cuz you know, I think it’s a little unhelpful to. Pursue the judicial comparison too far in this. Yeah. But you know, and you’re looking for just political guidance. And I don’t want to be, I mean, I’m, I’m trying to be careful to not be overly cynical about this, but it does, you know, if you’re kind of going, okay, well I wonder what Republican constituents look like, and you go, well, even split on the impeachment was justified, or it was not justified.

[00:11:25] Jim Henson: And then 39% keeping their powder dry, you know, It doesn’t give you clear guidance. And I’m being careful to say, you know, if, you know in political terms, and again, senators are all taking, you know, yeah. But, you know, swearing oaths to be, you know,

[00:11:42] Josh Blank: but I mean, I think, you know, the, to bring two, two things you guys are saying together, I mean, I think, you know, I.

[00:11:46] Josh Blank: You the comparison with Trump and his impeachments is a good one. And it also points out why this is not a quote unquote trial in the way we think about a judicial process. Because ultimately everybody who’s involved in this trial is an interested party. Yeah. And when the, when we looked at, you know, polling around views of Trump’s impeachment and those issues, they looked entirely polarized along party lines.

[00:12:10] Josh Blank: In exactly the ways we would expect. And so if you are, you know, a Republican senator in the US Senate sitting there in that trial, the one thing you know for certain is where your voters are. And they were not with a vote for MP with for a vote of conviction, right? I mean, you could just see that easily.

[00:12:26] Josh Blank: Not getting that cue here. No. And you’re not getting that cue here. Now. I think what I think is interesting, I wanna go back to that 39%. Cause I think it’s actually incredibly important. Right? So right now you’d say you’ve got, you know, 60% of the Republican electorate is essentially split 50 50 on, on the PAX and impeachment.

[00:12:38] Josh Blank: Now, one important point that you found in the data, which I think is really key, is when you look at the extreme conservatives, people who described them who, who describe their conservatism as. Extremely conservative, they’re much more likely to say that the impeachment was unjustified. Right. And that is what we think.

[00:12:54] Josh Blank: If we talk about this a lot in here about, you know, sort of the Republican primary elector and the effect of sort of the really conservative, engaged, uh, voters. And they generally tend to get a little bit, you know, they, they get more weight on their views. So that’s sort of sitting out there if you’re looking for guidance.

[00:13:07] Josh Blank: Right, right. Well, um, it, yeah. But then the flip side of this too, that I think is really important is that 39%, that is what is up for grabs here. Now, one of the things important about the Senate getting those rules out is that until they do, you know, there’s essentially no Republicans want to go and touch this to get too close to it, because ultimately they don’t know where to go.

[00:13:23] Josh Blank: So it’s not like there’s someone out there waving their flag as sort of the pro, you know, Ken Paxton impeachment guy, right. In the Republican caucus. Because what do you, right. Who should who? What do you do? Right. At least, at least that we know of, right? Yeah. At not, not publicly. Not publicly. Not publicly.

[00:13:37] Josh Blank: This is about this elite voter thing. Yeah. On the other side, you have allies of Ken Paxton, and I think if Ken Paxton would do it, he would do it himself, who have been very clear about saying basically this is all malarkey. Like this shouldn’t be going on. The process was messed up. All this makes me sound like Joe Biden’s an ally.

[00:13:52] Josh Blank: He like that, but it’s, but, but to be honest, but just to be clear, it’s the Republican Party of Texas. It’s Matt Ranaldi. It’s, it’s those people and it’s allies of Ken Paxton. What’s interesting is that all the other people who are kind of, who are in the position of actually knowing something, And potentially being on the side of, you know, again, within the Republican caucus of impeaching Paxton are essentially duty bound to not say anything.

[00:14:13] Josh Blank: So what I’m watching now going forward is what happens with that 39%, because there’s an asymmetry here in the sense that the people who who would prosecute the case are not allowed to talk about it. Right. And technically I think his defenders have been pretty active and open in trying to go out and send those emails.

[00:14:27] Josh Blank: You know, I mean, again, during the impeachment hearing there was talking about, well, Trump has just said this, and Ted Cruz has just sent an email saying this, and so they’re trying to mobilize, I think especially, you know, among PAX and Defenders, that 39% to. His side of this issue. Right. But like as we’re saying, as we’re seeing with public opinion, people watching this plan, that’s what I’m watching.

[00:14:43] Josh Blank: Yeah. What happens to that 39%? Because that, I think is gonna tell us at least, at the very least, not what the senators are gonna do. Not how they’re gonna vote, but it’s gonna tell you what kind of response they are getting out there and what they’re expecting

[00:14:55] Jim Henson: to get Right. What they’re seeing out there in the context.

[00:14:57] Jim Henson: Then I, you know, we don’t wanna spend the whole, we could easily spend the whole con podcast talking about this, but there is an interesting. I mean it, this conversation is such an interesting illustration of one of the classic things about, you know, elements of impeachment that always come up at the federal and uh, uh, and now at the state level.

[00:15:19] Jim Henson: And that is the inherently political nature of something we’re calling a trial. Of an elected official by a bunch of other elected officials. Yeah. You know, it, it’s, you’re not gonna get away from the politics here, no matter how many, you know, vows of impartiality everybody takes. Well, and I mean, you’ve not

[00:15:37] Daron Shaw: the nature of the process, right.

[00:15:38] Daron Shaw: You have familial relations even, um, that complicate things. And that, that, frankly, I mean, just to take that particular example in a trial setting, in a classic judicial setting in the United States would clearly be. Conflict of interest and would Right, you know, require recusal. It’s not entirely clear to me, um, what the standards are for recusal in this sort of circumstance, because you’re denying, you know, just playing this out, you’re denying your representatives.

[00:16:06] Daron Shaw: Right. An opportunity to opine or to be part, part this Well,

[00:16:09] Jim Henson: and you know, well, it’s a complicated, you know, there’s no no place. Well, they split the baby. I don’t know if you, you know, you were traveling, you know, they basically split the baby in terms of saying, you know, no, you’re a spouse. You can’t have a vote.

[00:16:21] Jim Henson: But, but we know that the constitution requires that you be here. So you’re here. Yeah. And you’re part of the denominator of the electoral body. Which is ultimately, you know, look helpful to the attorney general or the suspended attorney general.

[00:16:34] Daron Shaw: It depends on their relationship at the moment, but yes.

[00:16:36] Josh Blank: Well, I mean, but to make the, but I mean this is, this is the point here. I mean, you know, you are, I mean, I thought you were gonna know somewhere else with that actually, to say, yes, a spouse can’t vote in this trial, but will make a part of the denominator. However, if one of the other senators slash jurors needs to be called to testify, We are going to say that they can testify and then go back to being a juror.

[00:16:54] Josh Blank: So to your point is sort of, you know, what is the level of standards? I’ll tell you whether, whatever they say they are, well that’s the,

[00:16:59] Daron Shaw: yeah. Whatever they’ve agreed to. I’m sure most of our audiences were, you know, the classic Gerald Ford line initially when, when asked in the seventies about what is meant, what is, what constitutes high crimes and misdemeanors, I believe it was Ford’s line was whatever a majority in the house says it is.

[00:17:16] Daron Shaw: And that’s, Not a, you know, you could interpret it as being cynical, but it’s not as a practical matter. That’s, that’s right. Now, that’s for the articles of impeachment, the standards by which you remove somebody from office. But this, it’s amazing how often impeachment has come up with, I mean, I, I go back to some of the questions involved in like, Impeaching and removing from office, somebody who’s left office, which of course was the last Trump impeachment.

[00:17:36] Daron Shaw: I mean, it’s, it’s kind of fascinating when this broke, I had to go in and look at my Texas constitution to figure out exactly how similar or different this was from the federal you and everyone else, brother. Yeah, exactly.

[00:17:48] Jim Henson: So on, on that, um, we will almost certainly have another opportunity to talk about this.

[00:17:55] Jim Henson: Um, You know, so another current event, you know, sort of element of the hook or, you know, or of, of the poll results and something that really, you know, places some of the results in the poll hitting close to home is that, you know, we had some, you know, some number of questions in this poll that assessed legislative action and expectations on, um, Improving the reliability of the electric grid.

[00:18:23] Jim Henson: And this comes as the, you know, today is actually not quite as bad. It’s only hot rather than excruciating. Um, outside and, you know, everybody, you know, sorry, we’re talking about the weather, but you know, Ercot entered his f, you know, uh, issued his first energy conservation warning of the summer in response to excessive heat, uh, this week, you know, reminding people to turn down thermostats and things like this.

[00:18:49] Jim Henson: Well, you know, this is something that was standard practice prior. Uh, To the, to winter storm URI that now has all these overtones and has become something of a trigger for the anxieties that came out of the, you know, among some people after the, the storm hit and the massive adages and fatalities in, in 2021.

[00:19:09] Jim Henson: Um, you know, and we asked about this because this is, it’s not news to elected officials statewide, certainly, or in the legislature that. Sensitivities on this issue are higher now than they used to be. Right. And so, you know, we asked a bunch of que, you know, a few questions assessing what the legislature did.

[00:19:32] Jim Henson: And they did a lot. I mean, you know, we talked, we’ve talked on the podcast, Josh and I. You know, over the course of the session and even back in the election, you know, during the election year about just how much activity and, and stakeholder fighting and attention went into legislation on the grid this time.

[00:19:53] Jim Henson: So we asked people, you know, what they thought.

[00:19:56] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, and, and just, you know, Just to make a quick point here, you know, in the polling that we did earlier in the session, when we asked voters, you know, what they were concerned about, what the legislature had to deal with, the grid remained really high.

[00:20:07] Josh Blank: And I think the main thing that, just to repeat that we mentioned when we did those results, uh, was, you know, it was bipartisan. And I think that’s important here because I think, just to re-highlight this, you know, the idea that. Because, uh, winter Storm URI and the state’s response to it were mobilized during the last election cycle by Democrats, that it was somehow a partisan issue is just not borne out in the data.

[00:20:28] Josh Blank: I mean, people are just concerned about this. So when we ask, you know, do you approve or disapprove of how the state. Leaders in the legislature have handled a range of issues, including the reliability of the electric grid. 44% said they disapproved of how state leaders, uh, handled this only 28%. They said they approved, uh, o which is near the bottom in terms of the 16 issuers, which it’s not the very bottom, but it’s, it’s close.

[00:20:50] Josh Blank: Uh, you know, we asked another set of questions about confidence in legislative efforts to sort of fix these big problems that voters had had raised Also that, you know, legislative leaders had raised. Only 18% of voters, so fewer than one in five, said that they were either very or extremely confident that the actions taken by the legislatures would actually increase the reliability of the state’s electric grid.

[00:21:08] Josh Blank: Uh, a larger share, 47%. So almost half were either not very confident or not confident, you know, and I think really speaking to where this gets. You know, pricey. And I mean this politically, not, not to do, not to do it this way, not to pun here, I thought you were referring to Q 20. We ask as

[00:21:24] Jim Henson: if you’re following along, if you’re following at home, along with your top line documented, um, at home.

[00:21:30] Jim Henson: Yeah. Well,

[00:21:31] Josh Blank: and one of, I mean, I think one of the things that’s sort of, of the politics of this, that’s sort of has been floating around out there since it happened, and I mean, I think the lieutenant governor really pushed in on this was like, well, who’s gonna pay for this? You know what I mean? Are basically our customer, you know, basically are, are the rate payers gonna be responsible for all this?

[00:21:44] Josh Blank: And, you know, I, in some ways I think that’s where, you know, the raw evaluation kind of comes out of all this. And when we asked people, we said, okay, you know, leg legislature’s been working to improve the reliability of the grid. What do you think, what impact do you think this is gonna have on prices? And the plurality almost hap 48% said they expected higher electricity prices in the future.

[00:22:01] Josh Blank: 17, expect percent expected no impact. 16% thought that they might, these, uh, efforts might result in lower prices for consumers. And I think the most important thing about all this, in some ways, partnership didn’t matter. It. You know, a lot of times we can look at these sort of things and especially evaluations of the legislature and we expect, you know, a certain amount of just sort of, you know, Democrats to be negative, Republicans to be positive.

[00:22:21] Josh Blank: But when we look at this sort of suite of results, It’s not as though there’s a bunch of Republicans saying, boy, the legislature did a great job here. I

[00:22:28] Jim Henson: was laughing at the expression on your, on your face, Darren. But you know, I choose to take this as heartening that, you know, there are limits to partisan polarization, you know, in terms of

[00:22:38] common

[00:22:38] Daron Shaw: sense.

[00:22:38] Daron Shaw: I was laughing at the 16% who thought the, uh, legislation would lead to lower prices. Um, but, um, I’m not quite sure. Well know where you are. I’m not quite sure if they understood the question. Um, that’s very funny. Well, it’s, you know, This is an, it’s an example. This is emblematic of a particular kind of question, I think a particular kind of issue out there where, um, in some ways it’s a, it’s a performance issue.

[00:23:05] Daron Shaw: Um, and there is skepticism across the board, even, you know, liberal democrats who think government is, uh, Effort is required and, and government needs to have an efficacious response to problems. Even repub, you know, versus Republicans who are a little more skeptical about that. Um, across the board there’s a sense that governments is not getting it done.

[00:23:23] Daron Shaw: Yeah. And what you have in the, in the grid issue, first of all, I do think, you know, I’ve. Typically kind of mouth the party line in academia about, well, voters don’t really know very much about politics. They’re not thinking, and, and that’s true. They’ve got other things they’re concerned about besides politics.

[00:23:39] Daron Shaw: But one of the things they’re concerned about is, you know, the reliability of electricity in their homes. Mm-hmm. And so, while generally speaking, people don’t have well thought out opinions on this thing, I, I think one of the things I found fascinating was to Josh’s point about the persistence of the salience of the issue that most Texans.

[00:23:57] Daron Shaw: When the grid fails in the winter, think, oh my gosh, what’s gonna happen in the summer? Yeah. Right. And I, you know, it doesn’t require a ton of, I mean, this is

[00:24:04] Jim Henson: something that Texans, you have to be a policy expert to know that if the power goes out in the summer, you’re screwed. Right.

[00:24:09] Daron Shaw: And I think Texans know that.

[00:24:11] Daron Shaw: And I think that was, that that wasn’t a connection that needed to be made by elites, for them to think this is an important issue. I think we all thought that. Right. Oh my gosh. What happens when it gets to be a hundred degrees, um, Democrats, I think, um, Uh, because Republicans own everything are quite, you know, first of all, the objective appraisal of the handling of the storm, the winter storm is pretty negative.

[00:24:33] Daron Shaw: And I think Democrats are even more likely to embrace it because of Republican leadership, right? Republicans are skeptical of government generally. So even though their guys are in charge, um, you know, they’re like, well, this is another example of government getting it wrong. So there, there is a unity here.

[00:24:48] Daron Shaw: Um, as, as judgment, it’s not a. Partisan issue. And I think it, uh, part of it is performance, which is everybody sort of thinks the performance has been suboptimal, but there’s a lot of other things going into it. Democratic, you know, kind of antipathy towards Republican leadership, Republican antipathy towards government responsiveness, all that stuff, blues in here.

[00:25:06] Daron Shaw: And so it’s, it’s a great question if you want skeptical. Pessimistic responses, um, and all that comes together in some of the top lines that, that Josh mentioned.

[00:25:17] Josh Blank: Yeah. You know, I, I agree with that and I think, I mean, I agree with that partially. I mean, I think it might be a little bit, I. I don’t think, um, I think you probably intend to attend this.

[00:25:25] Josh Blank: That’s why I’ll say that. I mean, I think you’re, you know, it’s a little bit dismissive of the, of the thrust of the result in a sense, in that it’s sort of like, well, it’s not about this, it’s about these other things. And I don’t disagree. I think it is about the other things, and I think the main point there that I take is that you can be a Democrat and Republican.

[00:25:40] Josh Blank: I. Arrive at the same place doesn’t mean you got there the same way. And that’s always the case with these sorts of things. Right. No, that’s what I meant by

[00:25:45] Daron Shaw: saying it’s a performance issue. Yeah. But the underlying,

[00:25:47] Josh Blank: yeah, no, that’s why I’m agreeing with you on that. Yeah, yeah. I totally, I totally agree with that.

[00:25:51] Josh Blank: Having said that, I think, you know, one of the things about, you know, this poll and kind of what we’re doing is, you know, we’re studying contemporary politics here, you know, and one of the things is that, you know, contemporary politics in a lot of ways about, you know, okay, what did, what did you say you were gonna do?

[00:26:03] Josh Blank: Did you do it? Did you do it well? And then I get to vote again. And with the grid. I mean, one of the things that’s sort of striking about this is that, you know, it may just be the case that there’s nothing that they could do that’s going to lead to a significant share of the public. I mean, to your point, I think this is probably true.

[00:26:18] Josh Blank: I don’t think we could ask this question at any point in time where we’re gonna get 70% of people saying they’re extremely or very confident. It’s just not in the cards with the way that, you know, attitudes exist towards government generally right now, and just overall skepticism and, and all the things that you lay out.

[00:26:32] Josh Blank: Having said that, It doesn’t change the fact that like be a result, like this tells you why this issue is not going away. So, Right, because people are still concerned about it and because they don’t, and the legislature hasn’t been able to do enough to say, yeah, and look, this could change. This could be part of what the campaign’s about.

[00:26:46] Josh Blank: This could be part of. You know, we get through a summer, who knows, but they haven’t done a job of selling and saying No, but look what we did. It’s definitely safer. Well, I

[00:26:54] Daron Shaw: think. Look, there’s a, there’s an interesting political question here, and we’ve been a little reluctant, I think, on the podcast to talk about the politics of it.

[00:27:00] Daron Shaw: Because of the human dimension Yeah. Of the grid failure. And as we move a little bit further away from that, we can start talking about the politics. The politics are interesting because for the Democrats, you know, this is why it’s a tough issue to talk about. It’s a good issue. Mm-hmm. Politically naked, crass,

[00:27:17] Jim Henson: partisan politics terms.

[00:27:19] Jim Henson: Yeah. Look, you know, at, at the start it was the kickoff issue for the O’Rourke campaign. Right, right. In the, in

[00:27:23] Josh Blank: the last only editorial only and the only issue for the Collier campaign. Right, right. And I, I’m joking, I’m sorry, but you know what I mean,

[00:27:29] Daron Shaw: I do keep the damn rights on. Yeah. And on the Republican side, it’s, it’s a very, it’s obviously a very difficult issue because to, you know, you are the party that owns all these positions and, and majorities in the legislature and, um, To say that it’s the fault of the big energy companies.

[00:27:48] Daron Shaw: Yeah. Right. And, and to try to play sort of a populist angle on it is maybe politically astute, right? Distance myself in case there’s another grid failure because I don’t want to own, you know, the electrical grid as an issue, right? Where it’s, it’s for I’m, my political future is dependent on how well I kind of get that up and running or keep that up and running.

[00:28:07] Daron Shaw: On the other hand, there’s a bit of impotence if you simply say, well, I mean, I know I own the governorship and the, you know, state House and the Senate, but I can’t really do anything about that stuff. That’s just too big. Too complicated. Yeah, too big, too complicated, right? So, um, so what do you do? Um, you know, you can ignore the issue and hope it, you know, it’s sort of low level salience, Josh, not immediately salient in election context.

[00:28:31] Daron Shaw: You can try to get out in front by just blaming somebody, but then you raise this other. Issue. I mean, I guess there’s another way even, which is you take bolder kind of legislative steps to really target the

[00:28:41] Jim Henson: companies Well on that. I mean, I, I think what’s interesting about that is that, you know, I.

[00:28:49] Jim Henson: Certainly in the electoral environment in 2022. It played out in much in the way that you’re describing, but in the legislative process where, you know, frankly, Democrats didn’t really have much to say about the outcome. You saw some elements of what you’re talking about. But it was really a conflict between the lieutenant governor and the governor, and you know, the lieutenant, it was the lieutenant governor, frankly, who stood up very early on in saying, Essentially, look, the rate payers are getting screwed here and we’ve gotta do something about this.

[00:29:22] Jim Henson: And all of a sudden you had Lieutenant Governor Patrick, and it shouldn’t be all of a sudden because this is not unprecedented, but being, you know, sort of. Given credit for taking what was kind of a populist quote unquote position, would the underlying kind of political conflict being that, you know, he was really putting the governor on the spot.

[00:29:42] Jim Henson: Because the underlying narrative here was that everybody that was in charge of this, in terms of ownership in that policy making environment, thinking about Republican primary politics, we’re all gov gubernatorial appointees, right? Right. And so the politics have played out in a number of different ways and you know, the populist part kind of.

[00:30:03] Jim Henson: Disappeared a little bit, frankly, in this last session where they did a lot on this, put a lot of money into resilience and, you know, the, the drinking game word now, dispatchable energy and all of this. Um, but that was really like a fight amongst stakeholders. I mean, you were talking about the Democrats being taking this populous position saying, well, it’s the big corporations.

[00:30:26] Jim Henson: Well this was. I don’t know what the right percentage would be, but in the last session, I feel pretty safe saying this is about 90% a competing corporate sector in the energy sector fight. Right? And so it turns a lot of interesting ways, and that’s another kind of interesting context for this question in which you’ve got the institutional politics happening on a very different plane, you know, and you know, whatever the.

[00:30:54] Jim Henson: The tendencies of this question, you know, voters are just thinking about it in a completely different way. Most voters are not going well, you know, should we, what’s the, what’s the right energy mix? Well, so we almost asked a question about that and kind of killed it in the process. Well, it’s so

[00:31:08] Josh Blank: interesting hear you say that in the sense that, you know, you, you know, it’s like Dan Patrick was, you know, in that case and in some other cases was sort of taking the populist, you know, position on that.

[00:31:16] Josh Blank: And yet, when that, you know, when this session’s. Uh, you know, uh, negotiation over the e you know, that that bill kind of got to the end. It was the house. It was like, well, should we put a cap on the amount of money we’re gonna give to the energy companies? Right. You know, so, you know, so I mean, is there, I mean, and that’s why again, none of this stuff is fixed, right?

[00:31:33] Josh Blank: I mean, it’s all kind of, and this may

[00:31:35] Jim Henson: well, you know, piss off some people that were in the process and you know, pardon me. But, you know, there wasn’t a lot of discussion about, I mean, it was almost assume that what, whatever they were gonna do, the rate payers are gonna. We’re, we’re not gonna benefit. Right.

[00:31:51] Jim Henson: So, and you know, look, the public got that looks like. Yeah. Right. Um, so, you know, in addition to big news related to the impeachment trial on the grid, I. Number of other results, and we’ll move some of these a little bit, you know, more quickly. But, you know, we obviously, and it’s already come up a little bit, we, we can’t really talk about this at this point without talking about what we got on property taxes.

[00:32:11] Jim Henson: Um, property taxes are, you know, I, I, you know, I’ve described it so many different ways, but I mean, if you’re a. If you’re a Republican lawmaker right now, the property tax reduction situation is pretty embarrassing. I mean, I don’t think there’s any other way of putting that in the sense that this was one of the preeminent campaign issues in the campaign, uh, in the 2022 campaign from governor down, you know, practically to dog catcher and.

[00:32:42] Jim Henson: The intro party conflicts could, and the personality conflicts could not be resolved during the regular session, and I. The conflict has actually gotten even more complicated in the special session and we covered it in here. Everybody kind of knows what’s happened there. Um, and I, you know, I think that is shown.

[00:33:03] Jim Henson: I think it’s a pretty plausible argument to say that the friction on that and the difficulty of that showed up in the poll numbers this time. Yeah.

[00:33:10] Daron Shaw: I’ve just just talked about 16 items we tested. 16th outta 16 is not good. Yeah. Um, so I didn’t mean to step by Josh. No, absolutely. No. I Do you wanna give the particulars

[00:33:21] Josh Blank: on that?

[00:33:22] Josh Blank: Yeah, I’ll be quick. I mean, I’ll, just so you know, again, we, we asked the voters to evaluate the legislature and state leaders job approval on 16 different issue areas. I. Tied for lowest overall approval was their handling of property taxes, no doubt. Informed by, you know, what you’ve been talking about, Jim, uh, you know the plurality of Texans, 42%.

[00:33:40] Josh Blank: So they expected that their property tax, you know, the property taxes at Texans that pay to increase, only 23% think they’re gonna decrease. Looking ahead 21%. Expect ’em to say about the same. And you know, again, this is another one of those areas that I think, you know, again, if you’re a Republican official, you gotta be looking at the thinking uhoh, because it’s not just Democrats, right?

[00:33:58] Josh Blank: So 48% of Democrats and 41% of Republicans expect property tax bills to increase. And so again, and, and part of this is the way we think about these questions. I mean, look, there’s a party say, yeah, everybody expects their property tax to go up. So there is, that’s like the default position. But in a session, he said on the heels of a campaign, when legislature comes into the session with a historic budget surplus and says, we are going to.

[00:34:18] Josh Blank: Commit most of that budget surplus to reducing your property taxes and then they don’t do it. People should kind of feel like this isn’t gonna

[00:34:26] Daron Shaw: work well, what happened? Yeah, it’s a, you know, there are, I. You know, there are big global issues we ask about and, and people are basically kind of asked to opine on things that they have only indirect or kind of broad experiences with.

[00:34:42] Daron Shaw: That’s not property taxes. Right. Every spring I get my, yeah, my bill and. Um, you know, I guess the grid is like that too, right? We all interact with the grid, but there, there’s a couple of issues here. You know, we ask about, uh, you know, election and voting laws. There’s some personal experience with that, the opioid, academic crime, higher ed, these

[00:35:00] Josh Blank: kinds of things.

[00:35:00] Josh Blank: Well, and we’ll get to public education in a second. That’s one where actually we talked in this podcast before about how that is actually pretty distant for a lot of people. Right?

[00:35:06] Daron Shaw: Exactly. Exactly. But man, when you talk about property taxes, so, so whatever your feelings about the level of engagement of the, the Texas public, um, this is one where, you know, they all have opinions.

[00:35:17] Daron Shaw: And as Josh suggested, there’s a consensus they didn’t do this right. Um, yeah. You know, they, they get terrible ratings across the board. High expectations that, you know, property taxes are going up. And unlike some of these other issues where there’s a sort of complex interaction of sort of outside entities or government entities or corporations that are doing something, and then there’s the Republicans and Democrats and stuff.

[00:35:39] Daron Shaw: No, no. Right. They’ve got control over this and they,

[00:35:43] Jim Henson: you know. Well, and I think one of the interesting things about that is that, You know, look, property taxes, you know, we’ve said in here many times, if you actually look at the mechanisms, it is pretty complicated. Right? No, agreed. Agreed. Yeah. But the complexity of it is also what made, I think a lot of us think, well, you know, they might debate how they’re gonna do this, but as I’ve said on in here, you know, a million times, you know, and we’re seeing it in the, in the policy discussion, there’s a lot of knobs to turn here, and I think it’s fair for, you know, The average person who’s not even, you know, very plugged into what those knobs are, what the, you know, difference in compression and the, that exemption or, you know, whatever, where the compressing is happening, you know, but nonetheless, you know, I mean, you’re kind of, you know, I, I think.

[00:36:30] Jim Henson: As a, as a political, as an elected official that’s talked about this a lot, you kind of made your own bet if you go up and promise people and make, give them the impression. Yeah. There’s a, as you were saying, judge, there’s a bunch of money we can do this. We’re gonna do it. You can count on us to do, it’s your money.

[00:36:45] Jim Henson: We’re running the place, we’re gonna do it. And then when you don’t do it, I, you know, people are gonna be a little stumped about, about it. Particular a little grumpy. It’s,

[00:36:51] Daron Shaw: yeah. It’s a particular problem for Republicans. Yeah. I mean, you know, they. Been talking about property taxes since they took over, back in 94 or whatever it was.

[00:37:00] Daron Shaw: Right, right. And I, I don’t know at what point Republican voters or independent voters or even, you know, kind of soft democrats say, I. Uh, this is like your main issue and my property taxes have gone up X percent, you know? Right. Yeah. I know. It’s more complicated, but,

[00:37:14] Jim Henson: but No, no, but, but, but, you know, but you know what, it’s

[00:37:16] Josh Blank: not but the point.

[00:37:16] Josh Blank: Yeah, I

[00:37:17] Jim Henson: know. But that’s the thing. That’s the thing. The point is, yeah, you know, it’s complicated but not impossible to pull off. And you have to own not only the promise, but the tone of the promise that was like, Yeah, we’re doing this.

[00:37:29] Josh Blank: Yeah. Right. Don’t, don’t worry. Yes. Right. Well, and you know, and I just, I wanna make one point on this because I think it’s important.

[00:37:34] Josh Blank: I think it’s easy to look at a result like this and say, well, yeah, of course. I mean, given everything we’re describing here, why wouldn’t you see negative responses? If you’ve heard anything about the legislature and property taxes, it would be about the fact that they are at this impasse, they haven’t done what they said they’re gonna do, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:37:48] Josh Blank: But I wanna point out, after the last legislative session when property taxes were not, A driving force issue during the majority of what they were doing, and we asked a similar battery of evaluations in the summer. Property taxes came back at the bottom that time as well in terms of approval. Right. Now, the funny is, I’m not saying, I’m saying we did not do this, but pretty soon after those results came out and that was sitting there at the bottom, that was when they did the homestead exemption, kind of at the very last minute, at the very end of that special session.

[00:38:16] Josh Blank: Right. They sort of rammed that one through. Cause of course the voters are gonna improve an increase in the homestead exemption they did. Right. But what that tells me in some ways, like, yeah, I mean this result is somewhat a reflection of the current moment, but also we can go back two years and people were still really, it’s, it’s cumulative.

[00:38:32] Josh Blank: It is cumulative. Yeah, exactly.

[00:38:34] Daron Shaw: I agree. Yeah, I think that’s

[00:38:35] Jim Henson: right. So, you know, I’m gonna, we’ve got a couple things in here that we’ll come back to. We’ll figure out a way to get some of this in, but I, as we, as we go on here, I, I do want to ask each of you guys like, what’s the, what’s the zeitgeist take away from this poll?

[00:38:50] Jim Henson: That you get, like what’s, you know, we, we talk about underlying themes, you know, the kind of assessment of the mood. Well,

[00:38:56] Daron Shaw: we were, we were having a kind of informal conversation before we began here today. And I’ll just, I’ll just point out that my zeitgeist interpretation is pretty pessimistic here right now.

[00:39:06] Daron Shaw: Um, and just two kind of data points. Um, You know, I, I believe Josh is the, the source of this. So it’s a great question and I, I can say that cause I had nothing to do with it. Um, but I’ve, I’ve always liked this question. Uh, you know, here’s a pair of opposite phrases, which better describes. Mm-hmm. You know, we asked about state government, about local government, and we ask, you know, mostly honest or mostly dishonest.

[00:39:26] Daron Shaw: And we ask, uh, you know, mostly careful with tax dollars, mostly careless, mostly address the needs of residents. Mostly, you know, ignore the needs. And those numbers are really, really going down. Over time. It, it’s in, at the state level and you know, you see a little bit of it at the, you know, also at the local level, but not nearly as much.

[00:39:45] Daron Shaw: Not nearly as much. So that’s part of it. And then the second part, I’d, I’d point to, and this is a little bit of a bank shot on this. Kind of pessimism or zeitgeist is, you know, the, of the questions, you know, we asked about, uh, performance or the support for proposals that the Texas legislature considered this year and amongst the highest testing proposals were anything basically involved with kinda law and order.

[00:40:06] Daron Shaw: Across a range. I mean, obviously there was support for, um, you know, limiting firearm access in, in sort of appropriate ways to, whether it’s to young people or people who have records or things like that. But it was also, um, you know, things about sentencing publishing or punishing people who were in violation of election laws.

[00:40:23] Daron Shaw: Um, and. You, you put all that together and you, you know, the listeners can, can take a look at those items and argue with me about packaging some of ’em together. Yeah. But, but I, I just get this sense that there’s this real desire for order and normalcy out there. And, and I, I think it’s partly reflective of post covid environment, partly reflective of just the, the, the disruptions that people have felt and the, you know, the sense that things are just kind of outta control.

[00:40:49] Daron Shaw: And, um, you know, I was struck by. The sentiment for that. The very, very strong, and I’m talking about sort of 70% to 80% support for those sorts of measures. And so I pair those things together, sort of general. God, I don’t wanna go Jimmy Carter on everybody, but malaise with respect to the performance. You it here first.

[00:41:07] Daron Shaw: Well, I mean, I’m a one termer,

[00:41:08] Josh Blank: what can I say? Yeah, let’s see. I mean, I think when you’re talking about that, I mean, I think more about like the general disorder, like, I mean the things that kind of pop up in my mind is talking about is like, you know, the street takeovers, you know, earlier in, in, in the year there were, uh, You know, these sort of like flash mobs, you know, going into stores and stealing, you know, stuff, and then sort of, and the idea that like, this is just becoming a more common part of life along with mass shootings and all these other things.

[00:41:32] Josh Blank: Yeah. It does speak to this idea that there is a, I think, you know, an important point here. There’s a. Large desire, and it’s not just Republicans who are looking for law order. I think it’s a lot of voters and a lot of just people are saying, yeah, we could be a little bit more in control over this stuff.

[00:41:46] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:41:46] Jim Henson: I mean, look, that’s even, I mean, I, I would, you could argue that that’s even a little piece of the grid thing. Mm-hmm. You, you know, uncertainty and anxiety

[00:41:54] Daron Shaw: certain, yeah. Well, I think, you know, spelling out a macro, it’s, it’s part of Biden’s appeal. Not, not so much for the but normalcy. That was his, yeah.

[00:42:02] Daron Shaw: Let’s return not being on the news every day. Right. Exactly. Yeah. No, I think that’s right and I think it’s all of those things are kind of, I think, derivative of this general sense that people have in this particular environment, this point in time.

[00:42:13] Jim Henson: How about you

[00:42:13] Josh Blank: Josh? You know, I was really intrigued by the way that this poll really kind of.

[00:42:18] Josh Blank: Cut through some of the political geography in some interesting ways. I mean, some, some of the stuff you were speaking to speaks to this, but I’ll just assume, be specific, I guess. You know, when we look at, you know, views about the grid, when we look at views on property taxes, you know, we don’t see a lot of difference when we’re talking urban, suburban, rural.

[00:42:36] Josh Blank: And normally what we find is as we find, you know, basically, In some ways the, the locational variables are like proxies for party, right? When you see the urban, uh, results, they tend to be, you know, a lot more Democrats. Rural is overwhelmingly Republican and so the views generally tend to reflect that.

[00:42:53] Josh Blank: And you know, in suburbia is really where there’s competition in the state. And we talked about this in the podcast a lot, about the different electoral results and what they look like and why Texas suburbs are, you know, in a lot of ways the mobilizing force behind a lot of contemporary politics and in general, you know, I think.

[00:43:07] Josh Blank: Majority party has been able to pick a lot of issues, uh, that really, you know, play well in the suburbs politically. And I think, you know, if you look at the issue battery, you know, compared to these general evaluations, overwhelming po overwhelmingly positive results in most cases to most of, of the, the specific policies that we tested, including, I think a lot of policies that are meant to mobilize conservative parents, conservative suburbanites, which is where the competition is.

[00:43:32] Josh Blank: But when you look at this poll and you look at, again, views of future property taxes, again, regardless of whether you live in. You know, Austin Fort Worth, you know, you know, out in Fort Bend, wherever. Right. Jordan, you know, they’re negative, right? The grid negative. And to your point on these questions about, you know, views generally of state and local government, you know, the drop in positive evaluations towards state government is really remarkable in and of itself.

[00:43:59] Josh Blank: It’s especially remarkable in Texas’ suburbs right now. And that’s something I think, you know, gotta keep an eye on going forward in terms of, you know, how does, what happens this legislative session, whenever it ends, how does that get packaged and mobilized into a story that gets told and how does it play again, especially in the suburbs.

[00:44:16] Josh Blank: Cause right now it’s not looking great.

[00:44:18] Jim Henson: Right. You know, I mean, I think. You know, I, I think there’s a consensus on what the over, you know, what the overarching thing going on here is, is this, you know, this kind of churn in attitudes towards institutions and. Particularly state government, but I think what really is sticking out at me as you were talking Darren, it actually helped crystallize it for me at least one aspect of it a little bit, is that, you know, we’re seeing such a, we’re seeing such tension in a lot of the impulses in the state right now.

[00:44:53] Jim Henson: On one hand, you’ve got this kind of declining. You know, some of it is trust, some of it is responsiveness, some of it is, you know, a sense of ethic, efficacy of state government, you know, things we always talk about. But at the same time, if that is happening, you’re also seeing both in public opinion and among elites, a kind of a funny reassertion of state government and state government power.

[00:45:18] Jim Henson: So, you know, one of the things that. It was a big issue in the last session, in the last few sessions is this notion of state preemption of local government, you know, public attitudes. If you look closely, I think at the comparison of those paired responses you were talking about, comparing state and local government doesn’t really show a big weakening in support or views of the nature of local government, even as state government is asserting itself.

[00:45:50] Jim Henson: Against local government. And then when you throw in your sort of, you know, I think the, the really well taken point in my part, this sense of, you know, wanting some order, some predictability, normalcy, if you will, and. State government in a sense, sort of saying we will provide that

[00:46:10] Josh Blank: 140 days every two years.

[00:46:12] Jim Henson: But, you know, it doesn’t seem like it’s taking among the public. I don’t think that the public is buying it. If anything, it’s moving in the opposite direction. And I just wonder what you know, is that, I mean, and it’s, it’s obviously gonna be more than one thing. Is it the general kind of institution, you know, decay and institutional support we’ve talking about, is it difficulty in governance?

[00:46:32] Jim Henson: Is, you know, is it, is it partisanship? Is it. Is it

[00:46:36] Josh Blank: nationalization of politics?

[00:46:37] Jim Henson: Nationalization of politics? Is it a long, you know, how much of this is, you know, a long period of one party rule in the state that may be having an effect both on governance habits, decision making. You know, as we talk about this fight over property taxes, it’s hard for me to believe that if Republicans were really worried about the general election environment, That they would feel so free to just keep fighting with each other over how to deliver the property tax

[00:47:06] Daron Shaw: cut.

[00:47:07] Daron Shaw: Yeah, no, it’s a, it’s a fair point. I mean, I, I think Republicans have this sort of ideological problem generally, which is like, Hey, we control state government. Well, we’re the, we’re the party of local government or government closer to you and limited government. Yeah, but the Democrats control a lot of these local governments and we don’t really trust them.

[00:47:24] Daron Shaw: And we, the public wants us to address certain issues. And this is the mechanism by which, right? So there’s a really interesting, when Republicans own everything, lock, stock, and barrel at the state level, and that’s the mechanism by which, you know, they, they have the ability to sort of deal with these problems that they think are problems, but they have these sort of ideological and locational issues with respect to dealing with them that create problems.

[00:47:45] Daron Shaw: I don’t think the Democrats have quite the same array. Of problems, right? In California or New York, COVID is a good example, right? Covid hits in California, New York government lockdowns here, do this. This is what you need to do to protect the public safety, public health in Texas. It’s well. You know, are we really comfortable with exercising that power at the state level?

[00:48:04] Daron Shaw: Right. Are our constituents comfortable with, you

[00:48:06] Jim Henson: know, well, at an instrumental level because I’m, again, if I’m not worried about the general election, right? As soon as you get pushback from somebody who jogs to your right, if you’re say, governor Abbott, You know, you’re under, you know, you, you are feeling direct political pressure to act differently, to,

[00:48:23] Daron Shaw: I respond differently.

[00:48:24] Daron Shaw: I talked a lot about this with my California friends, about the, the complexity of Texas’ response to Covid, which is just an example we’re dealing with now compared to the California New York response and, uh, you know, Republican versus Democrat, the geographic complexity of Texas, the urban versus rural complexity.

[00:48:43] Daron Shaw: You know, to, I mean, you think about Abbott’s dilemma, which is even if I decide. You know, with the constituency that’s suspicious of governmental u use of power. Well now I’ve got what about what I’m doing in Harris County versus what I’m doing in Deaf Smith? And does that make sense? And I tried to convey this to my friends in California.

[00:49:02] Daron Shaw: I’m like, you know, it’s, it’s not an easy Wait, wait, they’re going what? Deaf? Who? Yeah, exactly. I was, well, I, I was just trying to say like, you know, I get that California’s a complex place, geographic, I get that in New York too, but man, in Texas it’s even. You know, I’m, I think all of us become kind of empathetic to the problems of governing a state like Texas, even as we observe this

[00:49:21] Josh Blank: stuff.

[00:49:21] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, it’s really interesting the extent to which this, you know, this political phrase, well, we can’t have a patchwork of laws, has just kind of become this sort of catchall. And you said, well, can’t we? I mean, yeah, and I mean, and you know, are you sure about that? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:49:33] Jim Henson: Well, exactly. Won’t the flip side of that is how do we not Well, well, that

[00:49:36] Josh Blank: is right, and that is the flip side, that it would be to say, you know, in, in a, in a state that has not only, you know, the, the very, very different, you know, geographies of, you know, Let’s say five of the biggest cities in the country, but also a rural population that’s has, that could be its own state.

[00:49:49] Josh Blank: You know, maybe you do need a little bit of flexibility, you know, just to move this along, but also it’s connected, so I’m gonna do it. Well, you usually we’re near the end, right? Yeah, no, I, okay. You’re the mc. So, so I know that usually what we do at the end is we are gonna do our, you know, deep,

[00:50:00] Jim Henson: deep, I think we kind of folded from the zeitgeist to the, to the interesting idea.

[00:50:04] Jim Henson: Well, let me combine

[00:50:05] Josh Blank: them. Yeah, let me deep cut on that. Then. Just to say, you know, one of the really interesting things I think, and maybe, maybe the. Maybe the most interesting thing, I don’t know. I have to think about this to me in this poll and it

[00:50:13] Jim Henson: goes back, well, this is the most interesting to you. You don’t really have to think about it that much.

[00:50:17] Josh Blank: That’s true. Well, I don’t know. I’m deciding whether it’s the most ing interesting to me. You’re prettying guy. Yeah. Well anyway, I like to be, I like to be fair too. So, but you know, we’ve been talking with these questions about, you know, basically whether state, local, government, you know, people’s views of whether they’re honest or dishonest.

[00:50:30] Josh Blank: You know, they take your people’s tax dollars, whether they respond to citizens. And one of the most interesting things in, in this survey was the extent to which, you know, I would say this going into it, Given the politics, given the death star Bill that the preemption bill that the legislature passed, it really takes away a lot of powers of local governments efforts to, to, to, uh, restrain the budgets and the, and the revenue generating abilities of local governments over pe previous cycles, efforts to remove locally elected district attorneys, so on and so forth, and then a bunch of stuff that didn’t pass.

[00:50:57] Josh Blank: Right. You know, the expectation would be, well, surely Republicans have a pretty negative view of their local governments, and ultimately that’s not what this poll finds. Right. And that was actually one of the most interesting things. I mean, when I was looking for where is this antipathy to local government that is, that is underlying this, and the answer is, it’s not coming from the electorate.

[00:51:16] Josh Blank: Right. And, and part of that is because, I mean, to, to your point, I mean, you’re kind of bringing this up with respect to Covid. You know, I mean, people sort themselves largely, you know, I mean, there’s a lot of political sorting that goes along geographic lines. And the thing is, if you’re a Republican in this state, there’s a good chance that you lived in a community that maybe was a little bit more light-handed in its covid response.

[00:51:35] Josh Blank: If you’re some of the most liberal, you know, leaning democratic voters in the state, there’s a good chance that you lived in a community that was maybe a little bit. More interested in addressing that Now that was covid until basically the state came in and said, no, we’re gonna do this. And then views split, you know, basically polarized along partisan lines.

[00:51:53] Josh Blank: I think you’re seeing something similar here that’s really interesting. But again, the most interesting thing in this poll is, is I don’t see in the electorate where this antipathy to local government is coming from, because ultimately, who elect the local government? Local voters, which has always been what the argument has been.

[00:52:07] Josh Blank: And so I think that’s something, you know, we’re gonna have to watch going forward. You know, we, we’ve, we’ve definitely taken some missteps around this issue of local control in terms of trying to figure out how to exactly. To sort of touch on this and think about it. But I mean, it is really remarkable, again, looking at the comparative evaluations, even amidst sort of these declines in overall evaluations of institutions, of governments and whatever one thing seems to remain, which is that Yeah.

[00:52:25] Josh Blank: But local government’s better. Yeah. According to most voters.

[00:52:30] Jim Henson: As we close out, I mean, I think one of the things that’s really interesting about that going forward is as you kind of suggest in that how elusive these issues actually are when it comes to us trying to really probe public opinion about it.

[00:52:47] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, we’ve talked about how, you know, the idea of local control and, you know, the valorization of local government. It ha it seems to have like. As you’re suggesting Josh, and it, it’s an interesting combination of the way that we’ve talked about it in the past. In some ways, the experiential part of that is kind of easy to see in the way that you’re talking about with geographic sorting.

[00:53:10] Jim Henson: On the other hand, when you put it in words and you put it in front of people, the roots of trying to put a label on that cognitively are very shallow.

[00:53:18] Josh Blank: Well, yeah, and I mean, I just, you know, just one other sort of summative thing about this, you know, because, I mean, I, I. It’s interesting cuz there’s something going on here that I, I don’t know where, how it plays out, right?

[00:53:29] Josh Blank: Which is that, you know, when we look at responses to sort of the types of policies that people might hear about, that kind of will, will peak through, you know, all the noise during a legislative session. You know, what you tend to find is that, you know, unsurprisingly, these issues are popular. Why do I say unsurprisingly?

[00:53:45] Josh Blank: Because politicians have pollsters too. Yeah. Right. They have a pretty good sense about what, what their view of the zeitgeist is. Also informed by data. Just, just, just like this, you know? And so it’s not surprising to see that, that among the set of policies that they produced, there’s a fair amount of, uh, you know, again, positive response to that.

[00:54:04] Josh Blank: Yeah. The flip side of that is when we ask all these general evaluations, it’s so overwhelmingly negative, right? And so I guess just from a basic kind of like, you know, mechanics of politics standpoint. Is that good enough or is there a point at which, you know, the one starts to outweigh the other, where you say, oh, well, you know.

[00:54:24] Josh Blank: Yeah, I mean I’m really glad that the legislature, you know, addressed, let’s say, you know, sexually explicit materials in public schools. Right. Even though I don’t have a kid in public school. Cause most voters don’t. But on the other hand, you know, my electricity might go off and my taxes are going up, and also the city’s getting more crowded and the roads aren’t really keeping up.

[00:54:40] Josh Blank: I mean, if you

[00:54:41] Jim Henson: asked me about the public education system, generally.

[00:54:43] Josh Blank: Generally, yeah, that’s the thing. All the general evaluations are very negative and I think the, you know, the others are really important thing, this poll that, I mean, just, you know, if I was an elected official, if I was an elected official in the majority party right now, I’d be noticing is that, you know, it’s not all Democrats.

[00:54:58] Josh Blank: There’s a significant share of Republicans who are also holding these negative performances, you know, evaluations over these big issues. And the question is, and I mean, not to be dismissive, but you know, is there, is there enough candy that you can give Republican primary voters that this doesn’t matter?

[00:55:14] Josh Blank: And that’s kind of what’s sort of sitting out there looking at the end of, you know, where we are, at least in this session. Right? Yeah.

[00:55:18] Jim Henson: And that, you know, and that, and that is a good explanation of that, you know, the kind of difference between, you know, the. The positive range of those specific policy evaluations and the, and the, and you know, the much less enthusiastic evaluations almost everywhere else.

[00:55:35] Jim Henson: You know, I. We will just use the word endogenous and call it a day. Um, so thanks to both of you guys for being here, uh, and of course for the great work on the poll. Um, thanks very much as always, to our excellent production team in the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Um, All of these polling results can be found at Texas politics dot u texas.edu.

[00:56:01] Jim Henson: You can also sign up for our email list there. You’ll find the podcast there with lots of supplemental material. Um, so thank you. Thanks to Josh. Yeah, you’re welcome. Thanks for having

[00:56:13] Josh Blank: me again. Thanks,

[00:56:14] Daron Shaw: Darren. My

[00:56:14] Jim Henson: pleasure as always, thanks again to our excellent and and vital production team in the studio here, and especially thanks to you for listening, and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast.

[00:56:31] Jim Henson: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.