November 10th, 2022 – The 2022 Midterm Elections in Texas

2022-11-10 – Second Reading Podcast
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[00:00:00] 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, so I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America.

It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the constitution.

They have become the norm.

At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?

[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. Back. Two days after the election with Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project. He’s been a very busy man since the election. ?

[00:00:52] Josh Blank: Yeah, I guess so. I don’t know.

[00:00:54] Josh Blank: Sure. That’s

[00:00:54] Jim Henson: humble. Well, it’s done , at least the election part. [00:01:00] So the 2022 election is in Texas. Is is now in the books, obviously not quite in the books and several other places in the country. You know, a a, an interesting. Election in the way that it was in some way, such a status quo election, you know?

[00:01:16] Jim Henson: And, and you know, last week we talked a lot about how familiar this all looked based on the polling we had done. It started looking even more familiar during early voting, though we needed to be a little Yeah. You know, you know, humble. I like to say , well humble and you know. Yeah. Careful, you know, Um, well go hand in hand sometimes.

[00:01:34] Jim Henson: Uh, yeah. Hopefully. Um, Anybody listen to this will know basically, But yesterday afternoon, a hundred percent of the, uh, we’re recording this. On, on Thursday, uh, yesterday afternoon, on Wednesday, Secretary of State published the final results. Abbot, 54.8%, O’Rourke 43.81 for an 11 point margin, slightly over.

[00:01:58] Jim Henson: Two major polling [00:02:00] averages were, yeah, 5 38 in rcp. I think one was about 9.8, The other was in the low tens,

[00:02:05] Josh Blank: I think. Yeah. Which is, I think, you know, that’s a conversation for another day, but something that we should probably be pretty comfortable ex, you know, at this point in time expecting. Yes,

[00:02:13] Jim Henson: yes. Um, for lots of reasons anyway.

[00:02:15] Jim Henson: Right. And, and, and so, you know, the polling averages, you know, we’re, we’re pretty close. Yeah. Despite. You know, some commentary, I guess we’ll call it, You know, the, the polling, you know, was pretty in the ballpark this time and, and in the ballpark, you know, really in the infield, most

[00:02:32] Josh Blank: of it, yes. It certainly seemed to track the contours of the election pretty broadly, as, as, as again, as only the trial ballot can do.

[00:02:39] Josh Blank: And, you know, in the end it seemed to, you know, especially in the, the late stages as we moved to likely voter samples and from, I think, you know, the people who’ve been kind of doing this here for a little bit, it, it all kind of seemed to be around. Range, so Right. Certainly wasn’t a super big surprise on election day, at least if you believe, you know, that they were at least, you know, making relatively accurate estimates of the sentiment of the electorate.

[00:02:59] Jim Henson: [00:03:00] Right. And, and, and in terms and in terms of the competitiveness on the rest of the ballot, you know, kind of a, you know, that that did not, You know, the statewide ballot did not really materialize. Lieutenant Governor Patrick reached almost 54%. Uh, finished the head of, uh, uh, call might callier by about 10 and a half.

[00:03:18] Jim Henson: A little more than 10, 10, 10, 10 0.4 or so, 10.37, I guess. Um, the attorney General pulled another one. So to speak, , um, just about a, you know, a few tenths of a point below the Lieutenant Governor. I should put a pin and come back to that one. ? Yes. Uh, wait for the end, you know, won his race by just a smidge under 10.

[00:03:40] Josh Blank: Yeah, I mean, somebody pointed out the fact that, you know, if you look at the top three Republican vote getters and the top three Democratic vote getters, Pretty close. Yeah, it was,

[00:03:47] Jim Henson: you know, pretty, Yeah. I mean, you know, as we got down, you know, farther down the ballot, we saw those, those gaps opening up a bit.

[00:03:53] Jim Henson: But, you know, there’s no point in like talking about what people’s expectations were at this point, I don’t think. And, and then we

[00:03:59] Josh Blank: [00:04:00] saw, that’s what we’re luckily released from Right. at this point. That’s why this nice election is done. You know,

[00:04:05] Jim Henson: so I, I, I think, and, you know, And then, you know, pretty close to the old numbers in the Texas legislature.

[00:04:11] Jim Henson: Something else that we had talked about in the last couple weeks, and, um, that all seemed to be pretty on track. We were saying there were probably not more than, you know, five or so competitive races turned out. Uh, we had five flips, right? Mm-hmm. , but for a net gain of, of one for the republicans. Um, then you know Phil King, uh, former representative, now Senator Phil King, or Senator, actually, he’s already been declared elected, so Right.

[00:04:38] Jim Henson: We’ll come back to that too. Maybe . Yeah. Uh, Representative Phil King steps into the redrawn Beverly Powell in the Senate. So we have a 1912 Senate again, and, uh, a legislature that, that looks like it will be 86 64, I guess, in the Senate. We should flag, there’ll probably be a recount in the vacated, uh, seat of [00:05:00] former Senator Lucio.

[00:05:01] Jim Henson: Yeah. But, uh, the Democrat Morgan Lamont has won that seat. I think by less than two points, there’ll be a, a recount. Um, but I think the general expectation is that that will hold

[00:05:12] Josh Blank: well. And just an aside, if, if you are interested in that sort of thing, you can kind of like look around on the internet for analyses of how much recounts tend to shift votes, and they tend to be very, very, very minor shift.

[00:05:22] Josh Blank: Right? So, so a two point difference would be pretty far outside the range of what a typical recount would be expect to change. In general, so it’d be unusual.

[00:05:30] Jim Henson: So, you know, I mean, I, you know, even less surprising than usual, I think, I mean, in the sense that, you know, we always feel like, you know, I think we said probably last week or the week before, there’s very often, you know, a surprise flip that everybody goes, Oh, no one thought that way.

[00:05:42] Jim Henson: You know? Right. The races that flipped were on all the lists pretty much, or that the seats that flipped were pretty much on all the, on all the lists, turnout. You know, I mean, I, my notes are saying moderate at best. I think that’s probably unfair. I mean, you know, between 24 and 2018, [00:06:00] um, with 2018, as we’ve said on here, ad nausea being a pretty unusually high mm-hmm.

[00:06:06] Jim Henson: year, you know, we saw 45.68% turnouts this year. 50 compared to 53 in 2018, which was very high. Yeah. So, you know, about 8

[00:06:17] Josh Blank: million votes let’s say. You know, I mean, people are kind of, I mean, look, I’ve been a big. , you know, proponent of reminding people that Texas is a low voter turnout state. Yeah. And regardless of what election cycle we’re in, whether it’s high turnout generally, or low turnout, generally, Texas is usually at the bottom.

[00:06:31] Josh Blank: Having said that, like compared to 2018, you’d say, Yeah, you know, voter turnout was moderate. You know, you said 45 versus 53, but if we look back at midterm election cycles, you know, in 2014, this is of registered voters, about 34%, 2010, it was 38, 2006. About 34. So yeah, this is actually a pretty, This is generally in the thirties for, Yes, this is actually most of the modern era, you know?

[00:06:52] Josh Blank: You know, it’s regress, you know, to use a term that’s many people’s, I guess it’s regressed to the mean, but it hasn’t gone back to sort of where it was before. You know, the [00:07:00] 2018 and 2020 cycle.

[00:07:02] Jim Henson: And I think, you know, there’s a discussion going on now nationally that Texas is relative to this discussion, you know, given.

[00:07:09] Jim Henson: And I haven’t seen, I we’re not, we probably won’t see overall, I haven’t seen a table of overall state turnouts, or I haven’t looked at it yet. I think we’re probably still gonna be near the bottom of the pack based on, on what I’ve seen in other parts of the country.

[00:07:19] Josh Blank: But, and, and just what we’ve seen historically.

[00:07:21] Josh Blank: Yeah, I mean, just historically that’s been the case and there’s no reason to think that would shift in one election cycle. There’s no reason to think based on what happened here. , you know, that would be, this would be the. Yeah,

[00:07:30] Jim Henson: Parti. Yeah. Given what we’ve seen and you know, what these margins were, et cetera.

[00:07:34] Jim Henson: Right. I mean, so, you know, the big takeaways, I mean it’s, you know, I mean the big overarching takeaway is, you know, Texas is still getting more competitive and, you know, you can dig into those numbers in a sec. So, you know, on one hand you have, by most measures that we could look at. Yes. But on the other hand, you know, very gradually and.

[00:07:57] Jim Henson: You know, from a partisan point of view in the aftermath we’re seeing [00:08:00] people, you know, leaning on different ends of that argument. Right. The, Yeah, no, see, it’s, you know, it’s getting better on the other hand, like, yeah, well, okay,

[00:08:08] Josh Blank: fine. It’s surprisingly quiet from both sides, actually. I mean, there are people pushing arguments out, but it’s not as though, I mean, I wouldn’t say there’s clearly no, a lot, not a lot of Republicans right out crowing about how great the election went in a lot of places.

[00:08:19] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, Texas a little bit more than other places, but it’s that sort of, Kind of drowned out by the national discussion, the fact that we are Yeah.

[00:08:25] Jim Henson: I mean, I think that’s part, Yeah. And there’s, you know, I think there’s a certain degree of exhaustion here. Yeah. You know that not talking for ourselves, , and when you, Well, and when you get a, a, you know, when you have such a big run up and then you have an outcome that looks in retrospect, predictable.

[00:08:38] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. , you know, people take a break. You know, people take a break for a few days. Yeah. And you know, we even, you know, I mean, we delayed the, the podcast in some ways for that, but, so, you know, You know, what sticks out to you on this? Let’s talk about the geography of this. We talked about the lot of the ge about the geography of this going in.

[00:08:59] Jim Henson: You know, we should [00:09:00] look at that again and kind of see what, what we found out when you looked at those numbers.

[00:09:03] Josh Blank: Yeah. You know, it’s interesting cause I mean, you’re right. I think, you know, in election night you’re looking at the numbers and you’re saying, Well, this seems to be pretty predictable based on what we knew and based on the election environment and the issue environment and all those things.

[00:09:13] Josh Blank: Right? But I was thinking about this, you know, in this sort of hypothetical way that, you know, if, if somebody had told. You know, six months ago and said, Look, forget about the ish environment. Forget about the dynamics. All the things we were talking about. All the things we’re talking about. But this is the thing about that makes, I think, just an aside, this is one of those things that I think makes interpreting understanding election outcomes so difficult is people pick the things that they want to say were, were important or hinged, or the election hinged on, or whatever.

[00:09:39] Josh Blank: And that’s always, almost always in a self-interested way. And the reality is a lot of things. Mattered. Right. So what we’re doing right now is we’re gonna hold those other things constant for a second just so we can focus on, on geography for a second. And I think, you know, if you had said to me, Okay, you set all that stuff aside, Republicans went by 11 points, what?

[00:09:55] Josh Blank: What do you think probably happened? Or what are some of the things that you would think happened? [00:10:00] And you know, in addition to kinda the obvious. You know, Well, I think independence probably broke, you know, back towards Republicans from breaking for Democrats. Geographically, I would say, you know, we’ve been talking about electoral gains by Democrats in the urban areas and the suburban areas, and you know, I probably think maybe some of those trends abated or maybe, you know, we saw.

[00:10:19] Josh Blank: Democrats performing less well in those areas. And the interesting thing is, that’s not exactly what we see here. Now, I should just set this up a little bit for completeness. Just tell you what data I’m looking at. Yeah. Uh, and, and why I’m choosing to look at some, some versions of, of this data, some specific numbers.

[00:10:34] Josh Blank: So what I’m looking is I’m taking the election results by county from the Texas Secretary of State’s website, uh, their beautiful website. I’m copying and pasting that table from there, and I am cleaning up that data and then I’m combining it with the. The sort, there’s sort of a bulk data file on the sort of the tech on the, I think it’s on the redistricting website or texas.data.gov.

[00:10:54] Josh Blank: If someone really wants to know, please email me and I will tell you exactly where it is. But you can get a bulk data file with all the election [00:11:00] results by precinct going back for ways, and that’s what I’m using for the prior elections. So that’s the baked data for looking at other elections. So what elections should we look at?

[00:11:08] Josh Blank: Number one, we shouldn’t look at 2020 as a presidential election. That’s silly. So let’s look at some midterms. So I’m looking at 20, 22, 20 18, uh, and 2014 election. And then the question becomes this question, what should you know, what should you compare within here? Well, you know, if we want to compare better work’s performance, uh, you know, this week to how he did against Ted Cruz in 2018, obviously he did not do as well, right?

[00:11:29] Josh Blank: I mean, as a percentage, you know, he did not do as well. Uh, and in terms of raw vote, tell he do as well. Again, we already talked about turnout was down. He wasn’t gonna hit those boats. If we look at Abbott’s performance against Lupe Valdez in that same election, he also performed worse. In most cases. He got less votes, good turnout was down.

[00:11:44] Josh Blank: So both of them nec, you know, necessarily. Have a, you know, I would say wouldn’t say had a great evening relative to their most recent election. Right. Okay. So that’s, you know, So then the question was how should we compare this? Well, I think the difficult part is 2018 was such an odd year because of the [00:12:00] increased turnout, because of the fact that number one is a Republican in the White House.

[00:12:03] Josh Blank: It was Donald Trump that motivated a lot of democratic voters. 2014 is probably a more comparable election, both in terms of kind of the turnout rate, uh, the fact that you had a Democrat in the White House, there was a midterm election with Democrats and you had a funded Democratic candy. I mean, the other thing about the whole Lupe outs race is, I mean, she was underwhelming in terms of her campaign, but also in terms of her resources.

[00:12:22] Josh Blank: Yeah. Wendy Davis very under resourced. Wendy Davis wasn’t under resourced to anyone would say. Yeah. But the DO’S decision and abortion was like, Yeah, I mean, abortion was part of the mix in 2014. Very much so in Texas. Right. So this was probably a little bit more comparable. So then I would. Further analysis needs to bring in a little bit of voter turnout and the size of these sort of geographies.

[00:12:41] Josh Blank: To sort of add a little more context to this, I haven’t had a chance to do this yet, so what I wanna look at is the percentages. Yeah. Basically say, how does sentiment look in these different parts of the state? Okay. So overall, as we said, as you already said, uh, Abbott got about 55% of the vote. O’ work out about a little bit about 48%.

[00:12:58] Josh Blank: And again, we say this is actually in [00:13:00] gubernatorial contests, more competitive. Abbott got 59% of the vote in 2014. He got about 56% of the vote in 2018. We say he is down to, you know, 55. Not, not great, you know, it’s pretty much the same. Uh, O’Rourke for the Democrat, Wendy Davis got 38.9% in 2014. Lupe Val’s got 42.51 and he only got up to 43.8.

[00:13:19] Josh Blank: Now again, I’ll point out very different environments. Lu, we’ve talked about this before, but you know, Lupe Vals had all the wind in her back in that environment and kind of didn’t, really, wasn’t able to capitalize on it. Certainly, uh, O’Rourke in this environment obviously had a lot more wind at his front, but then if we go sort of You like that his front, I don’t even know what it’s, that’s not a, I think you

[00:13:37] Jim Henson: flip those.

[00:13:38] Jim Henson: I think she had wind in her face and he No, he, she had in her back and he had, she could win in his face. Yeah. Wind in his front. Those Okay. I

[00:13:44] Josh Blank: like, Well, yeah. Win the, the wins. Uh, but then if we start to kind of look into the geographies, we say, Okay, so what happened in, in the big counties and Harris, Dallas, Terrant Bay, and Travis County, and I’m, I’m partially like, why am I picking those and not adding like El Paso, which people sometimes do, I’m looking at the places that [00:14:00] contribute the most to the vote, right?

[00:14:02] Josh Blank: So together, combining these together, we’re talking about. 40 to 50% of the statewide vote. It’s the big urban counties. Okay, so what do we have here? Not surprisingly, O’Rourke wins this by basically 58, 41, but the other thing that’s kind of interesting here is this is actually a significantly better performance percentage wise than even in 2018 or 2014.

[00:14:20] Josh Blank: So in 2014, Democrats got 40. Basically just under 50% of the vote in these counties. In 2018, they got 54%, and now it’s 58%. So each election, they’ve added four percentage of the vote. Abbott in each of those four elections went from 48.4% of the vote in 2014 to 44.12% in 2018. To just under 41% in 2022.

[00:14:40] Josh Blank: So in the urban areas, actually, we’re still seeing Democrats picking up boat share in these large counties. Now, again, you can look in each of the counties. I don’t wanna talk about each of them. They kind of tell a similar story. I’ll just just point out, Dallas is a really interesting one cuz it actually, I mean this place where it really jumped.

[00:14:56] Josh Blank: Uh, in 2014, uh, Abbott got 44% of the vote. [00:15:00] In 2018, he got 39, and in 2022 he got 36. So Democrats went from 55% of the vote in Dallas County in 2014 to 63% in 2022. That’s a pretty, I think it’s a pretty big jump and gives you an example. Tarrant County gets a lot of attention. It’s the one county, uh, that Abbott won the one large county.

[00:15:18] Josh Blank: Yeah. Right, right. Um, but I mean, the reality is, you know, when people are talking. You know, these counties and you know, Tarrant County, they’re talking about, well, they’re talking about Biden won it and, uh, O’Rourke won it over Cruz. But Abbott has won this county in each of the last three elections in the Governatorial race, he won 57% of the vote in 20 14, 50 4% of the vote in 2018 and 51% this election.

[00:15:40] Josh Blank: So again, it’s the same story even in a, in a. Large county that Republicans do well in. So then we can go and say, What about the suburbs? You and I talked a lot about the suburbs and the election and I think it was a big focus. Now here, what we find and just as an what, the definitions I’m using in this case, usually the suburbs are usually the, the counties that are surrounding the large [00:16:00] urban counties.

[00:16:00] Josh Blank: Right. Is is basically the definition here. And I can, again, if anybody’s interested, emailing me, I’ll send you the list of the cavities I’m talking about. I’m happy to. So we look here. Abbott wins in 2022. These suburban counties, 60% to 38%. Pretty comfortable margin. Right. Certainly. You know, I think for Democrats to be competitive here, they really need to close that into much more of a almost even

[00:16:21] Jim Henson: range.

[00:16:21] Jim Henson: Yeah. And that’s not too far off what we were getting in

[00:16:23] Josh Blank: the polling. No, but again, In 2014, Abbott got 67% in these counties, and Wendy Davis got 31. Uh, then he got 60, a little over 63% in 2018, and now he’s down to a little over 60%. Democrats have gone from 31 to 38 in these counties. Again, they’re still losing these counties, but in terms of the trend of picking up vote share in the urban and suburban counties, you’re definitely seeing that.

[00:16:46] Josh Blank: You know, I don’t, Do you wanna talk about the, you know, the different types of suburbs at all? Or just sort of wave at it? You know, I don’t, you know, I mean, without

[00:16:52] Jim Henson: numbers for a second, I, I think the, you know, I mean, if you have a couple, couple good examples, I think that’s fine.

[00:16:56] Josh Blank: I’ll just say, you know, if you look at, let’s say the suburbs and one that’s thing that I [00:17:00] would say is noticeable is that, you know, the Houston suburbs and the Dallas Fort Worth suburbs look a lot more like each other, which I think if you’re familiar with the political geography of Texas, should not be totally surprising.

[00:17:10] Josh Blank: The Bear County suburbs basically are rural parts of the state in most cases. Yeah. I mean, except for the north, and that’s kind of changing as we go, but pretty much everything around that is in the hill country. And it looks like that in terms of the trends

[00:17:23] Jim Henson: or you very rapidly get into sort of rural south Texas as you get.

[00:17:27] Jim Henson: Yeah. To the southern edge of, uh, of Bear

[00:17:28] Josh Blank: County. And then when we look at the suburbs around Travis County, where Austin is basically, it is becoming more and more an extension of, of Austin in a lot of ways, just in as an economic region. And then also in terms of the demographics and, and the way that voting looks.

[00:17:41] Josh Blank: We can go into that in some other time talking about that. But that, that’s how I would divide those up. So lemme say, so where are Republicans doing, doing well? Well we can go and say, well let’s look at the rural counties cause where are the Republican firewalls been? So we, the way we’re defining is case is, okay, I talked about those urban counties.

[00:17:55] Josh Blank: I talked about the suburban counties. I’m also adding in sort of other. Like large [00:18:00] metro area, you know, large-ish non, you know, super big metro areas and leaving with left most counties in Texas would fall into this rural definition. So in the way I have this, there’s 57 non rural counties and the other two, you know, out the 254, the rest are rural.

[00:18:14] Josh Blank: Yeah, so a hun, so a hundred and I think 97 or 198 counties left over that are rural. We talked, had a whole podcast about this. I think we were saying that, you know, Republicans regularly get about 75% of the vote share there. That’s what Abbott got in 2014. In 2022, Mike Collier be O’Rourke, They’re in the rural areas.

[00:18:31] Josh Blank: Greg Abbott, 79%. So you did a little bit better and you better than did in 2018. So Republicans are doing better, or Greg Abbott is really doing better in these rural counties from 75 to 77 to 79% of the vote share. But obviously this is not a big part of the population. So if. A Democrat, you know, and you’re kinda looking at this election and thinking a lot of the questions right now is, you know, should better work ever run again.

[00:18:54] Josh Blank: Are Democrats ever going to be able to win Texas? I would say you could look at these results from an electoral standpoint and [00:19:00] say, well actually, you know, the trend lines of democratic competitiveness increase in the urban areas and in the suburban areas are unbroken. Uh, ultimately it still resulted in an 11 point loss , but, you know, I, I started this by saying, you know, what do I think is a more comparable election?

[00:19:14] Josh Blank: And I would say, I think 2014 and 2022 are more comparable to each other in a couple ways, and I think 2018 and 2022. And if you’re a Democrat looking at these numbers and saying, Okay, in, uh, eight years to full presidential election cycles, you’ve gone from losing at this top, at the state level by more than 20 points to losing by about 10 points in elections that don’t favor.

[00:19:38] Josh Blank: I think you would say that’s actually, yeah, it feels slow in terms of the idea of like what people think about for progress and when the question becomes is Texas is gonna turn blue tomorrow. But in terms of what I think is realistic, this is still happening. This is still, you know, the competitiveness is still increasing.

[00:19:52] Josh Blank: I don’t think Republicans are too worried about it at the moment. I don’t think they necessarily should be, but,

[00:19:58] Jim Henson: Well, you know, I mean, that’s an, you [00:20:00] know, I mean, I, I, you know, we were talking about this beforehand. I mean, I. All of that is true. Kind of consistent with what, you know, consistent with what we had seen in, in poll in election results before this election.

[00:20:13] Jim Henson: Right. In the trend, consistent with what we’ve been seeing in polling mm-hmm. . Right. Um, in terms of, you know, where, what the favorability ratings look like in these three areas. Yeah. You know what, you know all of the, you know, the issue positions, the, you know, even the trial ballot. , you know, looked pretty remarkable.

[00:20:34] Jim Henson: If I had my act together, I’d have those trial ballots or some of that data in front of me. But, you know, I mean, I think if we go back and look at the polling, unless I’m wrong, I mean, I don’t think I’m gonna be wrong enough that these are all within about five or six points of what we were seeing in the polling.

[00:20:48] Jim Henson: Yeah, I think that’s about right. You know, more or less in terms of thinking about the trial ballots, um, I’ll look it up what you’re thinking. So on, on one hand, I, I think pretty [00:21:00] consistent with what we’ve been seeing. Mm-hmm. . Also, you know, underlining something that we’ve been saying and now that we’ve got one more data point, it’s one, you know, just one more, or, you know, one set of them for one year’s elections worth in terms of the singularity of 2018.

[00:21:15] Jim Henson: Right. Um, you know, I, I think in, in the rest of the country, or at least in a lot of the more competitive states mm-hmm. , certainly, you know what we’re seeing. A lot of people seeing 2018 as kind of a kickoff of Right. Increased competitiveness and increased turnout. Uhhuh . Now some argument for that. It’s, I mean, you know, for that, for that argument here too, but in a much more diluted way and from Right as we say, you know, here, you know, at least once a week, you know, from a very different baseline.

[00:21:46] Jim Henson: Right, Right. Very important. So I guess, you know, a a as we interpret, you know, what people think about this in terms of the arc of electoral competition in the state. The state is getting more competitive, as we’ve told [00:22:00] dozens of reporters over the last two election cycles as we’ve written mm-hmm. . But I mean, the, you know, the slope of the curve here is so gradual.

[00:22:11] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. , it’s, I mean, it’s unmistakable. I mean, I think, you know, the stuff you’re looking at here and the way that it. it maps onto the geography. Yeah. And if we,

[00:22:19] Josh Blank: and I’ll just say to your, you know, so you and the top line results. Yeah. And if we include 2010 in this, which I think was a pretty crazy election too, it, you could, you could either look at this cause you could either further emphasize the trend or could even exaggerate it potentially.

[00:22:31] Josh Blank: I mean, depending on how you think about 2010s impact reasons. But the Republican margins were even bigger in that election. So Yeah, you would look, it would look even more stark if we went back a little bit further in this case. Yeah.

[00:22:40] Jim Henson: I mean, you know, I mean, the. The 2010 and the 2022 comparisons are interesting because there’s a lot of things you can hold equal.

[00:22:48] Jim Henson: Yeah. Right. But the thing you can’t is race . I don’t.

[00:22:52] Josh Blank: Yeah. Well,

[00:22:52] Jim Henson: that’s another talk. That’s a talk and that’s, you know, which is an interesting, you know, Yeah. Piece of this. I mean, and you’re kind of, you know, Josh and I had a conversation or a chat or something offline [00:23:00] this week. Very tentative, kind of off the top of my head, suggestions about how we’re periodizing this.

[00:23:05] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know what this tells us about the periodization of Texas politics. Again, you know, lots of, lots of time for that later, but I guess what I’m really struck by here is, you know the difference between, you know, what we see analytically and in this. You know, and in the immediate kind of, well, what does this tell us about partisan competition?

[00:23:27] Jim Henson: And I think the answer you’re right, is clear. It’s getting more competitive, but it also raises the question of when you have growing competition at such a gradual, if steady, but gradual rate. Mm-hmm. . , you know, what is the response of the historical actors that are actually involved here? , Right. You know, given the baseline that we’re at.

[00:23:52] Jim Henson: Um,

[00:23:53] Josh Blank: and again, we’re talking about statewide numbers versus a legislature that was, you know, again, as we already said, kind of had a pretty [00:24:00] easy night. Right. For the most part.

[00:24:01] Jim Henson: Right. Yeah. And, and, and look, I mean, just to put it on the table, and this is something that, you know, we, we’ve sat on this podcast before and I guess we have, you know, sort of get out there and I think we got, it was a couple of things that we wrote, I think in the last year, but, You know, I mean, I think what’s, what’s interesting here is the, is the idea that this pattern has now been in place for so long, Even allowing for, you know, the, the last almost decade of, you know, a shift in, in, back towards more democratic competitiveness.

[00:24:34] Jim Henson: The Republicans have had a lot of time to react mm-hmm. and to use the advantages that they have structurally and institutionally. To respond to that. Yeah. And I, yeah, they can only res, you know, now, you know, people make history, but not in conditions of their choosing as the guy said, but mm-hmm. , um, you know, and I think that does bring us to some of the, the tactical adjustments.

[00:24:59] Jim Henson: It’s [00:25:00] tactical and strategic adjustments that we’ve seen Republicans making in the last couple cycles. Mm-hmm. , one of them is driving up the rural vote. Absolutely. Right, Right. I mean, I don’t know that it had any effect, but you know, there was a lot of, you know, you know, a little bit of, I shouldn’t say a lot, there were some corners people were snickering about, you know, the Lieutenant Governor’s bus tour in rural areas that was not covered by the press.

[00:25:27] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. . Now, I think given that we’re seeing this trend, I wouldn’t give that, that actual bus tour, you know, all this credit in terms of driving up road turnout, but it was certainly not. You know, the worst idea. Well, as, as you

[00:25:42] Josh Blank: know, as it turns out, we’ve been talking, you know, probably not for half an hour yet.

[00:25:45] Josh Blank: I should just throw, you know, it was probably endogenous. Right, Right. I mean, you know, I mean ultimately, yes. I mean, it probably didn’t

[00:25:52] Jim Henson: have a huge, Well, yeah, the strategy was not lost on the Lieutenant Governor and his

[00:25:56] Josh Blank: Exactly. Well, again, they’re looking at the same things that we’re looking at. I mean, to [00:26:00] some extent, you know, if you don’t know what turnout’s gonna look like in the city, you don’t know cities.

[00:26:04] Josh Blank: You don’t know how the election is going to be administered or how well it’s going to be administered, how well it’s gonna be administered everywhere, as you know, which was not a non-issue this election cycle. You know, your unknown is, is, is turnout. I mean that was all of our unknowns on this one.

[00:26:18] Josh Blank: Nobody, I mean, you know, there are a lot of people who predicted turnout levels of various things that had to revise them once a early voting, starting basically immediately. And that’s not to point say anybody was like wrong because it was impossible to know. And so, you know, to give, you know, you know how I like to be fair.

[00:26:32] Josh Blank: But I mean, to the extent that the lieutenant governor in that period, especially before early voting was, was putting out the signal that it might, you know, either that it was closer or it might be closer. Look, there’s very clear strategic reason to do that as just an actor. Let’s just, you know, Right.

[00:26:43] Josh Blank: But. If you don’t know where, you know, you know, there’s a lot of people who live in a, in an area, they lean heavily democratic and you don’t know what their turn out is gonna look like. It makes a lot of sense to shore up your support where you know that you’re basically almost a hundred percent of the people you interact with are going to be your [00:27:00] people.

[00:27:00] Jim Henson: And, and the prevalent and plausible interpretation of the most recent midterm experience is that the rural areas saved them. In 2018, rural firewall was the term of arts. And so you. Um, I think, you know, a little bit of credit’s not exactly right, but I mean, I think, you know, I, I thought a lot of the coverage of that, I mean, really reflected the press feeling excluded from it.

[00:27:22] Jim Henson: Cuz they weren’t quite the press. Yeah. Cuz they were and that. I, you know, I think that that led people in the wrong direction in terms of thinking about the strategy and, and Right. And how they covered it. So the other tactical thing is something you’ve been looking at a lot and that’s, you know, the Republican push on Hispanics, particularly in the rgv, which has gotten a ton of print, a ton of discussion in here.

[00:27:44] Jim Henson: And you’ve kind of unpacked a lot of those numbers, um, in a way that does reveal the degree to which that’s a part of this puzzle. with, you know, mixed results. Right?

[00:27:57] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, you know, it’s interesting. [00:28:00] There’s something that like, I, we’re gonna have to unpack this, you know, again and again, unfortunately, probably not, unfortunately.

[00:28:05] Josh Blank: It’s kinda, it’s pretty interesting actually. But you know, what’s sort of striking to me is there’s a, a tendency in analysis of. You know, Hispanic voting patterns in Texas, And I don’t wanna say here, I’m not talking about Hispanic voting patterns nationally. Yeah. I wanna set that aside. You know, we’re just talking about Texas, but there’s a tendency to sort of, you know, say, Well, let’s talk about this region, or let’s talk about these counties.

[00:28:28] Josh Blank: It’s like, okay, well now let’s talk about these congressional districts. And it’s like, these are different areas, right? And they, and they, and, and in any sense, none of them are perfect measurements. Hispanics or even Hispanics voting in those areas. Cause we just, we just don’t have that kind of data. But we can, But we, but the thing is like, you know, whereas the congressional district lines shifted as they did and you know, that’s important, right?

[00:28:47] Josh Blank: I mean, everybody who was, you know, sort of, if anyone was surprised by vi say Gonzalez’s win, right? Uh, over Myra Flores, you know, Floor is one that seat in a special election under the [00:29:00] old district lines. Which was a marginally democratic district with amazingly low turnout, with amazingly low turnout and a ton of resources.

[00:29:07] Josh Blank: The district was redrawn to be plus 16 Democratic. There’s no reason to suppose that she was gonna win that district. Right, right. Um, and so, You know, and so part of the, so, so part of this is just to say like, you know, if I, one of this, if Gonzalez had lost that district, Democrats were losing everywhere.

[00:29:24] Josh Blank: They were losing everything. The house was gonna be a bloodbath, and they didn’t, And ultimately all of this talk and, and all of this tension, really what they did was, was two things, is they. Made CD 34 more a safer democratic district. They actually made Henry Cue our’s district slightly safer. Yeah. So that they could have access to CD 15, which they won.

[00:29:42] Josh Blank: And the other thing I’ll say, they also shore up CD 23, which we used to talk about a lot. Now we kind of just don’t. But we would say now it’s basically a Republican

[00:29:48] Jim Henson: for listeners that are not, you know, that are only partially dorky. You know, that’s that huge district, you know, you, you know, uh, you know a lot of familiar names that goes from the outskirts of San Antonio into El Paso.

[00:29:59] Jim Henson: [00:30:00] Right.

[00:30:01] Josh Blank: So, you know, you look at that, and so in part of just, there’s a lot of different ways to look at this and you can’t treat them all the same, but you’d say, But some people are saying, Well, you know, Republicans put this huge push into South Texas and they netted one congressional seat, You know, kind of Mm.

[00:30:12] Josh Blank: It’s like, well, okay. But also that CD 15, they’d say, I mean, kind of better than zero. Well, better than zero, but also just now to get to the point of the Hispanic vote. Yeah. This was a district that was often referred to by Republicans as a border district. Now if you know what that district looks like, it’s basically like a.

[00:30:27] Josh Blank: It starts down in Hidalgo County on the border and then shoots up to basically east of San Antonio. And if you remember, we were talking about what do the outskirts of San Antonio look like? They look like rural Texas. Where, Yeah. Again, if you look at the, if you look at the county level results in those counties, 70, 80% Republican.

[00:30:42] Josh Blank: I mean, like, you know,

[00:30:43] Jim Henson: in, in, in areas where, you know, there there is a high percentage of of Hispanics in the population. Yeah. So, but also thinly populated. Right,

[00:30:51] Josh Blank: because rural, Right, exactly. So anyway, you know, it’s easy to kind of over, I. This in either direction, but then we go and we kinda look at the rgv because [00:31:00] that’s been so much of the folks.

[00:31:00] Josh Blank: Let’s look at these county. This is a fixed area, and what do we find? While there were 232,233,000 votes cast in the RGV in this election, that represented 2.88% of the total votes cast in the state, which I think is something, again, if we’re gonna focus on this region, we gotta be careful. Democrats won the region.

[00:31:18] Josh Blank: 36,000 votes in terms of percentage, they want it by about 15.28% in 2020. They want it by 15.14%. Right. Okay. Now look, this is a big drop off from where they were before in 2018. They were winning it by 35 points. So look, it’s not to say that they haven’t, you know, they aren’t having an issue here, but this is still a region that they’re winning.

[00:31:40] Josh Blank: And honestly, despite all of the attention paid to the region, Republicans didn’t really make a. Push here relative to 2020 in terms of their overall numbers at the top of the ticket. And if you look

[00:31:48] Jim Henson: at that time series put together even, you know, I mean it includes presidential elections, but there’s a decent amount of variance in those results.

[00:31:54] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. even prior to 2020.

[00:31:57] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean it’s, It’s pretty amazing. Yeah. There’s definitely a [00:32:00] decent amount of variance. But I mean, the other side of it, I would just sort of point out, as you know, Yes. Democrats did less well there than they did in 2018. They lost about 30,000 votes. Republicans gained about six, 17,000 votes.

[00:32:12] Josh Blank: But it kind of, just to make a point, we’re talking about again, 2.88% of the electorate. Yeah. We’re talking about 17,000 votes. How much money and ink has been spilled on this Right. I mean, I know someone later will do a calculation of like dollars per vote gain kind of thing. Yeah. I’m very curious to see

[00:32:29] Jim Henson: what it is.

[00:32:30] Jim Henson: There’s a couple floating around out there in some, you know, per, you know, different races. But yeah, here I think it’s gonna be very interesting.

[00:32:36] Josh Blank: Well, and so then we say like, okay, look, let’s just take a step back further and say we’re looking at this one region of the, of the state, which I think, you know, you and I have argued and I’ve argued like aggressively in some places, probably not representative of Hispanics living in the state.

[00:32:47] Josh Blank: Yeah. Well, why don’t we go look at the exit polling now. There’s all kinds of problems with exit polling, right? But it’s a consistent source of, of information that we can at least, you know, look at for something. I would say this most, in most cases, most people who have a [00:33:00] problem with the exit polling especially has it characterizes, Hispanics would say that it characterizes them as too conservative.

[00:33:07] Josh Blank: Let’s just look at it for a second as an, as an example of statewide sentiment, right? Cause we can look at our polling and we know that it, the Hispanic sentiment hasn’t changed that much except really in rural areas. But if we look at this, we say, you know, the one big number that shocked a lot of people, when Abbott beat, uh, Wendy Davis in 2014, the exit polling had him getting 44% of the Hispanic vote to Davis.

[00:33:25] Josh Blank: Yeah. There was enormous amount

[00:33:26] Jim Henson: of

[00:33:26] Josh Blank: pushback on that number. Enormous amount of pushback. In 2020. Again, we’re talking about, you know, Republican gains. It was 58% Democrat, 40% Republican, and, and again, the expo. And that was the presidential. The presidential. That’s plus 18. And in 2022 it’s 57% Democrat, 40% Republican, so plus 17.

[00:33:45] Josh Blank: So again, definitely a decline from what we received in terms of Democratic, uh, gains in 2016 and 2018, not as well as Abbott performed in 2014 and about the same as 2020. So in terms of this big picture about, you know, planting a flag in South Texas and [00:34:00] the push among Hispanics, you know, it. It’s not overwhelming in the data.

[00:34:05] Josh Blank: Right. You know, by any stretch. And I mean part of it is, is it was kind of un, I mean, we’ve been kind of talking about this for all. It’s hard to expect it to be because we were talking about such a very narrow region and letting it stand as representative. But there’s kinda little evidence at this point that you know, I mean, Abbots really did not win a majority of Hispanics.

[00:34:23] Josh Blank: We know that as he claimed he was going to at the beginning of the election. And if anything, you know, if you gonna go by the measures that, you know, they were pretty happy to tout when he won 44%. He actually did worse than in 2014. But if

[00:34:33] Jim Henson: we, you know, but the reason, you know, I mean I kind of, we slot this in at this time is if we’re talking about the Republican strategy of responding to this overall trend, mm.

[00:34:46] Jim Henson: You know, I mean, to repeat the point that, you know, we’ve made a million times on now and I feel almost embarrassed to repeat it again, but you. Republicans winning between a third and 40% of, of the re of the [00:35:00] Hispanic vote in Texas is not news.

[00:35:02] Josh Blank: Right? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. like,

[00:35:05] Jim Henson: yes. You know, kind of the bottom line.

[00:35:07] Jim Henson: I mean, I feel almost, you know, silly elaborating this again yet again. Right. Um, but you know, to the extent that you’re talking about deflecting these overall trends, Mm. , you know, you’re finding, you know, little pockets of votes. Yeah. It’s part of the Republican strategy that then is embedded in the larger strategy.

[00:35:27] Jim Henson: Also, I implied in your, you know, sort of use of, of CD 34 and, and, and of the redrawing Right. Of, of 14. 14. No.

[00:35:36] Josh Blank: Oh, well, yeah. I mean, they’re all

[00:35:38] Jim Henson: redrawn. Yeah. But, but I mean, but the radical redraw to benefit Republicans. You know, that’s all of a piece. Right, Right. And it’s all of a piece of what’s going on.

[00:35:48] Jim Henson: You know, I kind of envision, you know, we look at these trend lines and we’re. Looking at them getting more democratic. But then there’s all this kind of mastro going on around those lines [00:36:00] that, you know, is, is the context of this. And I think, you know, we saw that and, and you know, so we haven’t mentioned this time, but it’s also, but also voting rules, right?

[00:36:09] Jim Henson: And so there’s a lot of things that you can do when you have institutional leverage to, if you recognize what these trends are. And I think that at least the consulting class and you know, the, you know, people that think more strategically, In the Republican party. I think they have a pretty clear view of this.

[00:36:28] Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, look, a lot of them, like some people don’t care. No. And you know, and are certainly pushing in the opposite direction and interpret this as, you know, you know, we haven’t gotten to, we probably won’t today. You know, the issue of as we go into the legislative session Yeah. Into the. The beating heart of the, you know, the process, the beating heart of the political economy in the state in a lot of ways, how are governing [00:37:00] Republicans going to interpret these

[00:37:01] Josh Blank: results?

[00:37:03] Josh Blank: Right, ? Yeah. I

[00:37:04] Jim Henson: mean, you know what, you know, if you win by this much, you know that the psychology of people is going to be, that they feel like they have a mandate. Mm-hmm. . But what is that mandate and how do you, how do you balance the different pieces of. Wow. You know, and that’s obviously a whole other, but I mean, I think you have to kind of keep all this in mind as you move into that space because it’s going to, it’s going to affect how people strategize, what their, what their priorities are.

[00:37:34] Josh Blank: You know, as, what’s great about covering Texas politics is that once you get sick of elections, the legislature starts, and then once you get sick of the legislature, we go back to elections. And so we have these two year back and forth, but this is the, this is the part of the year where we start to shift our discussion.

[00:37:47] Josh Blank: Topic of, you know, agenda control and agenda management. Right, Right. And you know, really now that the election is over, you know, the next step is, I mean, you know, there’s all these sorts of little things that are, you know, kind of important to the consultant class, especially [00:38:00] around elections and politics.

[00:38:01] Josh Blank: You know, I mean, we’ve been talking about those, but uh, at this point, the question was, okay, this is now just an. Right. This just becomes one more input into what becomes a fight over what the agenda is going to be and, and

[00:38:16] Jim Henson: a highly mediated input. Right. . Right. Which is, you know, I mean, different people find different things.

[00:38:22] Jim Henson: Interesting. I mean, I think this moment is, you know, I mean, I is gonna be very interesting in a, one of the quotes from one of, uh, I’m not sure if it was from Governor Abbott’s speech or from a post-election interview, but the quote was, you know, here are the priorities that you know, It might even have been a paraphrase, but the order of the priorities that Governor Abbott announces going into the legislature were job growth, property tax reduction, school, school choice, and improving border security.

[00:38:52] Jim Henson: Yeah. It’s, uh, and that is a bucket of slightly rearranged campaign priorities. Yeah. Just thinking strictly in terms of rank [00:39:00] order. Yeah, absolutely. And. Gives you the stuff of some of the bargaining we anticipate going on. Yeah. When you look at all of those things being included in a kind of marquee manner.

[00:39:11] Jim Henson: Absolutely. All right, Josh, thanks for taking all that data out. Yeah, terrific. Well, I

[00:39:15] Josh Blank: guess like, I love it. I mean, I was dorking out this morning, I mean like part of the election. I’m like, Oh God, I can’t stand this. Can it just be over? I was like, you know, we were talking like on election day, I like took the kids to the park.

[00:39:25] Josh Blank: I’m like, God, just let’s get this going. Be done with this. But then once I actually have data, it’s, it’s so much more. You know, Cause at least you can go. You don’t have to speculate anymore. Let’s just, let’s just see what happens. Well, I

[00:39:35] Jim Henson: mean, more specifically, I mean, you have election returns. Yeah, yeah.

[00:39:39] Jim Henson: No, we’re, we’re not having to like, say things and then go Well, and remember that’s an estimate and,

[00:39:43] Josh Blank: Yeah, no, this is just, let’s just see what happened and, and now we get to look at it and it’s just, it’s interesting. And, and there’s still more, I mean, just to like, it’ll be interesting to dig out like pre-state level returns in some of those congressional jurisdictions in the RV rgv.

[00:39:54] Josh Blank: Where did Republicans actually make those gains relative to the discuss? Yeah,

[00:39:58] Jim Henson: I’m very interested in looking [00:40:00] at some of those, you know, some of those precinct level returns in the qua race. Oh yeah. And you know, there’s a, you know, we haven’t really done it. There’s a certain amount of like, I mean, there haven’t been that many, I guess there won’t be that many to do.

[00:40:12] Jim Henson: But, you know, we talked a lot about that qua race. We talked a lot about it in the primary, we talked about it less so, but still was on a lot of lists in the general election and. Representative Cue is back. Congressman cue is back.

[00:40:26] Josh Blank: Well, and you know, the thing is, I mean, just as you know, just to this, kind of finish this out for Democrats kind of thinking about what’s next based on the results in that region, I mean, what you notice is like, so you know, you’re moderate to kind of conservative Hispanic, Texas Democrats got reelected and the progressive

[00:40:43] Jim Henson: little more, little more uneven, shall we say.

[00:40:45] Jim Henson: Yeah.

[00:40:46] Josh Blank: You know, and I mean, again, it’s not to say that’s true and like, you know, Greg Kaar won his district very progressive Democrat. Going to Washington doesn’t mean, you know, that, that’s, Yeah. You don’t over generalize. But yeah. I never wanna listen thing, I never wanna over generalize [00:41:00] beyond the rgv and beyond the border region because it’s a different

[00:41:03] Jim Henson: place.

[00:41:03] Jim Henson: Well, and as we go into, you know, as, as we get set, as you say, to go into the kind of next phase, you know, there’s. There’s that , you know, in terms of the culture of working in this business and in this area. Mm-hmm. , we’re now in the Okay. Election to legislative transition phase. Right. And then we’ll get into, or yeah, into the legislature phase.

[00:41:26] Jim Henson: Soon we’ll be pretty deep in the, in, in the legislative phase. But I think, you know, probably, you know, as we, as we hurdle towards the holidays, we’ll probably have a little bit of anticipation of what’s going on in the legislature coming up and, and what that looks like. But I think, you know, as I talk to different groups and, you know, talked group this morning, you know, it.

[00:41:50] Jim Henson: It is interesting to see people digest what is going on here as actors begin to move into the arena of the legislature and, [00:42:00] and see the, you know, the replication of a lot of the conflicts that we’ve talked about being sort of submerged when you get into the, the general election environment. Mm-hmm. now reemerging, mapped onto the legislative process and, and, and govern.

[00:42:15] Jim Henson: Right, And the governing part now is gonna be, I think, very interesting. I was talking this morning a lot about, you know, how this feeds the institutional questions that we were talking about a lot before we sort of moved into full election mode. I mean, right. You’ve got a very, you know, you’ve got a very strong governor who has strengthened the executive branch now winning again by an 11 point margin.

[00:42:36] Jim Henson: You have a very powerful lieutenant governor who has won by, you know, just a little less. and is now moving in with a Senate that he helped craft even further and has already been, you know, fairly pliable, shall we

[00:42:54] Josh Blank: say. Well, it’s interesting and also, and he’s also on his way out by his own Well, and [00:43:00] neither Yeah, his own statement, which, which normally I would say you would, I mean, under normal circumstances you might say, Well, maybe that kind of weakens.

[00:43:07] Josh Blank: I don’t know that that’s the case

[00:43:09] Jim Henson: in this scenario. Well, and I think there are a lot of, you know, there are a lot of scenarios playing out right now that suggest that he would be aware of that and that there are possible strategies that he can take to Yeah, I would think, I’d hope so. I’d imagine so. to, uh, uh, to make that less so.

[00:43:22] Jim Henson: I think we’ll leave that for another podcast. Um, though it is, it is interesting and I strongly suspect we will have a lot of opportunity to talk about. Uh, in the new year, if not slightly before. So thank you, Josh for being here and for all the work on that. Uh, thanks to our excellent production team in the dev studio and the College of Liberal Arts here at the University of Texas at Austin.

[00:43:47] Jim Henson: Remember, you can find some of the data we talked about today. We’ll probably try to process some of this in the next couple weeks and, and put it in a post. Watch our. For that, you can sign up for our email list, uh, on our [00:44:00] website, all of this at Texas politics dot u texas.edu. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast.

[00:44:12] Jim Henson: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.