March 28th, 2023 – Republican primary voters’ influence on the agenda of the Texas Legislature

[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 departure from the Constitution, they have become the norm. At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be re. Over the male colleagues in the room

[00:00:34] 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. Happy to be joined today by Josh Blank, research Director for the Texas Politics Project. How are you on this fine Tuesday morning, Josh. I’m feeling pretty good.

[00:00:52] Jim Henson: Yeah, we’re here in the, uh, the very active fog of war section of the legislative session. Yeah. I, you know, but

[00:00:58] Josh Blank: a lot going on. Yeah. But it’s fun. This is where, you know, I mean, in some ways it really starts to take shape, you know? Yeah. In some

[00:01:03] Jim Henson: ways. It’s funny, I was around a lot of legislative people last night at a good event, but I, fun was not a l a word I heard

[00:01:09] Josh Blank: a lot.

[00:01:10] Josh Blank: Well, you know, I have a certain distance from the thing that allows me to have more fun maybe than most .

[00:01:15] Jim Henson: Uh, I think for those, yeah, intuit up in their neck is a little more of a sloggy feel. Although, you know, I, I shouldn’t say that. I mean a, a little more positive than I thought. There were a lot of people kind of going, yeah.

[00:01:24] Jim Henson: You know, we’re where we are in the session. You know, the macro situation is what it is. Yeah. You know, but, uh, but, but I would’ve to say, I did not hear the word fine much. Oh. Um, oh, exactly. Poor, poor folks. Yeah. So, you know, apropo of that stage of the session as, as the session unfolds, you know, the discussion of what the most important policy areas and and legislation are you.

[00:01:52] Jim Henson: In this very busy mid-section of the session continues, um, you know, particularly amidst the session with a lot of competing top priorities. Now, I think there’s a, there’s a lot of agreement on what those priorities are. I mean, I broadly, you know, well, I mean, I mean, yeah, I mean, I don’t think what the. , you know, what the, what the specific form is, right?

[00:02:13] Jim Henson: Which is, you know, a, a a different thing. But I mean, I, you know, did a panel over the weekend, uh, for, um, the, one of the engineering, the, the big engineering professional group. Great group. I appreciated being invited and, you know, paneled Harvey Kremberg and, and the GA person, one of the GA folks from, from that organization.

[00:02:36] Jim Henson: And there wasn’t a lot of disagreement over what the big chunks are. Yeah. You know, I mean, there’s a bunch of stuff bubbling under, and of course what’s gonna happen within those big policy areas. Sure. But I, I thought what we’d do today is try to explore some of the underpinnings of one of the more common explanations of, or speculation about what is driving those priorities.

[00:03:01] Jim Henson: And not even the big ones, but the more hot button priorities that we’re seeing. And I, I think, you know, those are two different things. So if we’re saying, look, there’s, you know, there’s gonna be a property tax cut. , you know, there’s, you know, like, you know, there’s gonna be fighting over a voucher bill, you know, but there’s gonna be something done in the, the nexus of education and property taxes.

[00:03:24] Jim Henson: Right. Um, you know, we know that there’s a lot of money to spend in the budget. That’s one thing. But I think what, you know, certainly you and I get asked a lot and, and mm-hmm. , certainly in the past week where we saw hearings on a lot of the very controversial bills that are out there. You know, a lot of questions, you know, are.

[00:03:45] Jim Henson: Kind of revolving around the attention being paid to things like treatment of, of trans kids, um, particularly medical treatment, um, you know, limiting women’s rights and abortion access, uh, education about ra, you know, educational and curriculum material about race and sex. You know, the content of library books, right?

[00:04:08] Jim Henson: And their availability issues like this. , you know, and I think the common explanation, you know, that we hear mostly is that the attention to these issues reflects the dominance of intensely conservative voters and the most engaged Republican partisans. And we make reference to this in the podcast all the time, that, you know, a powerful force here is the primary dynamic in the Republican party, right?

[00:04:36] Jim Henson: And the fact that the Republican primary. so important and so crucial to the vast majority of incumbents that are, you know, nominally at least, you know, at, you know, controlling the levers of the legislative process. Mm-hmm. and, and controlling kind of, you know, the big inputs on the agenda.

[00:04:57] Josh Blank: Well, and, and, and you know, and even say, and even very recently controlling the shape and nature of those districts in such a way that in many.

[00:05:04] Josh Blank: Even further entrenches the centrality of the Republican primary into their reelection prospects. Right?

[00:05:09] Jim Henson: So, so I mean, so I, what I thought we’d look at a little bit today, be in part, and you and I were talking about this obviously in the run up. . You know, I, I think we’ve taken kind of a, you know, different looks at this, at different points in time, but I, I thought it would be a good idea to treat it as a little bit of, you know, not to be the guys.

[00:05:29] Jim Henson: We are an empirical question. Ah, I love empirical questions. You know, in other words, you know, if, if we are going to attribute the energy on issues like this mm-hmm. . To the influence of Republican primary voters. And I’ll let you talk a little bit about different ways of operationalizing that. Sure. You know, is that evident in a consistent way in the polling data that we have?

[00:05:55] Jim Henson: So let’s start with that. So, you know, well, and before we start, you know, and that also obviously leads to a backup question that is subsidiary to this, which is, you know, probably equally important in the longer run in terms of thinking about. , you know, playing out the logic of that proposition. Mm-hmm.

[00:06:12] Jim Henson: because obviously the other part of that proposition, if he’s saying, look where things matter are Republican primaries, and that is an internal incentive for, for members and for, and for political actors and for, you know, for that matter, for the statewides. Mm-hmm. , um, How does you know, if we do, if we can identify that faction in the party, how different are the attitudes of, you know, for lack of a better phrase, you know, the rest of the Republicans, right?

[00:06:41] Jim Henson: Right. I mean, how much, you know, how much distance is there between their two? Is this, is there a potential for friction? Be like a lot of the, you know, a lot of the times that we resort or, or wind up having to reference this kind of explanation. Mm-hmm. is people looking. Polling data that suggests that public opinion is in fact closely divided on a lot of these issues, and even on some of them.

[00:07:02] Jim Henson: Probably most prominently guns, and depending on how it’s framed, abortion, Republican legislators and and leaders seem to be pursuing policies that are at least, you know, in some cases, at odds with the majority of public opinion. Mm-hmm. , but in, in other cases though, or in other cases, You know, seem to be taking a, a really pronounced or even extreme position on issues in which public opinion is very closely divided and wouldn’t seem to bear that.

[00:07:33] Jim Henson: So, so let’s start with that. Yeah. So let’s, so, so first of all, let’s, let’s start with decomposing Republican voters. Yeah. And just what

[00:07:39] Josh Blank: does that look like? Well, I just wanna say one more thing about that. Cause I think it’s an important point here is, you know, I, I think the way that you’re talking about this, I mean, what I think about is, you know, how do you, how do, how do the elected officials think about exposure?

[00:07:50] Josh Blank: Yeah, and where exposure lies, and sometimes you could say that lies in the general election. You look at the, you know, the sum of public opinion. You say, oh, this is the wrong side. Sometimes you’re looking at it, you know, again, just among Republicans and you’re saying, okay, well, you know, let’s say the state, like in the last session is gonna move ahead on pretty restrictive abortion legislation, pretty permissive gun legislation.

[00:08:08] Josh Blank: Then you say, well, there’s about a third. According to a third of Republicans who are not on board with this. But that didn’t create enough exposure to stop any of its right. And then we move ahead to, that’s the argument. And then we, yeah. And then we move to ahead to this session. And ultimately one of the things that’s gonna be apparent in the data is that, you know, first of all, Republican voters have updated their views because the policies have changed so much.

[00:08:26] Josh Blank: But then we’re at a new point now where we have to say, okay, did that third. , did it stay the same? But then further, the other piece of this that we always talk about is, you know, what about the most committed and most intense Republican voters who we think, yeah, they’re a small share of the party and we’ll talk about this, but they’re a larger share of the Republican primary elector and they become the basis of, you know, essentially a challenge if there’s reason to have discontent.

[00:08:49] Josh Blank: And so part of this is sort of figuring out, you know, within the public, You know, bands where are there is are constraints potentially and how that might explain where we’re seeing movement in the legislature without any sort of seeming stop edge and where maybe there’s a little bit more uncertainty about what’s gonna happen.

[00:09:03] Josh Blank: And I think actually the data bears out a relatively nuanced story here. That’s kind of interesting. So first, you know, we just talk about like the, you know, the Republican electorate generally. Right. Uh, you know, what we’re looking at, we’re trying to say, you know, what, really we’re trying to identify within that electorate, you know, first of all, where are they on these issues, but also, you know, again, where are the most conservative among them, and how do we think about that?

[00:09:21] Josh Blank: So, a couple ways. Who, who are they? Who are they? Right. So first of all, you know, 78% of re republicans in tech voters in Texas identify as conservative. . I mean, just so this is not like there’s a big divide here. There’s not a ton of moderates in the Republican

[00:09:33] Jim Henson: party, and that’s been very consistent for a long time.

[00:09:35] Jim Henson: Extreme. It’s extremely consistent. Yeah. There’s a great graph on our, on the Texas Politics project website at Texas politics dot u texas.edu. It’s a, if you just search for it, ideolog ideological. Yeah. You’ll find it. You’ll find it. And it’s, it’s, it’s a pretty interesting, it’s a pretty interesting illustration.

[00:09:53] Jim Henson: The internal composition of the Republican party in terms of how they are, idea how they identify ideologically.

[00:09:59] Josh Blank: Right. So then within those, you know, and then when you say, okay, within those conservatives, how do you know they can iden, uh, we can divide them a little bit further. So equal shares about 34% to about a third of Republicans identify as extremely conservative.

[00:10:12] Josh Blank: another 34%. Another third identify as somewhat conservative, and the rest identify basically as moderate and a some, and a few are confused. Right. Is what I would just kind of say. And that’s true in general, but what you mean they,

[00:10:21] Jim Henson: they identify as liberal basically?

[00:10:23] Josh Blank: Yeah. Okay. So about a third say they’re extremely conservative.

[00:10:27] Josh Blank: About a third of Republicans also say that Republican elected officials in Texas are not conservative enough. Now, this is important, right? We talked about the last session being, you know, one of the most conservative in Texas history, however you wanna measure that or think about it or whatever. But there’s still about a third of Republican voters within Republicans who say, the elected officials.

[00:10:43] Josh Blank: Yeah. Talk a little bit about the question about how, yeah. The way we do this is that we once, once, once people have identified whether they, uh, whether they tend to identify with a Democratic or Republican party, then after they do that and we ask ’em some other questions, we say, okay, for Republican.

[00:10:55] Josh Blank: Just among Republicans, we ask, you know, are Republican, in your opinion, basically are Republican elected officials in Texas too conservative, not conservative enough or conservative enough? And we’ve asked the same thing about the liberalism of Democratic elected officials to Democrats. Are they liberal enough, not liberal enough, you know, too liberal.

[00:11:10] Josh Blank: And what we find is that, you know, again, even in, in a very conservative state like Texas, with a very conservative legislative output, about a third of republicans say that elected officials in Texas are not conservative. . Now, when we look at just the extremely conservative voters, more than half of those, I’m sorry, more than half of those voters who say that the Texas Republicans are not conservative enough, are the extremely conservative ones.

[00:11:28] Josh Blank: Now, that’s not surprising. Right? That’s, you know, that should make sense, right? Yeah. That,

[00:11:31] Jim Henson: but we can, that makes me feel like we’re, we’re measuring the right thing here. Yeah, we’re getting some measure. It would be weird if it was anything else and the, uh, you know, good estimates I should say. And then if you

[00:11:38] Josh Blank: wanna say, okay, so who are, who might we define as the pool of what I would say like, you know, discontent conservatives, the people who say I’m an extremely conservative.

[00:11:47] Josh Blank: Voter I am, you know, I’m a Republican and I don’t think that Republican elected officials in Texas are conservative enough. Overall, that’s about 17% of of Republicans not a huge share of the overall party, but. As we’re talking about the small size probably hides, you know, relatively high rates of Republican primary participation.

[00:12:10] Josh Blank: I think that’s pr, I think that gets pro borne out by anyone who looks at this data pretty closely. I think it’s gonna be borne out in the polling data, which I think it certainly is. And I think if you were to talk to any sort of, you know, again, campaign consultant about this, you know, we could quibble about.

[00:12:22] Josh Blank: What exactly is the right set of questions. Right. But I think if we were to say, is this number way off in terms of an estimate? Right. And this

[00:12:28] Jim Henson: is where we have to remind people, I think, or you know, a lot of our listeners will know this. Yeah. But it’s a good, good time to say and remember turnout rates and Republican primaries.

[00:12:38] Jim Henson: Yeah. Not very high. We’re talking between five and 15% overall. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, in, in raw numbers. . You know, I think in a presidential year we’re looking at a little over 2 million. In midterm years, we’re looking at between 1.5 and

[00:12:52] Josh Blank: two. Yeah. And we’re talking about certainly, you know, around, you know, in terms of the overall turnaround, this probably we’re talking about 10% of the RV population, registered voter s Right.

[00:13:00] Josh Blank: So I mean, so when you say 17% of Republican voters are extremely conservative and don’t feel like Texas is conservative enough, You know, you may be talking about a pretty

[00:13:08] large

[00:13:09] Jim Henson: share of Yeah, yeah. A likely share. Yeah. The likely share of people voting in Republican primaries among these much higher than 17.

[00:13:15] Josh Blank: Right, exactly. Okay. So that’s sort of the, the universe. And so then the question becomes, okay, what, what kind of, you know, impact do these identifications and these overall attitudes have on the issues that we’re looking at? And especially right now during the 88th session. So I think the most important thing to just say at the outset, This is important and we’ve said it before,

[00:13:34] Jim Henson: sorry, the Rosetta Stone of Republican politics.

[00:13:37] Jim Henson: Here it

[00:13:37] Josh Blank: comes. Immigration in the border is, we had a sound effect with, I know. I’m gonna think about a drum roll sound effect would be very good. I don’t know if that would be, if I want to, anyway, I don’t wanna think about that later. In production values, , you know, if you think there’s a sound that would, that wouldn’t be perfect for that email jimson.

[00:13:52] Josh Blank: Well, you

[00:13:52] Jim Henson: know, basically, uh, you know, a drum roll is only if you use a drum roll in an audio recording. You’re really only about a beat. You know, you’re inevitably on the road to a. Yeah. .

[00:14:02] Josh Blank: Well, you know, a little clown horn. We’ll get there someday if we get big enough. Okay, so the immigration of the border is still the top text priority.

[00:14:10] Josh Blank: When we asked, uh, you know, an open-ended question in our February poll at the beginning of the session, you know, what should the legislature be focusing on? You can say anything you want. One in four voters said immigration of the border, 49% of Republicans. 55% of extremely conservative voters and 58% of the discontent, discontent conservatives out there.

[00:14:28] Josh Blank: That 17% group said immigration the border. So we have to put that out at the outset. This is a dominant issue within Republican Box, and it’s really important, I think, because in a lot of ways what this does is it actually creates a lot of space. Right? Right.

[00:14:42] Jim Henson: Because I mean, you know, in practical terms on the ground, Overwhelming consensus, the overwhelming presence of this among Republican voters, which is no corollary among Democrats.

[00:14:53] Jim Henson: Right. Well, there’s nothing like that exactly for Democrats, as we’ve said in here before. in many ways has moved border security and immigration out of most of the active policy discussions. Mm-hmm. , because as we’ve mentioned in here a couple of times already, both the House and the Senate budgets had nearly iden, I think maybe even identical, you know, amounts of funding for iig, for border security, for state spending on border security.

[00:15:18] Jim Henson: Right. And it included a slight increase. So we’re now getting in the hive. F you know, high range of more than 4 billion. Closer

[00:15:26] Josh Blank: to five than four? No, no one. No one in any, no one with any degree of credibility or honesty could say that the state of Texas has not committed resources to defending its border.

[00:15:36] Josh Blank: Right. I mean, there’s just, you just, it’s

[00:15:38] Jim Henson: with more to come and, and you know, I mean, yeah. There is some action on here, but it’s really around, you know, relatively specific ideas. I think last week or the week before we talked about speaker feeling. Mm-hmm. , you know, including as one of his priorities, the creation of essentially a Texas a state border patrol, broadly speaking.

[00:15:56] Jim Henson: Right. So, but for purposes where we are now, it’s kind of in any big sense. It’s, you know, it’s, it’s off the table. Yeah. Well, and not off the table, but it’s just, it’s just not in the, not in the realm of debate. Right now’s

[00:16:08] Josh Blank: Well, it’s one of, yeah. And you think, you know, this session ends, you know, and I, I love this about Texas.

[00:16:12] Josh Blank: We go immediately into the campaign season, and if you’re a Republican elected official, in that period where you start raising money, you know, either between special, between before the special session or Yeah, just after whatever, you know, ultimately the first thing you’re gonna say is not only do we keep border security spending at its highest levels ever, we increased it to take on you.

[00:16:30] Josh Blank: Dig at the federal government. Dig it Biden. Then the question. Okay, now what? Right. What’s, what’s, what’s number two on the list? 3 45. Right. In some ways, when you look at these, the data that we have, you know, you can see the way that the politics within these groups, and I wanna be clear, I don’t think that, you know, I’m not saying that every, you know, member is sitting here looking at polling data in their district.

[00:16:49] Josh Blank: They’re elected because they’re good politicians and they’re out there and they’re listening to what their voters are telling them. It just so happens that they’re telling us kind of probably something pretty similar. And I think you see

[00:16:59] Jim Henson: that, and like a lot of people, you know, they, you know this firsthand, they.

[00:17:04] Jim Henson: pay a lot of attention to polling data, even as they question and complain about it and let that’s, you know, yeah, fine. Healthy skepticism is great, but you know, the idea that, you know, they don’t look at pol, they’re not aware of a lot of this stuff. There’s a lot of interest in

[00:17:17] Josh Blank: this. Right. Okay. So, so part of it, as you say, okay, where are we Definitely seeing some movement in the legislature and, you know, do we see reflections of that in the day?

[00:17:24] Josh Blank: And again, we’re picking out some hot button issues. Picking everything, we’re setting this

[00:17:27] Jim Henson: in. By movement you, you mean sort of legislative activity. Well, what I mean is attention,

[00:17:31] Josh Blank: you know, I mean if, if anybody’s being honest at this moment in time about what’s going in the legislative process, there are vastly more uncertainties than there are certainties.

[00:17:39] Josh Blank: Right? There are a couple things we know are gonna happen. There are a couple things that we are pretty sure are gonna happen, although the specifics of it definitely still need to play out. And there are some things that just seem to be kind of at a bit of a standstill relative to what we’ve seen in previous sessions.

[00:17:52] Josh Blank: Right? Right. And so if I’m looking at, you know, where are we having a bunch of high profile hearings early? Right. Who is laying the groundwork to actually get a bill to the floor? And what kinds of bills are we seeing? There’s some stuff where you’re definitely seeing that, and there’s other places that again, have been very active in recent years where maybe you’re not, and again,

[00:18:09] Jim Henson: we were talking beforehand, you know, we want to caveat this somewhat.

[00:18:12] Jim Henson: I mean, and you’ve put this in perspective, but I mean, you know, as we sit here, Right. You know, they’re, you know, Lieutenant, Lieutenant, governor Patrick, you know, started messaging either last night or this morning that, you know, he finds the house version of a property tax cut. Unacceptable. Right? Right.

[00:18:31] Jim Henson: And so we’re not saying that those big fights aren’t going on out there, but we’re interested in looking at these things that have been. You know, issues that have generated a lot of conflict and taken, taken up a lot of time. But the committee, at the committee level, then ultimately, right, I think we’ll see this in, in floor fights and in the, you know, to some degree in the fights between the two chambers.

[00:18:51] Jim Henson: And this

[00:18:52] Josh Blank: obviously says nothing about the thousands of thousands of bills that are about minor technical changes, right? Or led regulations and various

[00:18:59] Jim Henson: things or, or look big, big changes, but changes that nobody, you know, that big changes that affect a relatively, or have a relatively narrow. group of engaged stakeholders,

[00:19:11] Jim Henson: Right.

[00:19:11] Josh Blank: Okay. So with all those caveats aside, more caveats to come. Yeah, don’t worry. There’ll be more. Second caveat podcast. All right, so where are we seeing some movement? Well, one place I can say you’re definitely seeing some movement on voting laws. I mean, the move to, to reinstate the felony charge on, on, on, on a legal

[00:19:26] Jim Henson: voting is big, big.

[00:19:27] Jim Henson: I don’t if you watch a big hearing yesterday, committee hearing and yesterday in the Senate with, uh, Senator Bettencourt taking the.

[00:19:35] Josh Blank: Yeah, so that’s, I mean, that seems likely it’s gonna move forward. When we asked, uh, Texas voters at the beginning of the session, should voting laws be made more strict, less strict, or left as they are now, remember, this is in the context of the big omnibus voting legislation from the last session.

[00:19:47] Josh Blank: So a lot of movement happened on this recently, but a majority of Republicans, 54%, still wanna see those laws made more strict. If we look at the extreme conservatives, it’s 59%. If we look at the discontent, Conservatives, it’s 71%. So amongst those Texas Republicans who identify as extremely conservative and don’t think that Texas elected officials are conservative enough, Nearly three and four say the voting laws need to be made more strict.

[00:20:11] Josh Blank: So a lot of energy in that sector here. Right. And there’s not a lot of disagreement too. That’s the other piece. Again, to the extent that there’s 54 saying more, it’s not as though there’s a big share saying make ’em less strict. There’s, you know, there’s about another third who’s gonna say, leave ’em alone.

[00:20:21] Josh Blank: And then there’s some people are gonna, I don’t know. Right. But the, the energy of the parties in one place on that. When we look at L G B T Q IA plus or transgender related issues, you know, we can look across this data, uh, from the last poll. 70% of republicans say they do not personally know anyone who is transgender.

[00:20:37] Josh Blank: Similar shares amongst, you know, extreme conservatives, 77% of disco, uh, discontent. Uh, extreme conservatives say they’ve never, you know, they do not personally know a transgender person. Uh, 87 to 88% of Republicans or extreme conservatives say that the only way to define a person’s gender is by the sex listed on their birth certificate.

[00:20:54] Josh Blank: This goes up to 98% amongst yes, uh, discontent conservatives. If we go even a little, be bit deeper into this and serve, you know, again, more generally in the area, 50% of Republicans and 70% of extreme conservatives say that same-sex marriage should not be legal in Texas, including 72% of discontent. That was, you

[00:21:14] Jim Henson: know, that was in our August 20.

[00:21:16] Jim Henson: Poll. Mm-hmm. . And that, you know, I mean, I kind of talked about that, that that was kind of my answer when I got asked. You know, like what was, you know, what struck you, what was surprising or mm-hmm. , you know, what was notable in this poll was the degree to which, you know, there’s a lot of energy in the Republican party that sees gay marriage.

[00:21:37] Jim Henson: In a diff in a very different way than we think about it. I think in the rest, in at the national level, which is that, you know, we’ve gone through, we’ve gone through this and we’ve kind of settled this. There’s a, not so much,

[00:21:48] Josh Blank: I think it’s an ecological fallacy, right? Problem here, where people looked at the trend lines and said, oh, everybody’s becoming more accepting of gay marriage.

[00:21:54] Josh Blank: Therefore every group is becoming more accepting of gay marriage. And that’s not the case. Yeah, that’s not the way these things actually work. You can’t make these assumptions about the subgroups from the top lines. And this is, I think, one. Things where those lines were moving this direction. Then we had the court decision, the law change, and the idea was, well, this was just, you know, a F of comp plea.

[00:22:11] Josh Blank: And it’s like, well, actually no. Right. Not within the public. And so ultimately, like again, you look at that basket of just attitudes and you’d say, you know, to the extent that there are. You know, especially advocates on the, on the side of, you know, the LGBTQ community, especially the transgender community, about sort of the lack of understanding amongst, you know, Republican elected officials towards the issues that they face.

[00:22:33] Josh Blank: You know, this data paints a pretty clear picture of why that might be the case. This is a distant group as far as most Republicans are concerned, and just the basic premise around gender identity is not one that is endorse. Yeah. So, you know, yeah, and I, you

[00:22:49] Jim Henson: know, the basic, you know, the basic underlying construct, right, of gender identity.

[00:22:54] Jim Henson: I mean, I think, and I think, look, advocates. , you know, on the conservative side, realize this. Yeah. And that’s why we’re seeing a lot of the lines of argument. We are, you know, this go-to move of asking people to define what a woman is. It’s Well,

[00:23:08] Josh Blank: and, and it’s one of those things too, I mean, we’re not talking about here cause we’re talking about the attitudes of the majority party voters and how that’s driving the agenda.

[00:23:13] Josh Blank: Right. But I mean, a big reason that this also is a, is a major issue is because democratic attitudes on this are. Uniform. Right? And there are a lot of Democrats who do not know a transgender person and do not necessarily take more alternative views of gender identity or more expansive views. And so that actually makes this, you know, a doubly good issue for Republicans because really he said strict political terms.

[00:23:36] Josh Blank: Yeah, strict and strict political terms, not in any sort of moral or other terms, but the reality is, is that when 90 to 98% of your voters feel one way about an issue, And, you know, the other party is, you know, not in, sort of, is not, I, I don’t wanna say split, but I would say is certainly, you know, in a, they’re

[00:23:53] Jim Henson: not fully formed, they’re not, it’s not fully formed, fully formed attitudes that are associated with Yeah.

[00:23:58] Jim Henson: Partisan and, and cultural scaffolding that we see in other issues.

[00:24:01] Josh Blank: Then that creates, you know, again, a pretty good political. Opportunity. Right? And then when we look at the education space, another area where you definitely see a lot of activity happening, you know, we go back to our April poll, we 59% of Republicans, 66% of extreme conservatives, 69% of you know, discontent, extreme conservatives.

[00:24:16] Josh Blank: There’s not a big difference. Support efforts to remove books from public school libraries. 50% of Republicans, 57% of extreme conservatives, 60% of discontent conservative support efforts to limit the use of teaching materials that emphasize racism and use history by public schools. And you know, be between about 60% of Republicans, conservatives, about 67% of you know discontent.

[00:24:37] Josh Blank: Extreme conservatives support a school voucher program. And again, it’s not to say that there’s 40% on the other side of these things. And if anything, there’s a lot of people who just haven’t thought about these issues. But here again, you’re seeing an area where you. You’ve got pretty much unanimity, more or less, or at least in, in the, in the direction of, of the attitudes among Republicans general, but also among the Republicans that, you know, an elected official should be most concerned about in a Republican primary.

[00:25:02] Jim Henson: Right. So, yeah, so, so I mean, I, yeah, the polling data is really good at illustrating. You know, I think butcher’s seeing this explanation that we started with about why we’re seeing movement now. How about in some of these areas where we’re not seen as much legislative movement? Yeah. So let’s start with gun laws where, you know, we’ve not seen much happening here, at least on, on the, on the Republican side.

[00:25:23] Jim Henson: I mean, I think there are a lot of Democratic bills that have, that have been filed that are. Unlikely to move. This also explains that. But yeah, we’re talking but focusing on the Republicans

[00:25:32] Josh Blank: right now. Right? We’re talking here about, you know, why aren’t we seeing necessarily more efforts to enshrine Second Amendment rights, which has really been, you know, a pretty big part of, you know Right.

[00:25:42] Josh Blank: The party set of issues. Right. Well look, Policies change. And we’ve seen this actually, I mean, to be honest, like we’ve seen this before. When the state went, um, from concealed carry to, to permitted open carry, Republican attitudes on gun laws shifted to a much more status quo preference from hall loosening preference back when that happened.

[00:25:59] Josh Blank: And we’re seeing that again in this session. And that framed the discussion last time and that framed the discussion. Now when we look and we say, should gun laws be now made more strict, less stricter, left alone, 22% of Republican voters say they should be more, more. 51% say left alone, 24% say less strict.

[00:26:14] Josh Blank: So that means in total 73% of Republicans say leave gun laws alone or make them more strict. That number goes up to or goes down to 68% amongst those who are extremely conservative and amongst the dissented conservatives, the number is still 60%. So it’s 54% say, leave it alone. Only 6% say make it more strict.

[00:26:34] Josh Blank: Let’s be clear. They are extremely conservative and they don’t feel that state officials are conservative enough. 39% would say make them less strict. But ultimately when you look at an issue like this, that 30 90% can’t drive that car necessarily. Not at least, certainly it doesn’t seem likely in the session after they loosen gun laws so dramatically.

[00:26:49] Jim Henson: Right. And, and, and not, and not with that big, you know, clear majority in the status quo category.

[00:26:55] Josh Blank: Exactly. Yeah. So then another issue where, you know, I think we’re seeing. Less activity than maybe some people would’ve thought would be around abortion. Right? Now, you can think about this in multiple ways, whether this is, you know, is the state gonna clamp down on, you know, let’s say abortion funds that help provide travel expenses to people who wanna travel outta state for legal

[00:27:13] Jim Henson: abortion, medical abortion, access

[00:27:15] Josh Blank: to medical abortion.

[00:27:15] Josh Blank: You know, I mean, very importantly, yeah. This, this big, big question about, you know, basically, essentially, you know, what happens when a, when a. When a person comes into the hospital with a fetal abnormality that, you know, essentially makes the, the, the fetus unviable. There’ve been a lot of stories in the news about how, essentially, not until that, you know, sort of that fetal problem becomes a problem with the mother’s health.

[00:27:33] Josh Blank: Can they act? Yeah. And, and a serious problem as to be a serious problem. It has to be, it has to be a threat to, to, to her life. And that’s becoming, you know, , and again, we said a long time ago on this podcast, like, these stories are going to come out and, and they are now and they’re trickling out. So what did the, that landscape look like?

[00:27:46] Josh Blank: Again, we ask first, just, you know, generally, should they be more strict left, left alone, leave less strict among republicans, 61% say they should be left alone or made less strict. 41% say leave them alone. 20% say make them less strict. Now look. A third, there’s still 32% who want stricter abortion laws.

[00:28:04] Josh Blank: But the majority of the party at this point is, is for the status quo. And, and just

[00:28:08] Jim Henson: while we’re there for one second, I mean that, and that’s a little, you know, you compare that to the gun share of, you know, and it’s a, you know, it’s a little bigger, right? Yeah.

[00:28:18] Josh Blank: It’s a little bit, yeah, it’s a little bit bigger in terms of who would have movement.

[00:28:21] Josh Blank: Right. And, and that’s the thing. And you see. With the more conservative voters here. So what you find is that among, you know, those who say they’re extremely conservative, it’s about split 46% say, make it more strict. 46% say leave it alone. Only 3% say, let make it less strict again. Makes sense. Among the discontent, you know, extreme conservatives, 52% would make these laws more strict, but 44% would leave them alone.

[00:28:42] Josh Blank: So it’s not a slam duck. And so what you can say is there’s a slight conflict here, but in a lot of ways it can be handle. It’s amenable to inaction. It’s very amenable to inaction. And when we look, we say, okay, you know what people have been talking about in terms of where, you know, the. Act to create some more access because of just the exposure it creates would be rape exceptions, incest exceptions, and exceptions for, you know, significant fetal abnormalities.

[00:29:06] Josh Blank: You know, 19% of Republicans, but 29% of extremely conservative voters and 36% of discontent, economic conserv or discontent. Extreme conservative voters say abortion should never be printed in the case of rape. Uh, 22% of Republicans, 34% of extreme conservatives, 36%. These discontent concerns say that it should never be printed in the case of incest.

[00:29:25] Josh Blank: And really importantly here, cause I think this, this, this fetal abnormality issues is really like where I think the, the big, one of the big, big policy issues really is 27% of Republicans, 36% of extreme conservatives, and 50% of discontent. Extreme conservatives would say that an abortion should never be available in the case of a severe field or an abnormality.

[00:29:48] Josh Blank: And. To some extent what that tells. I mean, what that, what that points to is like why in my mind, you know, we’re not seeing a lot of movement in this space because ultimately there’s not a lot of consensus within these sort of factions of the party overall. And then in some cases, the more conservative elements of the party to move ahead even further on some of these issues because they just did a lot.

[00:30:08] Jim Henson: So what do you make of that? I mean, I, so let’s go, let’s, let’s do this in a way, let’s go back to, you know, so, wow. So, you know, so the answer to our first question Yeah. Really, you know, there is a distinct set of attitudes among the wing of the party that is most conservative, most discontent. Yeah. With the extent of the cons of conservatism and likely to be engaged with primary voters.

[00:30:33] Jim Henson: I mean, they, you know, the shares, you know, as you went through those numbers. Yeah. To summarize in a lot of. The shares of people that want more movement on what we’ve thought of as or Right. Word movement, let’s say. Yeah. Yeah. More, yeah. In a more conservative direction, for lack of a better term. Yeah. Uh, in, in the moment, you know, I mean, it’s real.

[00:30:53] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, they’re there and, and, and the size of that share kind of tells us a little bit about, you know, relative to the larger Republican population does tell us something about what’s moving and what’s

[00:31:06] Josh Blank: not. Yeah. I think what’s really interesting, you know, thinking about this in, in the context of the last session in this.

[00:31:11] Josh Blank: Session was, you know, a bunch of the story in the last session was, you know, this big right word shift across a lot of policy areas. And when we would evaluate those, what we tended to find was in, in a lot of cases, majority disapproval, driven by overwhelmingly de overwhelming democratic disapproval with.

[00:31:29] Josh Blank: I would say, you know, somewhere between marginal and solid Republican sport, by which I mean a majority to maybe about two thirds. In almost all of those cases though, there were about a quarter to a third of Republicans who were not in favor of, you know, the right word, shift on some of this stuff, right?

[00:31:45] Josh Blank: Who thought it was too far, whatever it might be, some of these policies. Now, what was clear, what became clear, you know, was sort of the question of that session and, and what became clear. Clear. The answer was, you know, is that enough to create a pause? And the answer was no. full stop, right? Yeah. But what’s interesting now is you know, you start to kind of, you go one session ahead and you look sort of at a lot of set of similar questions.

[00:32:06] Josh Blank: The underlying policy environment has changed and voters have have incorporated that into their views and Republican voters and incorporated that into their views. And now, you know when you go and you say, yeah, you may still have. You know, Texas, right to life and the other Republican, and they’re pushing and they’re pushing, they’re pushing.

[00:32:23] Josh Blank: But if you got, you know, 50, 60% of Republican voters say, yeah, that’s enough. Right? Ultimately, I actually, you know, I mean, the reality is I think in most cases, I think they could prob, you know, I think honestly Republican leadership could probably still move ahead on some of this stuff because generally what we tend to find is a fair amount of tacit kind of approval of,

[00:32:43] Jim Henson: right.

[00:32:43] Jim Henson: Well that’s, and that’s the answer to our second question. Right? Right. I mean, the second question we set this up with was, you know, Even if there are differences, how much real, you know, uh, space is there mm-hmm. between this discontent group of extreme conservatives, right? And, you know, the main line of the Republican party on further

[00:33:06] Josh Blank: still, and then how much distance is there between that main line of the Republican party at any viable alternative, right?

[00:33:13] Josh Blank: And whether that be Democrats, libertarian, whoever, and the point is, The, you know, and this is kind of where the tat sort of support comes in. We’ve talked about this before. You know, the parties are not like interchangeable, you know, it’s not like it, it’s not for most voters, right, who are Republican or Democrat.

[00:33:27] Josh Blank: It’s not as though they come, you know, sort of to the political process. You know, especially if they’re regular voters, and especially not people who vote in primaries and say, well, am I gonna vote for Republican or Democrat at this time? Is if they were like picking out a flavor of Gatorade. . It’s not like that, right?

[00:33:41] Josh Blank: It’s, and I’ve, you know, this is a stupid analogy I’ll using, it’s like, do I want, you know, Gatorade or Milk ? They’re not the same thing, right? They’re not for not same time, not same place. We’re not talking about the same stuff. And so, so in some ways, you know, that in and of itself creates a certain, you know, boundary, right?

[00:33:55] Josh Blank: Just to begin with. And that also leads, I think, to a certain amount of task that, you know, approval. I mean, ultimately, even if you’re a Republican who thinks that the state’s abortion laws are strict enough, if they get made a little bit stricter, it’s not like, Totally a scan to your view set on, you know, right about, about abortion, which is, you know, ultimately should be limited.

[00:34:14] Josh Blank: Okay.

[00:34:14] Jim Henson: And, you know, and, and, and then, you know, when you then provide the overlay, you know, there’s the kind. , you know, product metaphor that you use, right? But then with the overlay of what we know about what’s going on with the particular political market, if you wanna mm-hmm. stretch that a little bit.

[00:34:29] Jim Henson: Yeah, I’d like to, you know, we know, you know, that the things that we beat on regularly in here, that the combination of negative partisanship and the polarization of the parties and its polarization. You know, it’s the ideological polarization and sorting of the parties that makes those, you know, that creates the ground for the, you know, milk Gatorade discussion.

[00:34:49] Jim Henson: Yeah. Right. In that, you know, the parties are very different and they coexist on an effective dimension. That’s the, in which voters are saying, you know, I, I may not be that kind of Republican, but you know what I am. A Democrat for sure. For sure. Not only, you know, in an environment, you know, and again, it’s, you know, with Donald Trump back in the scene and having been, you know, having done this rally in Waco over the weekend and reminded us about just.

[00:35:18] Jim Henson: How close to the surface those feelings are of, you know what all of these other guys, there’s, you know, psychopaths and, you know, predators and groomers and you know, whatever. And you know, again, to be fair, in places where the Democrats are in control, you know, there’s a fascists, there’s a, yeah, there’s a different, yeah, there’s a different dynamic that just is somewhat the mirror image.

[00:35:41] Jim Henson: I don’t want to, I don’t want to get their, I don’t wanna make them too equal because I think there isn’t. Anybody quite like Trump on the left in terms of the, you know, the istic kind of , you know what I think. But, but, but nonetheless, but I think what’s interesting, negative partisanship works on both

[00:35:59] Josh Blank: sides for sure.

[00:36:00] Josh Blank: And I, and I think what’s, what’s interesting here is because of negative partisanship, you know, again, we always talk about like, I mean, we don’t, but I mean, people talk about the party and say, oh, big 10, we have big tent parties. Yeah. And I mean, like, and. Technically that is true, and it’s true, honestly, more for institutional, like electoral dynamic reasons.

[00:36:18] Josh Blank: Look here, Wikipedia time for, you know, do Verges Law . Look that up, right? In Wikipedia, right? So there’s reasons that we have a two party system and we tend to talk about, and then we tend to sort of just let fall outta there. A lot of people tend to, well they’re big tent parties and it’s like, yeah, kind of.

[00:36:33] Josh Blank: But the thing is, is that, you know, with the. Uh, you know, number one with the, the effects of negative partisanship. I think with changes in like the media environment, I think honestly even just give Donald Trump some credit specifically for creating his own kind of brand of, yeah, conservatism. I’m putting that in quotes here.

[00:36:49] Josh Blank: You know, within the party. You know, what you end up with is you end up with these different sets of Republicans and if you know anyone who’s sort of, you know, a never Trump kind of Republican, they’re very quick to tell you they’re not that kind of Republican . Right. You know, at the same time, you know, if you’re an extremely conservative Republican, uh, in Texas who’s not happy with the direction of leadership, like I have a pretty good guess what email list you might be signed up for.

[00:37:08] Josh Blank: Sure. Right. And there’s a whole ecosystem for that. Now, what’s interesting to me is, you know, sort of what we’re watching in some ways is sort of how these different kind of factions, and they’re not clear lines. Some people are in a couple different factions. Right. But. , but how these different factions in the legislative.

[00:37:23] Josh Blank: Part of this negotiate the fact that, you know, they’re essentially these sub-brands of the Republican Party that, you know, essentially mean that different attributes and different outcomes are just more important to different groups of people, right? And so for some sets of Republicans, the most important, again, this is why immigration borders so important, because once you take care of that, then you can start to sort of jockey over, okay, who are we?

[00:37:44] Josh Blank: Whose policy areas are we taking care of, you know, , are we taking care of the homeschool community? Are we taking care of the Second Amendment Absolutists, you know, on this? Do we take care of ’em? Last session of can we go forward on anything of that without upsetting, you know, the suburban Republicans who we are trying to move forward on issues like school safety and Right.

[00:38:03] Josh Blank: You know, parental rights. Because these things feel a little tough, and so part of it’s, we’re watching these dynamics play out, but in some ways, the other piece of this is that, you know, and I think what all this is, About, in some ways shows us, you know, there’s a lot of tacit endorsement, but at the same time, you know, politicians are also risk averse.

[00:38:20] Josh Blank: Right. And so, you know, the question that this sort of lays out is, you know, and what the data kind of raises, and we’re doing this in a very kind of, you know, I would say schematic way. And maybe we’ll come back and write something a little bit more, more specific. But it does point to the fact that, you know, there is a certain amount of ex, there’s an exposure threshold on some of this stuff.

[00:38:38] Josh Blank: But it’s not, still not clear to me. Even going through this date, I’m talking about exactly where it

[00:38:42] Jim Henson: is. Right. Well, and I think that’s why, you know, I, you know, I, I think people, you know, a lot of the actors themselves would love to know exactly where it is, and that’s a lot of the muddling that we’re seeing.

[00:38:52] Jim Henson: But, but it is, you know, I mean, to go back, you know, I mean to tie that together a little bit with your big tent, sort of, you know, in the notion of parties, I. , the parties are still coalitional and that’s where those pressures come from. Right. But the coalitional, but the coalitions are now sorted differently.

[00:39:09] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. than the days in which we used to just think about the big tents and that, that this was inherently harboring really big contradictions. Yeah. That are. Defined by our historical memory of, you know, the Rockefeller Republicans versus the Goldwater Republicans. Right, right. Or you know, this, you know, even more, you know, probably more significant.

[00:39:31] Jim Henson: The Southern Democrats. Yeah. You know, the Southern, the Southern Democrats versus, you know, the other Democrats. Yeah. Everybody else, I mean, those. You know, those distinctions are not, are not as sharp, and that’s what’s making it harder for people trying to keep these coalitions that are still have a lot of internal tensions in them, but they’re not as sharp, you know?

[00:39:53] Jim Henson: I mean, in some ways the days, you know, when you were Lyndon Johnson. And you’re plotting your political career and you’re trying to get to the White House. Yeah. You know what you really have to do right there. Yeah. Right. And you know that it’s daunting. You know, that you have to appeal to a burgeoning liberal wing of the Democratic Party, yet still keep all of your essentially reactionary Southern Democrats, you know, certainly reactionary and racial politics and civil rights politics.

[00:40:21] Jim Henson: You gotta keep them. Yeah, it’s a little, you know, it’s just, it’s, it’s, it’s a little, it’s a little fuzzier now that the, that the parties are still ctal and still have sharp, kind of cleavages over issue emphasis and things like this. Right. Um, but it’s not, it’s not quite as obvious what you’re trying to do, I think.

[00:40:42] Jim Henson: Yeah.

[00:40:42] Josh Blank: You know, and I think the reason for that is something that, you know, you and I have been dancing around like a lot in this podcast, and I mean, say like, you know, and just say it explicitly. Yeah. You know, Part of it has to do with, in some ways, I, you know, I would say the, the declining sort of centrality or definitional or even ability to define ideology in either party right now, right?

[00:41:03] Josh Blank: And so, you know, there, there’s just, there just seemed to be fewer touchstones where clearly everyone agrees and you can say, you know, the Republican party, you know, it’s sort of like, I mean, to my mind it’s kinda like where, you know, what is small government? Yeah. You know, I mean, I mean one of the things that was interesting kind of going back and working on another piece on, on some of the public ed space, and, you know, there’s a point I think around 2015 when we asked, you know, essentially, you know, what would be most effective in, uh, in improving the public education system in Texas and the plurality response room among Republicans, essentially local.

[00:41:33] Josh Blank: right. Let the local school district figure out, presumably that was like, it made a lot of sense because that was, because look conservative rural school districts who don’t want to talk about, uh, social, you know, social emotional learning and don’t want to talk about any sort of d e I related stuff or, you know, that’s your community.

[00:41:48] Josh Blank: Yeah. And now what we’re actually seeing is in some ways this like, well actually we’re gonna centralize, you know, these sorts of educational decision. At the state level in terms of what kind of curriculum looks like, what can be talked about. Right. And it’s interesting. I mean, again, look, I don’t care. I mean the, you know, whether you think it’s hypocritical or it doesn’t really matter, it’s just it is what it is.

[00:42:03] Josh Blank: It’s politics. But the idea that you’d have a flip like that on something that was almost so core foundational Yeah. To both small government and this idea of, you know, sort of the important of kind of local institutions among Republicans, it’s now basically those institutions in some ways are like the.

[00:42:17] Josh Blank: Yeah, is a really remarkable shift. But it also just reflects, again, just the upheaval in both parties. And the Democrats have a similar issue in the sense that, you know, I think Democrats have a much better situation when they’re just talking about class, but the Democrats Coalition requires now to break out race from class in a way that creates, A lot of conflicts among Democrats about how to message things, how to talk about things, where to focus, and whether they can do that in a way that’s both respectful to the coalition in quotes on one hand, but also on the other hand is like electorally viable.

[00:42:47] Jim Henson: Yeah. And how, and how to implement, you know, multiple priorities that in the absence of any sort of an analog like to, to immigration and border security, that which helps the Republicans. So I think that brings us back as we close out. You know, what we should be looking forward to. Cause I think a lot of these issues that we’re talking about are going to, you know, they’re, you know, they’re very dynamic right now as we’re in the committee hearing process.

[00:43:12] Jim Henson: Right. And these very high level, intense, intense committee hearings over some, over a lot of these issues, which we’ve been seeing and we’ll continue to see, and then how those bills move.

[00:43:25] Josh Blank: Well, I just want, you know, one thing about that, I think it’s just really important to point out right now, and we’ve said this before, but I wanna say, I don’t think we’ve said it this session, the people who show up in Austin to testify on these bills.

[00:43:36] Josh Blank: It’s important, I think, especially for, I’m gonna say especially for journalists who end up, you know, sort of covering these really intense hearings and you hear these, you know, really often horrible stories. But look at that and then look at this data that we’re talking about. So, you know, there’s sort of a question of, hey, you know, a hundred people signed up to Testi 200 people and 80% were against this bill about, you know, transgender people.

[00:43:57] Josh Blank: It’s like, yeah, I understand that those people are mostly coming from central Texas sauce and most, a lot of them are coming from Austin because where the capital is. But furthermore, look at the Republican electorate.

[00:44:07] Jim Henson: Yeah. So there’s that and, and so I guess, you know, to tie it together again, what I would say, You know, we’re also gonna see some of these other more proximate factors coming into play in the next, in the next couple of weeks on a lot of these issues and the intera.

[00:44:24] Jim Henson: And, and we’re gonna see how they interact, if at all, with, you know, the, the kind of, if you will, the kind of a level agenda items that are out there. Right. And, and we’re gonna see, you know, yet another, You know, aspect of, you know, the pressure within each tent. Mm-hmm. , particularly in the Republican tent when it comes to institutional conflict.

[00:44:44] Jim Henson: And, and you know, frankly, in some ways personal conflict between the leadership of the house and the leadership of the Senate. Um, And with, with frankly, governor Abbott in the executive branch. And that’s gonna add another dimension that we’re also gonna start to see play out. Increasingly, probably not as you know, we’re already seeing it now, but in, in the next couple of months.

[00:45:07] Jim Henson: That adds a whole other sort of sense of cleavage to all this. But I do think all of these. You know, the un unearthing some of this public opinion data helps create what the context and, and what the context for that and what they are maneuvering around. So with that, um, thanks to Josh for being here and digging out all that data.

[00:45:27] Jim Henson: Uh, thanks again to our excellent production team and the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Uh, wherever you find this podcast, we will almost certainly post some data related to this with a link to the, with another link to the podcast and links to data. You can find various cuts of the data that we’ve been talking about, as always at Texas politics dot u texas.edu.

[00:45:51] Jim Henson: So thank you for listening and we will be back soon with another second reading podcast.

[00:45:59] Outro: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.