June 29th, 2021 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] Welcome to the 2nd Reading Podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party, so I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called texas. The problem is these departures from the constitution, they have become the norm at what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room And Welcome Back to the Second Reading Podcast for the Week of June 29, I’m Jim Henson, director of the texas politics project at the University of texas at Austin. Happy to be joined again today, after a couple of weeks of special guests by josh blank, research director of the texas politics project. Mike all adjusted how we doing josh

[0:00:55 Speaker 1] doing very well. Happy to be back

[0:00:57 Speaker 0] your voice as dulcet tones. That’s how that sounds

[0:01:01 Speaker 1] good to hear.

[0:01:02 Speaker 0] Dulcet, He thinks to himself what is adults in front and center today for the podcast, starting last friday and continuing through Wednesday of this week. The texas tribune is releasing the results of the latest ut texas tribune poll that josh and I conducted along with our colleague Darren Shaw and our colleagues of course of the texas tribune. And as long as we’re giving credit to everybody, our colleagues at Yougov, you’ll find multiple stories at the tribune side on various aspects of the poll this week, as well as our usual tandem release of graphics and drill down with cross tabs. And we’ll have some writing up soon I think. But most of that the best place to find that is on the latest poll page of our website at texas politics dot utexas dot e d U. Uh This poll focused on a mixture of subjects are our usual trend items on Texans, quote unquote mood. Things like the track of the country in the states, the use of the economy, the use of people’s own economic conditions, approval ratings for a bunch of political leaders, including all the top of the ballot, shall we say of statewide political leaders as well as selected national leaders and institutions. They’re also a lot of items looking opinion and opinions on what the legislature tackled and how they tackled it During the regular session, which was recently concluded. All of that has now become of course, something of a setup for the looming special session, which is going to be started here pretty quickly. We also revisited attitudes and reported behaviors about COVID-19 as part of our now, you know, year plus long project tracking the experience of covid 19 in the state. Now, given that huge backdrop today, I thought we’d start with something of a current events. Peg Donald trump is coming back to texas this week. I wish I had like a little some radio effects now some applause kind of a little by corn uh,

[0:03:06 Speaker 1] maybe in post

[0:03:07 Speaker 0] baby in post now. I think I want to have it all like right here, yes, our sound technicians are going, no, you can’t do that,

[0:03:15 Speaker 1] you rain stick for your. But

[0:03:16 Speaker 0] at any, at any rate, donald trump is coming back to texas this week for a joint appearance at the texas Mexico border with Governor Greg Abbott. I think this is much anticipated in the state and likely to get a good deal of national media attention. Um, and this comes as Governor Abbott has launched a kind of multi front policy and political offensive on the subjects of border security and immigration. I think we’ve already talked on the podcast a few times about the governor rabbits announced plan to build a texas funded wall. We’re getting seeing coverage in several media markets and a lot on social media today about various kind of law enforcement units from states with Republican governors being sent to texas to pitch in. So this is gonna be a big event this week that comes in a very contextually rich setting. So, you know, starting with the pole josh. What in the poll do you think helped set the stage for this visit?

[0:04:15 Speaker 1] One of the thing that service obviously sets the stage for this visit is looking at and looking at the trends behind Texans use of one of the most important problems facing the state. And you know, if you look at the most recent poll, we just released 34% of Texans so plurality, this is one of the biggest topic Said that immigration or border security security was the most important issue that the state of Texas is currently facing right now. And the thing to know is that this is driven almost primarily, but not wholly, but largely by Republican voters. So 59% of Republican voters said that immigration or border security is the most important issue facing the state. Another way to look at that, just, you know, in terms of just try to interpret what does that mean to say? Well, you know, if you were to find a random Republican voter, it’s likely that two out of three, if you ask them what’s the biggest issue the taxation right now would say, immigration or border security. So the attention that we see Abbott laying on it others is really unsurprising. I think what might be surprising For people kind of going back over, I mean, someone’s the year of Poland you’ve mentioned over COVID is the fact that nothing else has really dented the durability and the strength of the importance of this issue to Republican voters. So if we go back to, you know, sort of that one before the pandemic had begun spreading in Texas, but, you know, it’s sort of something that we were watching national internationally. In February of 2020, 54% of Republican voters said that immigration or border security is the most important problem, pretty similar to where we are today. By april with Covid kind of taking over the news. 27% of republicans said Covid was the top issue facing the state, but 26% still said immigration and border security. So ultimately, even as Covid was, was advancing, really, it was only on even par with republicans in terms of how much how important of an issue they thought it was amazingly, by june when really, if you think about if you go back and look at the curves and the case count, when the curve was really starting to ramp up At that point, only 19% said COVID was the top issue. Now, it was 29% said immigration border security. So still the top issue. This is by June of 2020, this is a year ago. Immigration border security was still a big issue. We jump ahead, let’s say to february of this year, 46% said it was immigration or border security, only 13% Covid. And amazingly, in March, when we pulled just after the winter storm and and all of the unpleasantness associated with that, including a lot of death, 61% of republicans said immigration or border security was the number one issue facing the state. Only 6% said covid, 1% said energy or any and maybe another 1% said anything else related potentially to the grid and the blackouts. So this is just an issue that just is a perpetual set piece really for Republican politics in the state. In a way that really few issues can

[0:06:58 Speaker 0] even come close

[0:07:00 Speaker 1] to mirroring. There’s

[0:07:01 Speaker 0] so many different directions to run with this. I mean, I think it’s interesting, particularly I think, you know, most recently, to look at just how dominant we use this phrase a lot. I think both of us I rely on it probably too much, but just, you know, the ability of border security and immigration to just take up so much cognitive real estate among republicans as a group. I’m really struck by the fact that to jump ahead a little bit into another result in the poll. But in this context, it’s not as if Republican voters, like Democratic voters, are particularly optimistic about what’s going to happen with the power grid after The experience that we had in the state in February. And yet somehow that problem hasn’t risen to become competitive in science because, you know, what was the result? I mean, only something like it was 20% or so thought that the legislature had acted in a way that would improve the reliability of the electric moving forward. That’s about right.

[0:08:00 Speaker 1] It was less than 15 for sure. It was less than 4-5 in any group are either very extremely or very confident. The legislature basically has done anything effective related to this.

[0:08:07 Speaker 0] And so it’s, you know, I mean, to be fair, I suppose that there are a lot of people that just think that the grid is too big a problem. I mean, you know what, this brings us into a whole other topic, but that but that the grid is too big a problem for government to tackle. But in a lot of ways, I mean, tracked ability can only get you so far and expanding those things because, you know, to be, you know, I don’t think you have to be an MSNBC commentator to observe that at this point in time, building a wall of the texas border is a a daunting practical problem. And be even if you could snap your fingers and have barriers up and down, you know, from one end of the border to the other, that it’s gonna be incredibly effective in assuaging the problem. And so I think the intractability of the problem doesn’t get you very far, even though I’m tempted to kind of go there.

[0:08:58 Speaker 1] Well, it’s funny, I mean, I think that’s a funny comparison to bring up in some ways, but it’s also really telling right? I mean, I think there’s there’s there’s two sort of, you know, I think broad lessons to draw from that comparison, right? One is the fact that, you know, on the one hand, you have this this very, you know, seemingly very salient recent issue in the case of the winter storm that really affected, you know, I don’t want to say affected everybody, affected a lot of people and it certainly affected most people in the state in a pretty serious way.

[0:09:26 Speaker 0] Our own polling in March then in the polling we did right after the incident with the Energy Institute at UT. As I recall two thirds of respondents in that poll said that they experienced some kind of hardship or some kind of impact as a result of the storm in the outages.

[0:09:43 Speaker 1] Right? And anecdotally, we know from people in and around the process that they were hearing about it from their constituents probably still are. But what’s interesting is, you know, this is a policy area where everybody gets touched. I mean, ultimately, if the legislature went fix the grid came back, you know, and there was never a problem, and it was stronger. It was more resilient. You know, I mean, again, you kind of get, you don’t really get a lot of credit for not for bad things not happening. But ultimately, you know, when bad things do happen, people are clearly going to say, hey, what do the Legislature do? And they’re gonna say nothing, There’s going to be some kind of ramification there. So, on the one hand, you know, it’s interesting, you’ve got this policy here where everybody could potentially feeling, then you’ve got this other sort of big thing, immigration that even though it’s not something, I mean, you know, I think it’s funny you’re saying the grid is this big intractable problem. And then we say, well, of course,

[0:10:28 Speaker 0] so is immigration securitisation

[0:10:30 Speaker 1] and border security. And I mean, so, I mean, so that’s, you know, funny those two issues being compared. But then the other piece I would just add to this is the grid is something that happened and clearly affected people in a way that they told us it affected them. Immigration is something that regardless of what’s going on, people still tell us it’s a huge problem. And this is not to say, and I just want to put this out there because one of things I didn’t say what I went through the rundown. Look, I think it would be disingenuous to say that there is not an issue at the border right now. I mean, there’s a lot

[0:10:56 Speaker 0] that would be wrong. Could be

[0:10:58 Speaker 1] wrong. So, I mean, I would say it’s not to say it’s not a policy problem, but the point is the point to just draw out of this is that, you know, attention to immigration and border security does not depend on conditions on the ground, it is always there. So it’s not to be dismissive of the current crisis. It’s just to point out in that trend, really, the nature of what crisis or crises are currently. The either don’t really affect Republican attachment to this issue.

[0:11:21 Speaker 0] Right? And so, I mean, I think that does, you know, lead us inevitably to the currents that are informing attention to the problem. You know, the underlying political and attitudinal currents that are that are directing people’s attention to the border and keeping them focused on border security and and immigration. And we have, you know, a lot of, you know, we didn’t ask that many specific questions in this poll because we’ve asked you asked in april and we’ve asked a lot before. But, you know, there are well formed and intense opinions about specific policy preferences among republicans, you know, probably do in form part of this question. The answer to the question we’re asking here about why the durability and why the science compared to other things that do seem to impact people directly.

[0:12:08 Speaker 1] Yeah, I mean, I would I mean, we could point to a million. I mean, when you say, you know, we we didn’t ask about in april. It’s like, I mean, I kind of want to say because we’ve asked about

[0:12:16 Speaker 0] we didn’t ask about in june, but yeah, we had asked about it in april right.

[0:12:20 Speaker 1] But that’s the point, right, is that we asked, I mean, we’ve asked so many questions about immigration, both, you know, sort of trend questions to get general assessments and specific questions relevant to whatever it might be at a time, whether it’s separating parents and Children, whether it’s the current surge of unaccompanied minors, whether it’s legal immigration, illegal immigration onward and et cetera, and the point is, is that, you know, is a broad summary statement. The most important problem doesn’t tell us the direction of the policy that republicans want to pursue. But the response to all of these questions show there’s without fail a majority of Republican voters who would take the punitive position on any aspect of any immigration question, whether it has to do with the contribution of immigrants, whether it has to do with what we should do with undocumented immigrants from the country, where there has to do with legal immigration, illegal immigration, Children at the border border security spending a wall sanctuary cities. I could go on and on because we’ve asked about all of it. And so it’s not really like there’s not a clear signal for Republican officeholders on this.

[0:13:20 Speaker 0] Yeah. And there’s, you know, there’s real directional guidance if you will to be as stale as possible in a lot of those questions. But even in terms of, you know, I think another another way of looking at the science and kind of thinking about just how powerful these attitudes are and how how big a presence it is, is to look at when it directly competes with other Republican priorities. So, you know, one of the big questions that is clearly raised by Governor Abbott’s recent advocacy for, you know, texas, pain for a much needed set of barriers in texas is that this is an expensive project in a state that is historically been pretty stingy about public spending. And yet, if you look at going into when you look at some of the results, we got Going into the session in February, we were asking about spending and we asked people broadly, as I recall, do you think Texas you should spend more, spend less or keep the budget about the same on a bunch of different items, 61% of Republicans wanted to spend more on border security. And at that point Texas was already spending I think between $800 and $900 million Republicans were very willing to spend more. Now, I think how much more and for what is a fair question to ask? And I think it is going to be a question that looms over here, and I kind of go back and forth. I mean, if you ask me at this moment, I think Governor Abbott probably has a lot of latitude, you know, to spend more money if the if the legislature will give it to him and if he can find it. But I don’t know, I don’t know where the limit is.

[0:14:59 Speaker 1] Well, it sort of raises this question of, you know, and I mean, I think it’s a question that’s been out there and kind of re cast a bunch of times, both, I think in the, you know, at the onset of trump’s presidency and certainly and does its wake, which is, you know, what does it mean to be a republican at this point? What does that look like? What are the ideological underpinnings? And I think, you know, there’s, I mean, you know, you’re alluding to sort of, yeah, you can say that sort of the classic, well, there’s a constitutional conservative and say, well, except that immigration is a federal policy. You can say there’s fiscal conservatism. It’s like, yeah, but we remember two sessions ago when DPS was laughed out of the room for asking for a billion

[0:15:30 Speaker 0] dollars. Yeah, they were worse than left, and they were kind of called on the carpet and, you know, given a little bit of a thumping expectedly by democrats, but also by republicans,

[0:15:39 Speaker 1] right? But what’s interesting here is, you know, you see this issue in immigration border security, I’m not sure this is the only issue. So I wouldn’t necessarily set it out where, you know, at this point, kind of like a lot of things in the trump presidency. I’m not just putting this as part of trump, because I think as we’ve been really clear, I should say right here, these attitudes predate President trump by a

[0:15:56 Speaker 0] long shot by

[0:15:58 Speaker 1] a long shot. But ultimately, there does seem to be, you know, it ends justify the means, kind of, argument towards this, you know, kind of, form of governing at this point that really says, well, you know, these principles are abstract, and ultimately, the other thing is kind of in the poll that were, you know, we really plan to talk about and talk about now, but it’s something else to consider later is Republican orientation towards, sort of, the business interests and business groups that have often really probably cautioned a softer tone on immigration, you know, I would say, have probably also been some of the biggest proponents of fiscal conservatism and limited government are kind of in a position where they’re a little bit at odds with the Republican Party over their positioning on social justice issues and really other issues in society voting, etcetera.

[0:16:38 Speaker 0] Well, and I think the business groups, you know, have always picked their spots on these big kind of macro level issues like this, you know, and I think we’re going to continue to see that, but, you know, we’re going to continue to see that with in this area. I mean, you know, is it, you know, so, you know, I think since, you know, we’ve gone this far on this, you know, we should also then talk about the politics on the, you know, the other side of this, if you will, and that, you know, we also did ask for, you know, specific job approval ratings for Greg Abbott and for joe biden in on border security and, and immigration issues. You know, I think, you know, Abbott’s looked about like we would expect, you know, they were not that different as I recall from his overall approval numbers, but there was a big difference in the biden numbers.

[0:17:30 Speaker 1] Yeah, biden was only 27 approved. 57 disapproved. So we asked about biden approval overall where he’s a little bit underwater. On Covid where he was above water continues to be one of his strong, strong policy areas, The economy where he was underwater, but then on immigration border security way underwater. So a majority of voters disapprove of the job he’s doing only 27% approved. That’s a net negative 30 approved minus disapproved. Republicans are overwhelmingly disapproving 89% disapproved most of those strongly. Which is not surprising right? If you follow politics in any way, shape or form, but only 56% of democrats approved an 18% disapprove. So you’re getting to, you know, about one in five texas. Democrats don’t really approve of the job biden is doing on the border. I think that’s why we saw Vice President Harris come down recently. There clearly this is not an issue that they can kind of wish away because it’s becoming a real drag

[0:18:23 Speaker 0] right, and we should, you know, and, you know, I think there’s two things to underline, I think about that one is that democratic objections to the President’s performance on immigration and border security. Some are probably similar to Republican criticisms, particularly in terms of border security, strictly speaking, in terms of safety and increases in crime and mayhem in the border area,

[0:18:47 Speaker 1] which have been

[0:18:48 Speaker 0] pretty widely reported. And and are, you know, concerns of these are some of these concerns have been articulated by Democratic members in the border area as well. So there’s that piece that, you know, the Democratic job approval, some of it’s coming from that place, but some of it is also coming from a perpetual democratic disappointment in how democratic presidents have handled the border in terms of practical policy, addressing long term solutions, um and on humanitarian grounds and biden this, you know, having some of the same problems that Barack Obama had throughout his presidency on this

[0:19:24 Speaker 1] issue. Yeah, I mean, the thing is that your democrats have the difficulty of balancing, you know, their orientation towards border policy and border security with, you know, the constituencies of their party, which tend to be diverse and have, you know, probably well, and I just, you know, definitional, have more interaction with immigrant communities based on just the overall composition of the parties. You know, republicans don’t have that same problem. The problem for, you know, a Democratic president in texas is that, you know, I would say, you know, hispanic attitudes towards the hispanic voter, attitudes towards these issues in texas, and even democratic attitude towards these issues in texas aren’t, you know, certainly are not universally liberal. And so there’s a tension here between, you know, I would say, the experience of, you know, say, what are can be, you know, let’s say, quote, unquote good democratic voters in texas who still, you know, see a problem at the border and want to see it addressed. And I think, you know, it’s a national democratic aspirations to be appealing to more and more diverse voters, and it’s just it’s not really working

[0:20:26 Speaker 0] right. And so, you know, I was saying there’s two aspects of this that I think are worth underlining. That’s one of them, is that kind of what’s going on internally, in in the, you know, the Democratic coalition, if you will, or among democratic voters, and Democratic elites for that matter, you know, some of whom have been kind of a thorn in the in the biden administrations side on on these issues, I won’t mention any names, Henry Cuellar

[0:20:49 Speaker 1] was going to say,

[0:20:50 Speaker 0] but I would also, you know, but I think the other point to underline here is that, again, in strictly political terms, that also makes this a pretty good issue for republicans, and in particular for the governor who you sort of talk about this, you know, frequently, and I think it’s a good point to make, and it’s not that Greg Abbott ever enjoyed, you know, some huge amount of crossover support, but at a couple of peaks during crisis times. You know, he’s gotten in the ballpark of about a quarter of democrats giving him at least a guardedly positive job approval rating. And he peaked at 20 for the early stages of the 24% among democrats in the early stages of the covid pandemic. Now, that’s all gone down, but to the extent that you’re an Abbot team that is certainly focused right now on Republican, on Republican primary issues. Like a lot of there’s no two ways about that. But, you know, it is possible for a good campaign to look for issues that allow them to do two things at once and this that makes this not a terrible issue for the governor in terms of some of the democrats that you’re talking about, that might be a little bit more of the moderate end or might be considering, you know, their certainly their their their job assessment and job approval ratings based on some more proximate

[0:22:12 Speaker 1] conditions. I think that I think that’s a really good point. A really good way to look at it. Because what I’m thinking about is you’re describing that is, you know, if you’re gregg Abbott right now and you’re thinking, okay, I’m heading, you know, into Republican primary, I’m relatively confident a general election. What do I want to talk about? And let’s say the issues are the issue basket includes immigration is a possibility, but also some of these other issues. We’ve been talking a lot about voting rights, guns, abortion. Some of the really hot button stuff in the Legislature has been addressing all of those issues are clearly attractive to Republican primary voters. But one of the things that, you know, has been, kind of going on here is they’re attractive to a point. You know, republicans have been in charge for a while, They have to, you know, sort of pursue increasingly extreme policies to cater to, You know, the most active primary voters in their party. But ultimately, that still means that you’ve got somewhere between 20 and 30% of Republicans, like, you know, I don’t know if we should be having people walking around with guns without

[0:23:03 Speaker 0] training, you

[0:23:04 Speaker 1] know, and that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to say,

[0:23:06 Speaker 0] completely banning abortion.

[0:23:08 Speaker 1] Right at the same time, those issues Gardere a negative response among 85-95% of Democrats, and most of it strongly, there’s no question about it. So, if I’m sitting there and I’m a Democratic candidate right now, and let’s say, you know, Greg Abbott wants to talk about guns or abortion, I’m not sure that I’m not relatively comfortable with that, given where the attitudes are in my party. And the fact that there’s certainly a lot of conflict leads among independents and even a little bit among republicans. But on immigration, Abbott can go and rely on the fact that most of his partisans agree with them. Most of them agree with him strongly on this issue. Really, there’s very there’s almost don’t want to say there’s not a line he could cross, because there definitely isn’t usually involves Children here at the border, but he can pursue pretty much, I wouldn’t say any policy but close to any policy. And the fact is that there is, in this case, there’ll be some democrats who are like, well, it’s better than what we’re doing

[0:23:59 Speaker 0] right well, and on the point about Children, I mean, you know, that brings up something that I’ve been wanting to, we just produced a column that’s under review at the tribune right now, and hopefully we’ll we’ll get ross’s sign off on this. But, you know, something I couldn’t find a place for in that piece, you know, as you raise the point about Children and that there are limits on this has been, I think something very notable in The governor’s re emphasis of these issues in the post legislative, pre 2022 context. And that’s the his recourse to, I’m not going to say recourse his deployment of a very emotional tone in talking about the way that the biden administration has, you know, from, you know, in their messaging endangered Texans and put people on the border and all Texans in danger because of his lack of because the biden administration’s failure. And even the suggestion that, you know, the humanitarian crisis, the degree to which, you know, there are vulnerable populations being hurt by this. He events is a kind of anger when he’s blaming the bite administration about that. And for you, if you look at it, it’s very performative and it’s uh you know, and it’s been repeated too many times. I think I’m going back and looking at the last few press conferences that he’s done in public events. It strikes me that they’re very aware of that point that you’re making in the way that they are approaching

[0:25:31 Speaker 1] this. You know, you said something a few weeks ago in an email that I’ll repeat here, which is we’re not really here here to cast blame at the texas politics project. But as you speak about that, it’s hard for me not to think about the fact that the state’s own child protective services apparatuses under federal conservatorship because it’s endangered Children so

[0:25:49 Speaker 0] much. And

[0:25:50 Speaker 1] so that’s why I mean, when you say, you know, well, it’s it feels almost performative. I mean, you know, I know that like, I mean, you’re a resistance saying that I’m a little hesitant saying that except for the fact that you guys, well, you know, uh yeah, if you could see us, we’re both kind of throwing our hands

[0:26:04 Speaker 0] well, and you know, I mean, I just think it’s it’s I think you have to really work overtime to ignore what’s right in front of your face if you don’t notice that that is going on in some of the tonal messaging that’s been going on. And I, you know, I I expect we’ll see a lot more of it. I could be wrong. And I would say this if I’m wrong, then we won’t see any of it on thursday. But I’ll bet you a lot when when that event happens at the border that we will see, you know, a projection of of of anger from the governor. And if we don’t, I mean, you know,

[0:26:37 Speaker 1] if we don’t, it’s because trump didn’t

[0:26:39 Speaker 0] well, I mean, I would say if I don’t, it’s because, you know, he doesn’t really want to, you know, I would understand the governor not wanting to try to compete with the former president’s ability to be performative. Let’s put it that way.

[0:26:52 Speaker 1] That’s a wise decision.

[0:26:53 Speaker 0] I think there is one last thing to point out before we go and that is, you know, just I think, anticipating the fact that that donald trump would continue to be a factor in Republican politics. And you know, I don’t think we knew that he was coming to the border yet when we designed the last, when we wrote the last poll. But you know, sometimes happens, we got lucky and he had we had a trump approval rating, you know, five unfavorability rating since we are not approving his job. He’s doing anymore. And I’m sure he’s doing a bang up job running that corporation. And his approval numbers were basically as high as they’ve ever been in texas. Right?

[0:27:30 Speaker 1] Yeah, right. I mean, you know, they look a lot like any Republican elect, officially, at least. Let me put it out there. So 47 or has had a favorable opinion, 47 had an unfavorable 91% of Democrats in an unfavorable opinion, 88% of Democrats, a very unfavorable opinion, 86% of Republicans had a favorable opinion. 56% of very favorable opinion. And this is really tied, you know, for his highest overall net rating. It’s a pretty fixed pattern and

[0:27:56 Speaker 0] yeah, but you know, he plateaus and stayed there pretty early.

[0:28:01 Speaker 1] Right? I mean, I think the notable thing just as you know, ending on this piece is that, you know, Trump started sort of came onto the scene in an international way. I mean, he’s obviously run for president before, but we start pulling about him seriously, you know, heading into the 2016 primaries in 2016 election. And, you know, at first his evaluations were extremely negative and they were negative among Democrats are negative among Republicans. He was just negative. He became president, I think especially, I mean, the peak of that negativity sort of came just before the election when everybody thought he was going to lose, he won. And then all of a sudden, you know, republicans came

[0:28:30 Speaker 0] around, although his republican numbers that did start to recover as it as he became a winner, I think,

[0:28:35 Speaker 1] I think it will. But the thing is everybody thought going into october that he’s going to lose, so there is

[0:28:40 Speaker 0] our winner in the primary.

[0:28:41 Speaker 1] Right, Right, right. Yeah, a little bit, you know, I think the thing that’s interesting is, you know, we sort of said trump out, is this kind of, you know, I don’t know this, this other entity and you know, that sort of is this so different than anything? And I think one of the notable things in this poll, As, you know, we kind of think about, you know, the power that Trump exerts over the party and all that. And this is something, you know, it’s sort of interesting to me watching this poll for 10 years, is the fact that Democrats now rate Republican officials almost uniformly as negatively amongst the group as anyone. So what, and that’s a weird way to say that what I mean by that, when we say that better, is it as negative as democrats, attitudes towards Donald trump are ultimately they have nearly as negative attitudes towards Ted Cruz. They have nearly as negative and universal attitude towards Greg Abbott. You know, we looked at ken paxton, 66% of Democrats have a negative view of compact. We think of compact the original, something that people might not know. A majority of democrats hold say that they disapprove strongly of the job that ken paxton is doing, his attorney general again, he’s a special case. But the point is that in general right now, the goodwill that republicans would expect from some democratic voters in the state has evaporated.

[0:29:45 Speaker 0] Hence our discussion earlier about needing to do some pole work on negative partisanship in the near future, right there in your future. So, Donald trump will be in texas this week, keep an eye out for that. He is you know, I think not to underline, not not to discount the point just made, but he comes still riding a wave of popularity, at least among republicans in texas. That makes him an asset. And I think it makes the both the optics and the performative aspects we can anticipate this week at the border and his event with Governor Abbott of much interest. So keep an eye out for that. Thanks to josh for being here today. Thanks to our crew in the development studio in the College of Liberal Arts for their excellent production help is always uh you can find the data we discussed today and much, much more again on the texas politics project website texas politics dot utexas dot e d u. Thanks for listening And we’ll be back next week. The second reading podcast is a production of the texas politics project at the University of texas at austin.