May 3rd, 2023 – A new UT/Texas Politics Project Poll as the #txlege heats up & Ted Cruz gets a Democratic challenger

[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,

[00:00:13] Intro: there is still a land of

[00:00:14] Intro: opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution, they have become the norm.

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

[00:00:33] Jim: And welcome back to the second Reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Very happy today to be joined today by my illustrious collaborators on the University of Texas, Texas Politics Project

[00:00:49] Jim: Uh, Darren Shaw, professor of government at UT Austin. Thanks for making it today, Darren. Always fun. Jim, I know you’re very busy at the end of the semester enjoying your last sort of interactions with students. We love each other very much saying you’re fond goodbyes, stuff like that. That’s right. And of course, Joshua blank, research director for the Texas Politics Project, Josh.

[00:01:10] Jim: Thanks to you. I know you’ve been a little bit under the weather, but you seem good.

[00:01:13] Josh: I’m feeling I’m excited to be here.

[00:01:15] Jim: That’s what it is. Uh, yeah, I think there’s stuff to unpack there, but we’re not gonna, um, so we released the latest version, uh, of our poll this morning. Just you, you were keeping count while this is, do you remember?

[00:01:27] Jim: 55

[00:01:28] Josh: more or less? Oh, yeah. I don’t know. 55, 56, somewhere in there. Yeah. We’re in the mid fifties when we get a I’ll look for

[00:01:34] Jim: 60 next. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ll just, I won’t mention it again until we hit 60. Yeah. Um. So we released this poll this morning. Uh, the poll was heavily oriented to the legislative session as one might expect.

[00:01:46] Jim: Um, if you’re listening to this, I, I suppose, yeah, um, I almost wanna like greet a few people by name because, but, Well, we won’t. Um, and, and you know, it makes sense of course, and, and there’s a lot of interest if you’re following the legislature because we’re hitting the most frenzied stage of the proceedings.

[00:02:06] Jim: And as we record this on, on Wednesday morning, was a very frenzy, uh, hectic day at the house of, at the Texas House of Representatives yesterday. Um, and whether we touch on that now or not, it, it underlines the fact that things are, you know, tension’s high at the, at. At the Capitol right now, it’s, this has been a very conflictive legislative session.

[00:02:29] Jim: I think a lot of it before yesterday has been kind of out of the public eye, or you have to be paying attention to really see it. But you know, I turned on the cable news last night and there was the Texas house or the outer area, and you know what looked pretty chaotic based on the footage they use.

[00:02:48] Jim: And even that is kind of contentious. Um, Nonetheless, there’s a lot of other different things in the, in this poll as well. So we’ll be delving into the results as always for the next few weeks. And this was a, a particularly dense poll. Yeah, man.

[00:03:02] Josh: Yeah, you can say that

[00:03:03] Jim: again. You know, Jo, you know, Josh does a lot of the wor does all of the work really to program the graphics and get the data transferred into our cms.

[00:03:10] Jim: And there’s a lot of stuff this time.

[00:03:12] Josh: Yeah. And I mean, it wasn’t even, you know, and it wasn’t even like the quantities. Cause honestly we al we always. Cover a lot of ground and do a lot of stuff. And I think about this one, what was interesting was they’re just, you know, I think it’s the nature of the legislative session is there’s so many things going on.

[00:03:24] Josh: You know, you sort of have to pick and choose or you don’t, and we kind of didn’t, in some ways, we almost touched on a lot of different things. Yeah. And so you can see that in that poll and, and this poll. And I think it makes it, you know, both. Richer in sort of what’s there, but also a little bit harder to, you know, sort of

[00:03:39] disentangle.

[00:03:40] Jim: Yeah, no, I think that’s right. And there’s, and, and just a lot of, you know, and, and I was looking back at some our other, other April or you know, kind of mid legislative polls. Mm-hmm. Uh, one could talk about the different, you know, consistent themes, whatever, but each one is a little idiosyncratic as the agenda is a little bit iio, idiosyncratic.

[00:03:59] Jim: There’s some continuity. Of course some things recur, but there’s always things that are a little bit one off.

[00:04:04] Josh: Yeah. You know, I mean, I think the thing that, you know, and this is sort of a theme probably for a lot of this stuff, is that y you know, I mean just cuz the leg, you know, an issue has sort of taken the legislature doesn’t mean that it’s taken the voters.

[00:04:15] Josh: Yeah. And so there’s a fair amount of, I think, you know, at this point, especially for the people who are listening to this and who follow this process so closely, you know, there’s a fair amount of, you know, sort of discussions about like the length of fingernails in terms of like different policy approaches and who cares about what and what’s gonna, you know, and it’s like, but for most voters, there’s still just a very arms length sort of understanding of what’s going

[00:04:34] Jim: on here.

[00:04:35] Jim: Okay. I didn’t really get the length of fingernails metaphor until you connected it to arm’s length. Now I get it. Ah, there we go. All. Yeah, that ripened nicely, I guess the mixed metaphors. So, you know, so I think, I think today, we’ll that’s a, I’m, look, I’m, I’m looking for a transition here. Um, you know, this’ll be a little bit more of an arms length day, although, we’ll, you know, we’ll get to the fingers here and there, but I, today I thought we’d start with some of the big cuts and there were other things, uh, in the poll that have to do with the broader environment, with the 2024 election.

[00:05:06] Jim: That is, that is. Coming up. Yeah. Um, and the news cycle has given us some direction. So let, let’s start a little bit with 2024 and, and what the news cycle has given us. Um, and what I have in mind here is that Democratic Congressman Col all read from CD 32, the Northeast Dallas suburbs basically is that district Democratic district.

[00:05:29] Jim: Uh, announced that he is going to seek the Democratic nomination to challenge incumbent Ted Cruz for the Texas Seed and the US Senate that will be on the ballot in 2024. Um, so Darren, I, I’m curious, you know, allowing that it’s early, both in terms of the poll and, and the larger, his larger position. What do you make of this in terms of where Cruise is in terms of, you know, the incumbent that Allred, should he get through the primary, would like to take on?

[00:06:00] Jim: So let’s, let’s talk cruise for a little bit. It’s been a little while since we’ve talked to Cruz,

[00:06:04] Daron: actually. That’s true. Well, you know, I think the, the macro environment here is, is pretty important. Last time cruise ran was 2018. This is an off year of. Midterm year in which, uh, the Republicans were defending Donald Trump was president.

[00:06:19] Daron: Um, Democrats were energized. There wasn’t y you know, there wasn’t really an issue environment in Texas. It was all that favorable to bet O O’Rourke or to a challenger. It, it’s not like there were singular or even multiple issues where O’Rourke had a substantial advantage on cruise. But the broader environment was very good for Democrats and, uh, you know, bet O’Rourke was a really good candidate during that cycle.

[00:06:42] Daron: So that was a, you know, in some ways a scare of a lifetime. I think I probably mentioned before that, uh, in my mind, I’m always remembering Ted Kennedy’s quote, um, after he was, uh, you know, kinda late in his career and they asked him whether the 1994 election, this Republican wave election in which he faced a reasonably close challenge in Massachusetts was his toughest race.

[00:07:01] Daron: And he said no. In fact, his 1982. Um, reelected, I think it was 82, um, was his most difficult because he just lost the presidential contest to Carter. He seemed vulnerable. In Texas, and you know, the sheen of Massa, Massachusetts, I’m sorry, Massachusetts, the sheen of invincibility was kind of laid bare and, and he had a really tough time, even though he won.

[00:07:22] Daron: Um, he said that was his toughest race. He said, I always think of Cruz in 2018 in the same way, right, the, the 2016 presidential contest, although he finished second, well, I guess Kennedy finished second in 1982. Um, you know, the second place finish really, I’d say

[00:07:36] Jim: running against, running against. Let’s, let’s see, who would’ve, uh, who would’ve.

[00:07:41] Jim: F who would’ve Kennedy lost that. Oh, Kennedy would’ve lost the card. Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say. And that I thought for a second I was wrong. Yeah. Run it against Jimmy Carter and run it against, and Donald Trump. Donald Trump. Kind of different, but he had

[00:07:51] Daron: a lot of baggage, obviously partly because of that dynamic.

[00:07:55] Daron: Had a lot of baggage coming out of 2018, and he didn’t, he didn’t look like, you know, Superman in Texas at all. Um,

[00:08:01] Josh: and said the same thing about O Obama, I mean about O’Rourke and, you know, his second

[00:08:04] Daron: run and, right. I think that’s right Josh. And so, um, so in some ways I, I think that. 2018 was probably the Democrat’s best chance to get crews in 2024.

[00:08:14] Daron: Looking forward, it’s, it’s not clear to me whether it’s gonna be a particularly good environment for the Republicans or the Democrats. I mean, I I, if the economic anxiety continues, you can make an argument that the dynamic will be more favorable to the Republicans on the other. Republicans own a little bit of government now.

[00:08:28] Daron: In a way that they didn’t in 2022. Um, so it’s,

[00:08:32] Jim: and presidential years in Texas better for Democrats, all things being recorded,

[00:08:35] Daron: right. With with turnout dynamics, et cetera. Yeah. So, you know, to me it’s sort of a, a, a middling year and a middling year in Texas is still a year in which you’d strongly expect the Republicans to win in this poll.

[00:08:45] Daron: Turn to the day that we have at hand. Um, you know, with Cruz, we’ve seen this throughout and Josh and I know have had this conversation about his, his sort of intense support never really seems to wane. He just has locked down Republicans. In the state. Yeah. And it is awfully tough as a democrat to, to beat somebody who generates so much enthusiasm and loyalty amongst a Republican base.

[00:09:05] Daron: And so I think that’s the, the starting point. I’ve, I’ve been impressed with Allred’s resume and what he brings to the table, um, as can actually. Just between us hens, uh, we had a campaign simulation, uh, in my, in my class here at the University of Texas. And, uh, one of the races was Cruz. So I had a half a dozen students who were doing the cruise campaign, and I just picked Alred out of, uh, you know, out of a, from amongst a lot of Democrats got, yeah.

[00:09:30] Daron: Uh, and Allred was the Democrat that the class I know markets, I know more about Allred now than, you know, thanks to my undergraduates here than than I otherwise would’ve. And I gotta tell you, the. The campaign plan that they put together was, was pretty impressive. I think someone from the Alred campaign ought to contact, uh, members of my class for that, but, but he’s still heavy underdog, obviously.

[00:09:50] Josh: Yeah, I mean, I agree with everything, everything you say, and I think the only thing you know that that’s interesting is, you know, at the meta level, the fact that we’re sitting here before the summer of 2023 and there are multiple Democratic candidates you know of seemingly pretty reasonable, if not high quality, who are.

[00:10:07] Josh: Saying right now, they’re in, you know, he’s coming from a safe congressional seat, a redrawn, safe, congressional seat. Uh, you know, I think that’s telling, at least at how they see the race, that they see an opportunity there. Whether it be Colin Allred or Senator Gutierrez, potentially. I mean, there, there are people, you know, ready to throw their hat in a ring when, you know, usually Democrats are like, okay, so who’s up?

[00:10:28] Josh: Who’s gonna do this? I mean, a lot of the conversations are normally going on at this point are about. Who might the Democrats find? You know, who can raise money, who can be a serious candidate? And the fact that, you know, again, right now it’s actually looking like a kind of competitive primary for Democrats this far out says to me that they see some opportunities, and I think the opportunities are probably in the thing, you know, like I think the one opportunity that they have outside of, you know, whatever the.

[00:10:50] Josh: Election dynamics are around the economy is, you know, Trump is super unpopular among Texas Democrats, Cruz is super unpopular among Texas Democrats. So no matter who Democrats put up, if that’s the top of the ticket, I think there’s gonna be a mobilization. And so I think that the candidates are probably seeing that as, you know, what their chances to make the starting point in the race more favorable, if not winnable, more favorable starting

[00:11:15] Jim: points.

[00:11:15] Jim: Well, Todd, is there any reason to expect, I mean, The, you know what, what is gonna be at the top of the ticket will be the presidency, right? Yeah. And so I, you know, I think that’s gonna be pretty heavily over determining, right? Yeah.

[00:11:27] Daron: I think, uh, uh, either were a political, or the Hill had the, the Texas races, the ninth most competitive race, and, and it might.

[00:11:36] Daron: Be the Democrats best chance for a pickup. I think thinking back across that list here, states like West Virginia and yeah. Democrats, Montana, Montana, a lot defense, deploy Ohio, right. Et cetera. And, and either Florida or Texas are, are pegged is I think the only two out of the top 10 races where the Democrats might be picking up a seed.

[00:11:53] Daron: I, you know, we talk a lot in terms of floors and ceilings. Yeah, I think the great thing about 2024 from the Democrats is that the floor is higher. Mm-hmm. Um, because as, as Josh properly mentioned, there’s a lot of antipathy towards Cruz and a lot of antipathy towards Trump. If Trump is indeed the nominee, which we’ll probably turn to in a few minutes, um, so that, that kind of gets you to 45%.

[00:12:13] Daron: Yeah. Um, But I, I continue to think that that also limits your ceiling in some ways. Now, to be fair, I’m not quite sure what the Democratic ceiling is in Texas these days. It’s, it’s clearly not 50% at this point, but, um, you

[00:12:25] Jim: say, yeah, how would,

[00:12:27] Josh: well, this is what, this is where it gets interesting to me. I mean, to some extent, I think, you know, what’s interesting is that a lot of what brought.

[00:12:33] Josh: O’Rourke so close to Cruz was the fact that, you know, independents had overwhelmingly positive views of, of O’Rourke by the end of that campaign in 2018. And, and very negative use of Cruz, the negative uses of Cruz remained, and then the negative uses of, of O’Rourke emerged basically over the next few years.

[00:12:48] Josh: At which point, you know, ultimately neither they like neither Abbott nor O’Rourke, but you knows a bad year for Democrats among other things. Right, right. Without a, yeah. All it benefits from coming into this almost to some extent is, I mean you don’t even normally say this, but a little bit more unknown.

[00:13:01] Josh: And again, as you pointed out, and I agree with. With a resume that looks just real nice, you know, it’s a real good look. You know, if you kind of go through his history and come into it, you know, for some, it’s not easy to sort of pick him out right away and start, you know, I would say chipping and chipping at him.

[00:13:15] Josh: We’ll see. I mean, I’m kind of curious to see what Cruz does next,

[00:13:18] Jim: you know, in terms of, well, I mean, I think, you know, I mean, I, I, you know, I, I think what they do for a while is. Just wait. Right. Yeah, because, you know, it’s, it’s interesting how similar these conversations are every cycle, and particularly with crews, right?

[00:13:34] Jim: I mean, you know, if I had a dime for every conversation I had in 2018, you know, particularly with some reporters that started with. But look, everybody hates Ted Cruz. Yeah. Even his own guys hate him. He must be, you know? Right. And you know, I just don’t think that’s as, as operative as, as people think it is in terms of, you know, there’s a difference between Republicans in the Senate thinking Cruz, that now not liking Cruz or whatever, and even Republicans in Texas saying, yeah, you know, he’s.

[00:14:05] Jim: You know, whatever, he can be annoying or, you know, I have these thoughts about him. It, it doesn’t show up in his numbers as you were saying, and it’s one thing to say, yeah. You know, I, I wish Ted Cruz was a little different. And it’s a whole other thing to say, yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna shop. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:14:19] Daron: I think the, you know, the interesting thing, this wasn’t the case, obviously in 2018 when, um, O’Rourke came on so strong that there really was nothing, the, the strategic imperative for the cruise campaign came to be negatively defining O’Rourke.

[00:14:34] Daron: That was it. Yeah. Because he wasn’t gonna move his own numbers and O’Rourke was so new that, that, you know, the cruise campaign could do some damage to those favorable, now they actually didn’t do a whole lot of damage. They just sort of hung on. But, but in, in this cycle, there’s, there’s a little more of an interesting dynamic, which is if you’re the cruise campaign, do you pay attention at all to the Democratic campaign?

[00:14:53] Daron: Right. In in other words, if, if Cruz. Anticipates a strong challenge from Alred or, or one of the other candidates, then there’s a lot of incentive for him to go out there and, and try to define them negatively, right? A, a Biden clone, somebody who’s just gonna, you know, rubber stamp this agenda in the Senate could be the decisive democratic vote in the Senate, et cetera.

[00:15:14] Daron: But, uh, on the other hand, there’s. Something of an incentive not to say anything if you don’t think that candidate and that race is gonna get anything beyond whatever, you know, Biden, whomever, the Democrat is at the presidential level. Right? So, so it’s a little, it, it’s an interesting dynamic and you know, at the, at the least we’re gonna get a.

[00:15:32] Daron: Kind of a nothing burger campaign at the most, we’ll get probably a highly negative campaign. Uh, right. Less from the Democrats and more from the Republicans. And I don’t mean that as an indictment on the Republican. I mean, it is a, yeah. Kind of a statement of the strategic position

[00:15:45] Jim: of the cruise campaign.

[00:15:46] Jim: Seems to me it doesn’t make any sense for them to do much. Right. You know, in the, cause you don’t even know phases of

[00:15:50] Daron: this. Right. We we’re, as we mentioned, we’re impressed with Aldrich’s resume, but, but we have no idea how he’s going to emerge as a campaign or if he’s even gonna win the Democratic not.

[00:15:57] Daron: Right.

[00:15:58] Jim: I mean, I, you know, I was going to, you know, we should move on, but I, you were saying earlier, Josh, about. You know, I mean there’s this, you know, half full, half empty with somebody like Allred or on one hand, yes. Is not, you know, because if nobody knows who you are statewide, your negatives aren’t gonna be very high to begin with.

[00:16:16] Jim: That looks like an advantage for a while, unless they get, you know, your opponent gets in front of you and the cruise campaign has a lot of time to do

[00:16:24] Daron: that. Yeah. There’s a lot of Corey, it comes to that at the very beginning. There’s a lot of Corey Booker in, in Allreds. Kind of profile. And I mean that in the, I always thought Booker was someone to really keep an eye on in 2020 and maybe even moving forward, but just never really caught on.

[00:16:37] Daron: And that, that would be the downside for, for Allred, that great resume, but for some reason doesn’t really catch on, but we’ll see.

[00:16:43] Josh: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. I think he looks like a pretty strong candidate. Agree. Honestly. Agree. I think, you know, and the one advantage he has over some of the other people he is gonna be running against is his money’s already transferrable.

[00:16:51] Josh: Right. I mean, it’s like technical stuff, but I mean, he has some advantages built in here that,

[00:16:55] Jim: well, that’s an important technical point, you know? Right. Um, You know, I mean, I, I, I think you know, some more things, you know, we’ll see what Schumer has to say and what the, you know, where the, where the, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign committee sort of lines up on this.

[00:17:10] Jim: He seems like they’re kind of candidate. Mm-hmm. To me. But I, I was trying to do a little digging around and see if I could figure out, They’re what the leading indicators have been like. So if you’re a listener and you’re in that camp and you know something, send me an email. I won’t, I won’t give you up.

[00:17:24] Jim: So, so Darren, let’s go ahead. As long as we’re talking about 24. And let’s, let’s talk about, about Trump and let’s talk, you know, for a couple minutes, you know, about what we saw in these approv, these, uh, favorability ratings of declared and all but declared Republican candidates that we have in here. We had kind of a.

[00:17:43] Jim: A theory of the case here, right? In terms of how we approach this and that, you know, I. You know, I got a text from one of my very insider political junkie friends, late last night after we sent out the advisory on the poll going, what did you do? Trial ballots? And I said, like we never do, uh uh. You know, as always, yeah, I’m happy to say that we did not.

[00:18:07] Jim: But, you know, I shouldn’t be all like, oh, taking the high ground here, cuz we did do Fon favor ratings for, for all of these, uh, for all these potential candidates. And, and honestly, there, there are some interesting things in here. I thought, I mean, let’s start with Trump. I mean, Trump, we’ve got the, obviously a lot of data on Trump at

[00:18:26] Daron: this point, right?

[00:18:27] Daron: So, uh, you know, Trump’s data, what’s interesting is if you look at the. Um, you know, over time, um, movement in, in Trump’s favorable, unfavorable numbers. So this is, you know, for listeners out there, we’re simply asking people, uh, it, it’s not a job approval question, which is kind of a performance evaluation.

[00:18:44] Daron: This is, you know, generally speaking, are you favorable or unfavorable towards a candidate? Those things often move together, but there are times when they diverge. There were a lot of people who, um, you know, for instance, like George W. Bush personally, but did not. Like his performance as president. You remember that?

[00:18:58] Daron: Yeah, I do remember that. So, uh, although they actually tend to come together after a point in time, uh, if you do a lousy job for long enough, people tend to not like you personally

[00:19:06] Jim: either. So the conversion in a, in an unhappy way. Yeah. I found

[00:19:09] Daron: that in my department. Um, not really. Not really. I, I just, um, but my colleagues love me.

[00:19:15] Daron: Yeah, exactly. Um, But if you look at the, if you look at the numbers, it’s, it’s really this jarring in, in 2016, as as Trump is, he’s won the nomination. He’s the Republican candidate in Texas. His, his net favorable minus unfavorable, so negative number here indicates, uh, plurality of people saying that they’re unfavorably predisposed to the candidate.

[00:19:35] Daron: Um, he goes, last three polls. We did February, June, and October of 2016. He goes minus 30, minus 25, minus 27. Now, this is amongst all. You know, all Texans that we were interviewing at the time. So those are colossally bad numbers for a challenger running for president. I, I, I’m hesitant to say they’re unprecedented, just cuz I, I can’t really think of the entire scope, but I find it hard to believe anybody’s got worse numbers.

[00:19:58] Jim: That’s one of those Trump things though, right? I mean, Trump people had a lot of

[00:20:00] Daron: well developed and opinions about him before

[00:20:02] Josh: he was a political, well, some of that. Well, and also there was some of that and then at that point I think there was also a lot of projecting going on because in that period a lot of the discussion, especially among, you know, in terms of negative uses among Republicans was this guy’s gonna lose.

[00:20:12] Josh: Yeah. So I mean, there’s a certain

[00:20:13] Daron: amount of, yeah, but he had the fortune of running against Hillary Clinton, whose favorability ratings were comparable, um, you know, as the democratic candidate. But as soon as the election’s over, um, you know, you go to February, 2017, all of a sudden he goes from minus 27 on the eve of the election to minus one, and he’s minus 2 0 0 0 5.

[00:20:32] Daron: He never gets out of, uh, single digits. In the, in the net fave, un fave after that point in time. And so the, the, you know, what’s the lesson here? The rallying of Republicans and conservatives around the Trump, uh, presidency and around Trump’s personality is really striking. And that persists it. It didn’t matter what happened during his presidency, uh, January 6th, barely, you know, dented.

[00:20:55] Daron: The, the favorability ratings, uh, within the state of Texas. Mm-hmm. Um, you know, what’s his famous line? He says, I could, uh, you know, shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue in New York City and, and still have, you know, the support of my party. And there’s some evidence of that here. It, it, it, he seems to be, you know, kind of immune, um, you know, a Teflon.

[00:21:14] Daron: Ironically, you know, we think of a Teflon as meaning you never get any bad stuff, but here it’s this Teflon meaning nothing sticks positive or negative. It’s

[00:21:22] Jim: sort of more an armor than a Yeah. Than a coat. I,

[00:21:25] Daron: so, and, and so you see in this poll, you know, we’ve got him at, uh, you know, 40%, very unfavorable, another 8% somewhat.

[00:21:32] Daron: So he’s got 48% InFaith. But he’s 27% very favorable, 15% somewhat. So he’s 42% favorable. So he is minus six in Texas is not a great state for him, especially given the partisan profile. Um, having said that, uh, you know, you look at Ron DeSantis. The main challenger at this point, and DeSantis is 40% favorable, 35% unfavorable.

[00:21:55] Daron: What’s striking with the DeSantis numbers is only 11% say they do not have an opinion of DeSantis. Yeah. So he is plus five overall. There’s some interesting political science written a long time ago by Larry Bartels. It’s, it’s actually a book about momentum in presidential primary dynamics, and there’s a small piece in the book that I’ve never forgotten where in discussing momentum.

[00:22:13] Daron: Bartels distinguishes between three types of presidential contests. One in which there’s no dominant candidate. There’s, there’s just a bunch of sort of lesser known candidates. I think his example historically is 1976 on the, on the democratic side. Yeah. Then there’s a contest where there’s what he calls one and a half.

[00:22:30] Daron: Candidates. So there’s a front runner and then a plausible challenger, but maybe not on par and Sirius ish. Yeah, and, and uh, the, I think the historical example for Bartels is 1984, where you’ve got Walter Mondale and then Gary Hart. Um, I, I would say this was sort of the dynamic early on in, in 2008 where you at Hillary Clinton in Barack Obama, it wasn’t clear that Obama’s gonna catch fire.

[00:22:53] Daron: And then you’ve got the third type, which is the two giants. And the classic example historically is Reagan and Ford. Right? And the idea that Bartel’s weaves is that the, the chances for momentum candidates are really diminished when you’ve got two titans, when you’ve got two candidates that everybody’s familiar with.

[00:23:11] Daron: Right? And the reason for that is, is that, you know, momentum is a function of candidates kind of catching fire and people aren’t paying attention learning. About a candidate. And so I’m struck and I’ll, I’ll just put this out there for, for both you guys as well as the listeners, you know, what kind of race do we have here?

[00:23:26] Daron: I mean, I, I, I thought for a while this is basically a one and a half classic. One and a half. Yeah. Um, so there’s some momentum potential and there may still be, but boy, DeSantis has pretty high recognition numbers. Yeah. I mean, we talked

[00:23:38] Jim: about that last time cuz he, and he was about here last time. I think maybe he’s, you know, the, the don’t knows have maybe gone down a little bit.

[00:23:45] Jim: I don’t. Yeah,

[00:23:46] Josh: I mean, I mean, you know, truthfully, you know, from a statistical standpoint, you know, not to be like that. But I mean, among Republicans, their numbers are not terribly distinct. I mean, Trump is 78 favorable, 16 unfavorable among Republicans. DeSantis is 73 10. I mean, the difference between those numbers in some ways is actually one of the little bit higher name ID for the president.

[00:24:03] Josh: Yeah. Over, you know, the governor of another state in Texas. Yeah. But they’re both almost universally known and universally liked. I mean, What strikes me about these results in some ways is actually, you know, in some, in some ways, is how strong the Republican field is looking. I mean, Donald Trump creates this sort of interesting center of gravity around it all right?

[00:24:20] Josh: I mean, to your point, sort the one plus tight and knot, but I mean, you know, you’ve got DeSantis sitting at 73 10. Nikki Haley, 46% of Republicans have a favorable view of her. Only 70% have an unfavorable view. Uh, Senator Scott 46. Favorable six unfavorable. So the rest don’t Yeah. Know him yet. I mean, you know, I mean, I mean, I say spoiled for choice, but there’s actually a pretty.

[00:24:39] Josh: Solid number of candidates there within the Republican universe. And to your point, you know, the overall number is, you know, Trump’s sitting at 42, 48 in Texas, you know, I mean, Abbott’s at 46, 41, he’s been kind of floating around those same areas, being a little bit underwater, a little bit over water. And, you know, in the, in a good year, or even not, he’s likely to win the state by, you know, six to 12 points, right?

[00:24:59] Josh: So you don’t need to have this huge net favorability. But what is interesting, I think is just the fact that. Except for Mike Pence. Well, I

[00:25:07] Jim: was just gonna, I was just gonna raise that,

[00:25:09] Josh: except for Mike Pence. You know, these, there’s a, there’s a good number of Republican candidates as far as, you know, I think Republican voters are concerned right

[00:25:15] Jim: now.

[00:25:16] Jim: I mean, look, it’s easy to make. I mean, you know, we have Pence, you know, total favorable, 30 total unfavorable 45, and. What is he among

[00:25:23] Josh: Republicans, Joe among Republicans? He’s 41, 36. But what’s so striking is that his numbers get worse among the more conservative voters. Yeah. So among ex, among people who described themselves as extremely conservative, he’s actually underwater.

[00:25:35] Josh: 34, favorable, 41 unfavorable, which is just really amazing to me for a guy. Really? Yeah. Built his career in the trenches of, you

[00:25:41] Jim: know, kind of Well, you know, I was gonna say, you know, think, you know, I’ve had a, I’ve, I’m playing with different takes on this. Yeah. I mean, on one hand when I first saw these, I was like, you know, I’ll poor Mike Pence, right?

[00:25:52] Jim: I mean, you know, made his play, you know, if you read, I’ve read a lot of those behind the scenes, like transition, you know, Trump campaign to the White House thing. I mean, Pence was very reluctant to do this and then got kind of talked into it and then kind of, you know, per the more negative versions of him, kind of drank the Kool-Aid and now he’s kind of a man without a lane.

[00:26:14] Jim: Right. Um, as illustrated by your sort of look at, look at his views of him, the intensity. But I also thought. You know, it also kind of disrupts the whole lane metaphor. I mean, and I think in a way it’s like Trump is just such a disruptive center of gravity. Am I, I mean, am I overdoing that? I mean, it just seems like, well, I think, I know.

[00:26:37] Jim: He just is like, I. You know, it’s like a Star Trek episode or they go into some part of space and all of a sudden like up is down and down is up and everything works in a, in a slightly different way. Cuz there’s this thing.

[00:26:49] Josh: No, yeah. I mean, but I mean, I think there’s no way to look at these numbers. I mean, you know, in some ways.

[00:26:53] Josh: I mean, just as in collecting the data, what you’re looking at as you’re saying, okay, where’s Trump among these core groups, within the Republican electorate, Republicans, strong Republicans, conservatives, very conservative. And he’d say, where’s everybody else? And it’s, and it’s in the comparison, we’re saying, you know, we’re not talking about.

[00:27:08] Josh: DeSantis is amazing numbers on its own, although they’re very, I mean, they’re. Phenomenal. Again for an out-of-state governor. Sorry guy. Yeah.

[00:27:14] Jim: A guy’s the governor of Florida. We talked about this last time. Right. But it’s where’s it is a thing,

[00:27:17] Josh: but the thing that we, the thing that we look at this and say, oh, these are like almost statistically indistinguishable from Trump.

[00:27:22] Josh: The other thing I’m thinking about in this, also into the Soldier of Trumps have gravity and the lane thing is it’s like, you know, well these candidates have very solid starting point numbers here. I mean, I’ll say like, you know, Colin Allred would take any of these numbers among Democrats right now jumping into the Senate race.

[00:27:36] Josh: Right? Right. And yet the other side of, it’s like, okay, but what does a Republican primary with Donald Trump look like? It’s gonna be ugly. It’s gonna be, you know, kind of messy. And, and how does that, I mean, it’s hard not to think about the dynamics of who becomes Trump’s target depending on who seems the strongest.

[00:27:52] Josh: Yeah. So the, this

[00:27:52] Daron: is, I think this is two. What does that do to these numbers? Yeah. Two quick observations. The first is that look Trump’s. Pernicious effect on the Republican primary right now. There, there’d probably be several, but one is that second choice Trump voters, and we don’t show this, but other polls have showed this.

[00:28:10] Daron: Go to DeSantis. Yeah. So if you’re not DeSantis and you’re not Trump, why would you criticize Trump? All you’re gonna do is one, attract his wrath, and two, if you shake voters loose, they’re going to DeSantis. So there’s a heavy incentive right now in the Republican primary to go after DeSantis, because DeSantis is second choice.

[00:28:30] Daron: Voters aren’t necessarily Trump. So if you go after. DeSantis and you shake him up, his voters come loose. They may go to the Nicky Haley’s, to the Tim Scotts to, you know, these other candidates. So I, I, I think that’s, but unless Trump

[00:28:43] Jim: is not in the race, it just doesn’t help you.

[00:28:46] Daron: No, that’s, yeah. No, this is, but this is the, the reason why you’re getting lots of people going after DeSantis rather than Trump, I think right now.

[00:28:52] Daron: And I think we should expect that. The other, the Pence thing is interesting because Pence. Accrue all of the negatives of Trump. In other words, you know, his, his very unfavorable ratings are, you know, he’s, his total unfavorables are 45, Trump’s 48. I mean, he’s right on top of Trump. So the Democrats have basically decided you’re part of that administration that we all loathe.

[00:29:13] Daron: Um, but he’s at just comparison here, even though he’s at 30% favorable, Trump’s at 42, so there’s a 12 point gap, but Trump’s 27% very favorable. Mike Pence is nine. Yeah. Um, so, you know, I’m not a mathematician. That’s three times the amount of support you did pretty good with that. Yeah. Good. Good. Thank you.

[00:29:32] Daron: That was fast. Um, The other thing is, is if you look, and, and y’all can’t see this, but you can, if you go online and take a look at the results, the, the middle category, we, we say we offer people choice, neither favorable nor unfavorable, right? So, so that number is not just people who don’t know, there’s a distinct, right?

[00:29:47] Daron: I don’t know who that is. There’s, there’s a distinct middle category and nobody’s really in the middle on Trump. Only 7% say they’re not neither favorable, unfavorable. Um, Ron DeSantis is 13. Nikki Haley is 18. Um, Ramaswami is 17 Hutchinson’s 20. Pence is 19 for the, you know, former vice president. 19% said they’re neither favorable nor unfavorable.

[00:30:10] Daron: So, so while Pence is in a. Not in a great position compared to some of his potential competitors. Um, he does have some opportunity there. I, I’m not quite sure what those people are waiting for. Um, yeah. You know, but to, to your point earlier, Jim, uh, about, you know, look, conservatism is, Trump has defined conservatism.

[00:30:31] Daron: So I think, uh, either you or Josh was talking about Pence. Why are conservatives down? Uh, pence is, is clearly, I think objectively a more conservative, classically conservative candidate than Trump. But how he’s reacted to Trump has defined him with conservative rather conservatives rather than his policy positions.

[00:30:48] Josh: That’s perfect. Let’s talk about the hodgepodge of conservatism.

[00:30:50] Jim: Right. Well, and in the, you know, and again to bring some of the, the qualitative to this and, you know, one of the anecdotal elements of that dynamic of. You know, Trump reforming conservatism even though, or you know, Having this impact on what we think of as conservatism pr in practical terms right now was just such a bad break for, for Pence.

[00:31:14] Jim: And you know, I mean there are many tales you don’t have to read like the most progressive of the accounts of this kind of across the board. Lots of accounts of, you know, how Trump just kind of, you know, would make fun of Pence. For his particular brand of, of conservatism. And he just, you know, I mean, it’s just such a bad break for the guys, so, all right.

[00:31:37] Jim: We, we don’t have too much time left. Let’s, let’s look a little bit then at the zeitgeist in Texas, you know, through the prism of legislative politics and what we found up here, found here, and like the way we, we frame, we’ve been framing this in the rollout. Um, I, I think we’ll hold, as you know, we look more at these numbers and as we talk about it more, and, and we were talking about this before we, we started, you know, and there’s a, for all that we, we, we talk all the time about the polarization of the parties, the polarization of the public agenda, and, you know, the nature of the issues that are on there.

[00:32:13] Jim: We’ve been talking for, you know, since the end of the last legislature about. The competition and the ideological undertones and the partisan undertones of trying to define the agenda for this legislative session. And so we have these lists that were put out by. The governor’s emergency items Lieutenant Governor Patrick’s 30 target items, cuz 20 wasn’t enough.

[00:32:38] Jim: And the governor’s and the, and the speaker of the house’s 20 priority items. And we put together this list that we used and then asked people about in terms of what do you think is, you know, important for the legislature to act on. Yeah. And I mean, I think, and what did we get? You know, we got this. You know, this list of items, you know, we were breaking it down and we broke it down in the rollout.

[00:33:03] Jim: You know the thing, there’s a list of things that 60% or more said it was extremely or very important for the legislature to address and, and act on. And it wasn’t all this red meat stuff at

[00:33:16] Josh: all. No, I mean, you know, it’s the sort of stuff that like most normal people care about, right? It’s like infrastructure, you know, I mean, the state, obviously people are still, you know, a little bit stressed by the grid collapse.

[00:33:27] Josh: That’s something that like people did not forget about and it’s clear in the polling data, you know, we’ve been having. Lots of news and reports, at least where we are. But I think, you know, lived experiences where other people are of like the water going out. Yeah. You know, for extended periods of time, you know, the state’s dealing with, you’re having to

[00:33:41] Jim: boil, you know, boil

[00:33:42] Josh: water, notice you have water, but boil it.

[00:33:43] Josh: Yeah. Just boil it twice, you know? Uh, I mean, and some of it does match the agenda in terms of things like school safety and reducing property taxes. Right. But it’s true, you aren’t, you know, I mean we saw this a little, a little bit of glimpse of this in the last poll too. You know, we were looking kind of in particular education priorities.

[00:34:00] Josh: Yeah. You know, sort of what was at the top and what was at the bottom of that. But you also see this here, which is that, you know, people aren’t necessarily clamoring for, you know, let’s just say like, I mean, just I’m looking at, you know, ending COVID restrictions at this point, or, you know, something thinking about what’s on the emergency item list.

[00:34:14] Josh: Right. You know, prohibiting books, you know, in libraries is another one of these things. Has had a lot of discussion, a lot of attention. But this isn’t, High on the priority list for, for large groups of voters, for the most part. And you know, and again, you have to break it down by party. And I think once you start breaking in, up, down by party, you definitely do see, yeah.

[00:34:31] Jim: You know, I think things that are given pride to place through a partisan

[00:34:34] Josh: lens. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, if you look at, if you look at that list, and I think, you know, this is the point. I mean, for us, what we were trying to answer, I think with, with a battery like this, we’re having them assess these priorities as stated by the leadership.

[00:34:43] Josh: You know, in, in both chambers and in, in both branches is sort of trying to figure out, okay, Republicans are in charge. What. Needs to happen, right? I mean, it’s kind of what we’re surfing on. We were talking about this sort of various agenda space and what’s going on, but we really wanna know, you know, if you ask the voters, here’s the list of things from, but like, if they can only get done four of these and we didn’t ask it this way, we wanna let them evaluate each of these.

[00:35:01] Josh: But like, what rises to the top? And when you look at Republican voters, I mean, it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a list that makes sense and I think reflects well on what’s going in the session. But it’s border security spending, it’s property taxes, it’s parental oversight and education is, and that specifically is, is a very popular, you know, I think just.

[00:35:19] Josh: Concept. Uh, and then the one other thing that really came up there, and I would say it was, you know, removing district attorneys who are not sort of, you know, enforcing laws, which I would put more broadly under the public safety umbrella, which has been a big part of Republican campaigns least recently, right.

[00:35:32] Josh: For Democrats, it’s infrastructure, it’s education dollars, and it’s abortion. That that sounds about right.

[00:35:39] Jim: But there’s still a lot of overlap.

[00:35:42] Josh: But that’s the thing, there’s still a ton of overlap even when we talk about those things. Right,

[00:35:45] Daron: right. Well, the, you know, look, I looked at this in even, even a more simplistic way than Josh, and that’s like, they want you to, they want you to keep the water.

[00:35:54] Daron: I’m not sure how to take that. They want you to keep the lights on. They want you to keep the water clean. They want you to mm-hmm. Educate the children and they want you to ensure the territorial integrity of the country. These are not, you know, these are sort of meat and potato kinds of things, and partly this.

[00:36:10] Daron: You know when you ask those things and people, yes. People how important they’re, but we didn’t ask them thinking that uh, everybody was satisfied. Yeah. With how Texas is doing, clearly there’s significant, if you take a look at the track numbers and the approval

[00:36:23] Jim: ratings, yeah. We’re still at about 50% wrong track.

[00:36:26] Jim: Right.

[00:36:26] Josh: Which I want to, I was been looking just on the trend. This isn’t something interesting, which is that really ticked up. So I mean, Texas was generally, voters generally would say when choosing between his Texas on the. Right track, wrong direction, you know? Right track generally for most of the history of those 50 some odd polls, you know, outpaced wrong direction until about the summer of 21.

[00:36:44] Josh: Yeah. And it has sat in negative territory pretty much since then. Now whether that relates to the end of that session, that special session on, yeah. Other things, I don’t know, but it’s an interesting inflection point in the time series. I do,

[00:36:55] Daron: I, I do think, you know, look at some level reality intrudes. I think the cumulative effect of the grid going down and people freezing in their homes, you know, public water supplies being suspect, the school shootings and the violence that we’ve seen on multiple occasions, both in El Paso and Uvalde and other places.

[00:37:14] Daron: Um, the, the ongoing crisis at the border. There’s just a sense of governments just not getting it done. Mm-hmm. Um, and I think those are manifest in the track numbers. And, uh, you know, the, the ledge is approaching that as they always do with, with sort of, you know, surgical strikes. On these issues and you, you wonder if voters are impressed.

[00:37:35] Daron: My sense is based on the numbers, that they’re not paying that

[00:37:38] Jim: much attention. Well, and that’s kind of, you know, I sent out a, a, a mailer this morning, you know, it’s a little more, you know, whatever sassy than what we put out on the bear or what I, how you’d want to, but I mean, to me, what, what this tells us is, I mean, I, I agree with both of you in the sense that, you know, we’ve been talking, you know, us, you know, in various combinations for a long time about.

[00:38:00] Jim: The cumulative impact of rapid population and economic growth in the state. You know, and I think that’s part of what some of this is. I mean, some of it is crisis intervention, you know, I mean, a lot of the things you were talking about, Darren, I mean, I would, I would probably combine a couple of those, you know, the impact of the pandemic on public education and schools and people’s experience of that.

[00:38:23] Jim: But it’s interesting to me how. Fundamentally experiential, this is. Mm-hmm. Right. I mean, this is like not, you know, and it’s not immune to elite queuing or leadership, but at some, at some point people are like going, you know what? Yeah. Great. Thank you. Appreciate that. You’re saying you’re paying attention to this.

[00:38:44] Jim: What I’m thinking about right now is that my power and my water were out for a few days and yeah, it was a couple of years ago, but. A pretty impactful experience. Right, right. And I think that, I think people are still carrying that around. I mean, for a while we, you know, I’ve been in some venues where I talk about the grid and people act like, are you just being a partisan?

[00:39:05] Jim: Cuz you want to blame the Republicans. But I think it’s much bigger than that. I think you’re right, right. Yeah. Yeah. I, you know, you go back to, you know, I mean, I, I put this, I. In response to something else. I was going back and looking at that item that I think we did in December about state government look, you know, doing it.

[00:39:25] Jim: God, what was the exact item? You know? Does, is state government, you know, doing a good job? Are they dropping the ball

[00:39:30] Josh: essentially? Yeah. Well there’s called careless. I mean careless or careful of people’s tax dollars and looking out basically like I

[00:39:35] Jim: think for people like you. Yeah, the other one, it wasn’t the tax, it was the other one.

[00:39:38] Jim: But I mean, remember we got like, Oh yeah. Amazingly negative numbers of it. Yeah.

[00:39:41] Daron: I love that careless, careful question, by the way. Yeah, I think that’s a real, yeah,

[00:39:44] we

[00:39:45] Jim: did a, a paired one on that. That was really quite good. And you know, I just think that’s still out there and that doesn’t mean that. People are turning on their partisanship and we’re not seeing any evidence of that.

[00:39:58] Jim: But people are pretty skeptical of government institutions. It’s not just here, but there are sp I, I think what this tells us is that those attitudes are seizing on certain things that are specific to Texas. You know, it’s not, we’re not the only ones experiencing rapid growth, but these are the kinds of things that in a rapid growth environment, In the political context we have here, there’s a little bit of a crisis of responsiveness or ache.

[00:40:24] Jim: Crisis is too dramatic a word, but there’s skepticism about responsiveness and I think that there is a sense that the, what this tells me is that, and we kind of. Pitch the results of the poll this way. Right now, if you’re watching the legislature closer in all of these, in a lot of these areas, there are intra intraparty fights going on in the legislature that are not even close to resolved about how they’re gonna address.

[00:40:50] Jim: Property taxes, what they’re gonna do about the grid. Mm-hmm. Um, and a and a couple of, you know, education, I’ll say school safe. What I mean, you know, school safety and, and I mean that legislation is still actively being written and argued over and changed a lot as we speak literally today. And I think there’s a big question about whether.

[00:41:14] Jim: The leadership in the state is gonna sort of produce what, what is the minimal viable product here that you can bring back that people are gonna, are gonna, that these voters are gonna go, oh yeah, they, they did that. Now, I, I think the bet all along on the grid has been, long as it doesn’t break again, it’s fine.

[00:41:34] Daron: Well, I think that, yeah, the, I don’t know that I’d predict that you’re one major additional crisis away from the. Proverbial dam breaking, which is not the correct metaphor given what we’re talking about. Yeah. Little one more scary, one more dam break away from the dam breaking. Um, but I, I, I do get a sense, and you see this in Republican messaging on immigration, which is, well, it’s the federal government that’s not sort of giving us the tools here, or, but I think there’s a sense that, you know, again, you talk about the, the cumulative total of these issues, which is, sorry, we.

[00:42:05] Daron: Seem to have a suspect supply of energy. We seem to have a suspect supply of clean water. I’m not sure the kids are getting educated. I’m not sure they’re safe. Going to the public schools, uh, you know, I’m not sure about walking downtown in Dallas or Austin or, or Houston these days. Um, exactly what is it I’m paying for, you know, from the, yeah.

[00:42:24] Daron: With my property taxes and, and in, in Texas there was a sense in, Josh alluded to this, that, that the. The Texas model of government and its sort of general approach was, was doing much better than the national approach That was true until fairly recently. And it’s, it’s not, I I don’t think it’s that, you know, people have made some sort of ideal, you know, there’s been an ideological period, right.

[00:42:44] Daron: I, i, I think it’s just, well wait a sec. Are we sure we’re happy with the performance of the state government here? Um, and, you know, at some level that does become partisan. I, I guess, but I, I, I agree. It’s, it’s a broader question about institutional functioning, right? And I, I don’t think there’s a lot of, I think we’re seeing a downtick in confidence, I guess, well,

[00:43:02] Josh: let’s say partisanship is a huge part of all of this, and in factually, in fact, it probably is, you know, a huge contributor to what the, the challenge is here, right?

[00:43:09] Josh: I mean, on the one hand you have a broader electorate that, you know, not surprisingly, is more focused on, you know, Whether the lights are gonna stay on and whether the water’s gonna be clean, then whether or not a kid they don’t have is gonna get a voucher. Or, you know, basically how the state is gonna respond to a, you know, probably less than half a percent of the population who has a different view about their gender, right?

[00:43:30] Josh: Like, that’s just not, it’s not gonna drive the generic voter to the polls, right? When they’re kind of more concerned about these issues. At the same time, when you look at the issues that are like getting a lot of coverage in the press are getting a lot of attention. You know, why the chamber was cleared out last night.

[00:43:45] Josh: These issues are a big deal. To re the Republican primary electorate and to a lesser extent, but, but I mean, still. To very, very liberal voters. Yeah. Right. And that’s the thing, I mean, a lot of this other stuff is a lot more abstract to people. You know, when you’re talking, when we talked about this, when we talked about kinda the positive education a couple weeks ago in public opinion, you know, public education is a pretty abstract thing.

[00:44:05] Josh: And when you really think about the arguments that a lot of people are making, and we tested some of this stuff in the poll and we’ll probably talk about this in another week. Uh, You know about the impact of some of these kinds of policies that are being discussed on public education. And first of all, most people are like, I don’t know, right?

[00:44:18] Josh: Because why would they, you know, there’s some things that are obviously good. Give the teachers more money. Sure. Most people think that would be a good idea. Give parents more oversight. You know, there’s a reason that’s, you know, that’s good messaging in terms of mobilization among repub Republican set of issues.

[00:44:31] Josh: In a way that honestly speaks to a lot of Democrats too, because who’s against giving parents more oversight. But is that an issue that if they do or don’t do, I’m gonna change my vote. Probably not, but if a power goes out again, maybe so. Yeah. But the thing is, is it’s hard because on the one hand, you know, you’ve got these very, you know, intense sort of, I would say, you know, heavily stakeholder driven fights, like in the case around property taxes, around, uh, yeah.

[00:44:56] Josh: You know, around the grid that, you know, the leadership needs to deal with, you know, in a lot of ways, in, in ways that really, the question just at the end of it politically is do the voters feel like they got a property tax cut? Right. Do they feel like the grid is safer? You know, can I say that and will it, will it be believable?

[00:45:09] Josh: And on the other hand, you’ve got this set of policies that is driving, you know, a smaller subset of people, but they’re an important subset of people and they’re very intense on it. Crazy on both sides. Right? And so, you know, you kind of come out of that and, and you sort of say, you know, you kind of look at, I think the, the danger becomes which set of issues are they really focusing on in terms of how the overall electorate feels about it at some point.

[00:45:32] Josh: And I think that’s the sort of thing we kind of go, yeah, again near the end, but you kind of go back to like the colon red thing. I’ll just do it anyway. Right. You say like, what’s Colin Allred’s approach here? If I’m looking at this pole right now and saying why jump in now? I would say it’s probably guns.

[00:45:46] Josh: You know, it’s guns, it’s probably the grid. And the fact that, you know, Cruz was on a plane outta Texas when the grid collapse happened, and he’s basically, you know, made his position on guns exceedingly clear in a state where more and more people are seeing guns as part of the problem. That becomes the, the basis of something.

[00:46:02] Josh: Again, especially if overall the state is not necessarily, you know, uh, living up to its responsibilities. And the thing is, there’s just more and more evidence of that. I mean, when you say, Right track, wrong direction. When you look at these sort of evaluations of, you know, the responsiveness of state government Yeah.

[00:46:17] Josh: And it’s in an environment, I mean, you brought up this massive growth where, you know, people aren’t sure about how they feel about growth in the state, and Republicans are negative about the state’s growth. And one of the interesting results in this poll, we’ve asked this question, I think nine times, maybe more, 13 times since I think 2019, about people’s views about the state’s increasing racial and ethnic diversity.

[00:46:34] Josh: And this was the first poll in which a plurality said that the state’s increasing racial and ethnic diversity is a cause for concern. So more people said that than it’s a cause for optimism. That’s the first time that’s happened. It was, I think the majority of Republicans. Yeah. And so there are these changes going on and it’s creating a lot of consternation on the right that I think, you know, the, the leadership and the legislature’s trying to deal with and address and, and reacts to, yeah.

[00:46:56] Josh: At the same time, you know, they can’t drop the ball on this other stuff, but it’s this other stuff that they seem to kind of be dropping the ball on. Yeah. That’s much more important.

[00:47:03] Jim: And I think that’s a, yeah, there’s a real public perception out there. And they’re in a, they’re in a tough spot right now because as you imply there, and I was saying earlier, trying to produce something tangible that you can take to the voters and go.

[00:47:15] Jim: Hey, we did this in response to your concerns. Very difficult right now because they’re gonna, they’re probably gonna, you know, I’d be surprised if they don’t produce something on the grid if there’s not some form of property tax reduction. I mean, they will produce something, but the question is, will it meet the market?

[00:47:35] Josh: Yeah. Not only will we meet the market, but I mean, the other side is, you know, how. How much criticism will you be able to marshal against with, I mean, the problem is, is that you’ve got on the one hand this idea of like, well, we need to address the grid, and we had to ask another question about who should pay for it.

[00:47:48] Josh: Yeah. I’ll tell you who nobody thinks should pay for it. Rate payers, but you know, who’s gonna pay for it? Rate payers and taxpayers regardless. And that’s gonna be, you know, a, a source of criticism regardless. Any sort of property tax cut is going to necessarily, you know, take some kind of money outta public education when most people think that, you know, the public education system can have more money in it.

[00:48:07] Josh: And as teachers are, you know, sort of leaving the job, that’s another piece about this is when, you know, if they don’t get the public education mixed right, and you know, the teacher sort of shortage becomes a teacher crisis all of a sudden. That’s another thing to add on the list of like basic state government functions that are not being reaching, you know, expectations, which I mean, obviously in our polling.

[00:48:25] Josh: People don’t really rate the public education system here very highly to begin with. Yeah. So it’s sort of, you know, you just sort of see it adding it up. But I mean, to everything else you talk about, you know, negative partisanship is a hell of a thing. Right. And so it’s not as though,

[00:48:38] Jim: right. Well, and the incentives, you know, I mean, The incentives to talk about that, the things that trigger negative partisanship are pretty high.

[00:48:46] Jim: And, and if you an incumbent

[00:48:47] Josh: Right. And widely

[00:48:48] Jim: available. Yeah. And yeah. And, and what the universe of those things is pretty clear. Darren, anything you, anything really stick out to you, you want to, you wanna flag at the end before we get outta here?

[00:48:57] Daron: Oh, I always love gambling questions, Jim. I think you know that, uh, so, uh, embedded within, uh, uh, you know, we’ve talked generally about both.

[00:49:05] Daron: The 2024 data as well as the priorities that voters said they had for the legislative session. Josh alluded to, we have a battery of questions, uh, on specific provisions on abortion as well as on public ed, and I’d encourage people to go take a look at those. But we also tested singular kinda one-off, um, pieces of legislation or policy proposals that have been floating around the session.

[00:49:25] Daron: And, uh, two that tested amongst the bottom four and we probably tested a couple dozen, um, was, uh, expand legal casino gambling, which was actually plus 15. Right. It was 49% support, but 34% oppose. And if you don’t have majority support before anybody starts talking about the negatives, that, that, that’s probably difficult.

[00:49:45] Daron: Justin. And, and

[00:49:45] Josh: importantly among Republicans, it was 46 40. Yeah. So, I mean, if you wanna say like, why, why isn’t, you know, the Lieutenant Governor or anybody else really going out on a limb? To expand casinos, it’s because it’s just not right. And

[00:49:56] Daron: then legalizing, online betting is 38% support, 41 oppose. So I, I always find these questions kind of interesting.

[00:50:03] Daron: We’ve had different versions of ’em over time. And if we’re talking about d different revenue streams or, you know, in the case of online betting, uh, you know, sort of its own industry as well as spinning off money for the state. Those don’t seem to be options at all. Yeah. This

[00:50:17] Jim: was not a session where, you know, the argument that we need the money was really gonna carry

[00:50:21] Daron: the day.

[00:50:21] Daron: We talked about that. Right, exactly.

[00:50:23] Josh: Yeah. I mean, I think there were two, you know, if not novel, you know, really counter, counter, you know, sort of attitudinal sets of results that really, I think, you know, Just sort of, sort of speak to this sort of question about responsiveness. You know, we asked in this policy battery about two gun proposals and two questions about Medicaid.

[00:50:40] Josh: You know, one, raising the age to purchase a firearm from 18 to 21, and then basically a description of red flag laws. 72% of Texans supported, you know, basically instituting red flag laws, including 88% of Democrats and 64% of Republicans. Uh, on raising the age to purchase a firearm of 76% of Texans, 91% of Democrats.

[00:50:58] Josh: Again, 64% of Republicans on Medicaid expansion. Uh, 73% of Texans were supportive of expanding eligibility for Medicaid, including 91% of Democrats, and again, 61% of Republicans. We has a similar question about, uh, postpartum coverage under Medicaid or something. The house is pushed for, for 12 months, showed similar numbers, and I think, you know, we spent years kind of, I mean, I remember like, especially in the Rick Perry era, the idea of, you know, well, Medicaid’s a dirty word.

[00:51:22] Josh: Yeah. You know, and it’s just, it, it was very interesting, the poll, and maybe it’s the pandemic, who knows? You know? But you know, the, and I think with shootings, with the gun step, I think the obvi, you know, there’s sort of obvious evidence there. But with Medicaid then it’s interesting that, you know, we’re sitting here now and you see about almost two thirds of Republicans saying, yeah, expand eligibility for Medicaid.

[00:51:42] Jim: Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, part of the, part of the explanation from that might be that. We’re just far enough away now from Obamacare and Medicaid being linked to that, that that may be also the political charge of that. I’m, it’s not gone, we don’t say the Affordable

[00:51:59] Josh: Care Act or

[00:52:00] Jim: Obamacare in that way.

[00:52:00] Jim: Yeah. You stand up and say Obamacare. Now there are some people that were going, eh, as are throwing rocks and stuff, but I think that the share of those people is going down. Yeah. You know, but I, I think it’s probably, it almost certainly. What about you? Puzzle? You know, I, I think if I was gonna say anything, I would’ve probably pointed out.

[00:52:16] Jim: Just the margins on those two gun measures. Yeah, I mean I think it’s hard not to be struck by that. Um, you know, I think for a long time we said, you know, these mass shootings don’t make that much difference. But I think we’re beginning to see a little bit of accumulative effect now, those two. Those two items have always pulled Yeah.

[00:52:38] Jim: Reasonably well, but the margins are getting bigger and they’re getting a little bigger

[00:52:41] Josh: among Republicans. Yeah. I mean, the big thing is we asked this question about what factors most to blame, uh, for school shootings. Yeah. We, we more or less repeated an item that we’d asked before in June, 2018. And, and two of the responses relate to gun laws.

[00:52:51] Josh: And there’s, there’s about. 12 to 14 responses. And you know, you can imagine Democrats generally coalesce around the gun related responses. You know, Republicans more around other things, mental health resources, you know, in terms of school shooting the, the role of the parents. But when we combine the share of people who say, you know, either lacks gun laws or poor enforcement of existing gun laws are the factor most of blames.

[00:53:10] Josh: So something having to do with guns. June, 2018 to April, 2023, the share who say that went from 23% to 36% overall among Democrats from 43 to 59% among independents from 12 to 31%, and from Republicans from five to 14%, which still sounds low, but it still almost a three, three time increase. And you can, so I mean, part of this is, you know, the accumulation of these, I mean, again, each individual event, maybe not, but the accumulation of these is starting to become, you know, more and more apparent and sort of people’s attitudes about the causes of these things.

[00:53:40] Josh: And we always focus on the causes because if you wanna know, again, from a poli, you know, political standpoint, what does a solution look like? You kind of have to ask, well, what do people think the problem is? Yeah, well, and what,

[00:53:48] Jim: and yeah, what are, what will they allow sort of cognitively as they explain these

[00:53:53] Josh: things to themselves?

[00:53:53] Josh: I mean, what’s interesting about going ahead about the school safety question is, you know, what’s almost. Without fail. At the bottom of the list is, is school building design. Yeah. Which is, so the hardening the schools that kind of thing is, is, you know, is usually pretty low down. And so it’s gonna be interesting to see again, whether what they can accomplish is gonna actually be what seems to be a, you know, is gonna actually meet the needs of what seems to be a pretty high priority in the electorate.

[00:54:14] Josh: Yeah,

[00:54:14] Jim: I think that’s right. But I, you know, it’s gonna be interesting to see how much pressure is, you know, continues to be brought to bear on that. But, uh, the word is that those bills are, are not moving. Yep. So, On that front. Darren, thanks for coming in, spending some time with us. Always a pleasure. Happy end of the semester.

[00:54:32] Jim: You too. Thank you, sir. Josh, glad you could make it. Yeah, I was worried about your health. Thanks for all the work on this. Oh yeah. Uh, Good to have it out. And thank you for listening. Thanks as always to our excellent technical staff here in the Audi, in the, uh, liberal Arts Development studio and in our excellent audio studio, which we spent a lot of time in over the years.

[00:54:56] Jim: Um, if you are interested in these results, which by now I hope you still are, Uh, you can see the rollout in the poll results@texaspolitics.tex.edu. There are lots of pointers. Go to the blog section, you’ll see the post, thousands of graphics, all the data, all the documents, um, and lots and lots to look at.

[00:55:19] Jim: So thank you for listening, and we’ll be back next week with another second reading podcast.

[00:55:30] Jim: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.