November 5, 2020 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Speaker 0] welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were

[0:00:07 Speaker 1] in the Democratic Party because there was

[0:00:10 Speaker 0] 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.

[0:00:24 Speaker 1] At what point must a female senator raised her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room on

[0:00:34 Speaker 0] Welcome Back to the second reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. I’m joining in today by my friend and colleague Josh Blank, director of research for the Texas Politics Project, with a week to go to Election Day. Josh, have you voted?

[0:00:53 Speaker 1] I voted this morning. I woke up and I saw that it was freezing in Austin and it was raining and I thought, This is a good time to go vote and I was correct.

[0:01:02 Speaker 0] Even though the research is supposed to show that right that it it’s less than a point reduction and turnout overall, bad weather on Election Day isn’t that right. Um, I remembering that.

[0:01:10 Speaker 1] Correct. That’s true. The weather impact on elections is relatively small, but that’s on the aggregate. We’re not talk about Austin in particular. Says nothing about Austin. And I know how Austinites are about cold rain, and he sort of loudly bad weather. Yeah, like if it was overcast, there might be a shorter line.

[0:01:29 Speaker 0] Well, I’m glad you got that knocked out and, um, did your bit for democracy. So speaking of elections, we thought that today we would rather than dwell on a drill down into one big topic. Although in some ways, maybe one could see this this way that we we talk about a few things that are out in the ether. We probably won’t podcast again before the election. I think currently were slated to record for election Day, but we’re going to try toe put that off by a couple of days so that we’re not in that dead zone of recording something on election day and it being all anticipation and no results. And who needs that?

[0:02:09 Speaker 1] And also gunshots and the

[0:02:12 Speaker 0] Yeah, with civil unrest? Um, yeah, Just kidding. Just joking about civil unrest and the collapse of democracy today, Um, which we don’t think is gonna happen. I don’t know. Very likely. Perhaps we could get to that. Very unlikely. Exactly. Um so we thought we today is we We’d hit on a few of the topics that, you know, frankly, we’re hearing about from press and reading about out there and and getting asked about. And there’s just generally hovering over the election And so, you know, with an emphasis on what we’re seeing in polling but also what that tells us about the dynamics in the election. So we thought we’d start today by talking about independence. And we did a block post last week that decomposed independence in Texas to the end degree, you know, with a set up that we’ve talked about on the podcast before the fact that as Texas is undeniably, I think becoming mawr politically competitive between the parties. And you’ll note that that I did not say as Texas is turning whatever color. But that is, the state becomes more independent that the just by very virtue of that, by the virtue of the math independence are becoming more important. And as they become important, they look a little bit different in this election cycle.

[0:03:33 Speaker 1] Yeah, that’s right. I mean, and I think just to, you know, quickly lay it out. I mean, ultimately, e I think you’re right. And, you know, we sort of joked for e God saying this. We’ve actually joked for years. Yeah, about about how unimportant independence are. And it’s not really a joke. It was more of a fact, actually than a joke, because

[0:03:53 Speaker 0] the joke is how determined you were about it. And how follow your affect. WAAS system worked that out? Sure. Yeah, about independence.

[0:04:03 Speaker 1] Right? And this is again, you know, we sort of set this up is you know, these are some of the things that we’re getting. Asked about what we get. We used to get asked about independence all the time. There was sort of this road idea of, like, what do independents think? Because independent, gonna decide the election, we would say, Well, not in Texas, because in Texas, Republicans generally started with about a 10 point advantage and independence, for the most part, you know, broke towards Republican candidates and Republican issues in general. So when you look at the attitudes of independence and we were talking about when we talk about independence is we’re talking about the approximately about 10% of the electorate that refuses to identify with either party, even having been asked twice both whether they identify with the party and then even if they say no whether they lean towards the party and ultimate this group is, you know, you said it’s really other. Also, they’re defined kind of by their lack of engagement, their lack of interest. If you’re one of those political independence who is really just super engaged, and that’s why your independent, I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about the rest of the independents who aren’t paying attention and who Vassil eight between positions and priorities and things like that. But ultimately, again, if if the parties are, you know, this is a competitive state what that basically means in simple terms that both parties can mobilize roughly similar numbers of voters for statewide elections. That’s we’re talking about. So then ultimately, the the attitudes of these independent becomes so important. The interesting that happened in our in our most recent polling, that’s really I think, very interesting. When people ask me now you know. Hey, what’s what should I be looking at? What’s interesting right now, this is one of the things I go to right away, which is that if you look at all pretty much all of our polling up until 2018, when you look at our election polling independence universally favored the Republican candidates in contest for president, governor, Lieutenant governor, attorney general for Senate races for congressional trial ballots for the Texas House without fail in 2018. That was true except for the Senate race, in which case a majority of independents favored Beto O Rourke over Ted Cruz. I think ultimately this contributed probably to that narrower margin. When I say that narrow margin, I’m not just talking about 2.5 point Cruz win. But I’m talking about the 2.5 point Cruz ruin relative to, you know, the more like five point winds of people like the Lieutenant governor theater, knee general. Kind of in that second range of candidates, if he’s probably

[0:06:12 Speaker 0] will won that race, right?

[0:06:14 Speaker 1] Yeah, I think so. He’s still okay? Yeah, he was. Was he indicted by a bit anyway? Okay, but anyway, so you know That was sort of a big shift in that race, and and I think that was

[0:06:27 Speaker 0] one of the

[0:06:28 Speaker 1] big factors leading to a closer race than the others. What’s interesting in our most recent polling, now again that you know, is having seen independence universally support Republican candidates is that in this survey, independents preferred Joe Biden over Donald Trump. They preferred M. J Heger over John Cornyn, and they prefer Democrats on the congressional trial about they prefer Democrats on the statewide on the text ledge trial about for so for Texas House. And this is a This is a pretty big shift. It’s not a doesn’t indicate a permanent shift, and I want to make that clear. I don’t think this means that all of a sudden independence are now Texas Democrats. But what it shows is that you know, one it’s possible. And also I think it’s a further reflection of the competition we’re seeing in Texas.

[0:07:10 Speaker 0] Well, you know, I think I think you probably think I go a bridge too far with this, but I’m gonna do it anyway, which is which is that? I mean, I think it’s also a function of the nature of independence that their attitudes as a group are just gonna be less fixed, you know? And so, you know, it seems plausible to me that you have a ZA group independence. There’s gonna be some significant subset of independence who don’t pay a lot of attention to politics, are absorbing some of the negative affect towards income towards incumbent institutions. Not a incumbent candidates, although maybe and to, you know, and and found some appeal in Donald Trump’s particular celebrity, his lack of political experience, his outsider campaign etcetera. Now Trump is a known quantity. There’s a lot of negative information about him in the ether on, and there’s no partisanship to prevent them from changing their minds.

[0:08:09 Speaker 1] You know, I’ve been thinking about this in a similar way, but maybe slightly differently, which is I’m just I’m thinking about the role of rejection among independents. Ultimately, you know, you’re an independent, you reject the party’s seems to me that if you reject both parties, you have more incentive to reject the party in power than the party out of power. And so that’s I think that is, you know, I agree with you and I think I just go. I think more about the idea of again, you know, what are they rejecting right now? What there seem to be rejecting is Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus that we saw this in our polling. But it’s also, you know, it’s coming up pretty consistently in most other polling as well. This independent preference for Democrats

[0:08:45 Speaker 0] and and as I remember, I mean, it’s not independent approval numbers are of Biden or not.

[0:08:51 Speaker 1] No, he’s less bad.

[0:08:52 Speaker 0] Yeah, are not stellar. So it’s, you know, I mean, so there’s something like there’s a certain you know I mean, there’s a bit more. You know, I sometimes I jokingly used derogatory terms that I won’t use it this time. But you know, there’s a more fluidity in independence. Evaluations of political figures and partisan figures that makes them unpredictable is a group. And to the extent that we’re now looking at them as perhaps a linchpin, let me ask you this before we move on to the next thing. And that thing is just a math problem that we should do off Mike. But you know e like doing today I’m feeling super warmed up, so you know

[0:09:30 Speaker 1] math problems and podcasts.

[0:09:32 Speaker 0] I don’t think we did. I know it’s really You know, I have a chalk in my hand. I really don’t. Um But if you think about what the back of the envelope math does, you look, you know, we think about turnout tendencies among independents. It’s funny to me that we did that block post and there’s not, in the end, something that says and so this shit looks like this percent.

[0:09:56 Speaker 1] Well, I will. In our defense, there’s a table

[0:09:59 Speaker 0] I’ve been saying 2 to 4.

[0:10:01 Speaker 1] Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, I mean, it depends and and, you know, and here’s the thing. You know, we’ve been watching the early voting numbers really carefully, and you know, the thing that’s kind of notable so far in those numbers is the parody between, you know, clearly Democratic and clearly Republican voters, by which all I on all I mean by that is voters. You have, ah, Democratic, consistent, Democratic or consistent Republican primary voting history. We know that you voted in these races. Ultimately, if you’re someone who shows up for midterm primaries, you know as well as presidential primaries, you probably a member of that party. We’ve seen rough parody, but that’s kind of why in some ways you know, the group that we don’t know about that’s basically the other third you know of the early vote electorate. Right now, it’s kind of unknown to us, and that’s why I think these numbers air so interesting. But I but I agree, like independence is a whole what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about a shift of maybe, you know, you know, 1123 points in Biden’s favorite. But ultimately, the question is, Are you talking about from a baseline of plus nine for Trump? Are you talking about a baseline of plus 2.5 for the Republican of the top of the ticket? Because that makes a pretty big difference now. It’s not the latter. It’s not the latter because ladder again. There’s already a shift in in place,

[0:11:05 Speaker 0] right? If you’re just looking at our polling, which now is a few weeks told, but you know well and we’re gonna talk about polling, maybe polling in the last few days. Yeah, I mean, but if you it’s baked into the movement from, say, nine down to four or five, but they’re still, you know. But that’s where the unpredictability of independence comes in because some of those independents are, you know, more than more than partisans are landing with some of the third party candidates, and they’re still low single digits of them undecided. And they could all of you know that there could be a lot of movement still.

[0:11:39 Speaker 1] Yeah, well, and I would say, you know that we talk about this. I think there’s an argument to be made that, you know, the movement might even be bigger because ultimately, you know we’re talking about is a detached group of people from some of them are going to show up right? So you’re not usually so detached from politics but also a consistent voter. So we don’t know who’s going to show up. But if we think about who’s likely to show up, it’s probably again the people with stronger feelings of rejection towards whatever is going on right now, You know, I think on average are more likely to turn out than those who just kind of reject the whole thing. You don’t like. Biden don’t like Trump way

[0:12:11 Speaker 0] need to put that on the we need to put that on the writing list, the rejectionist independent hypothesis.

[0:12:16 Speaker 1] We can work on that. But I mean, you know, just another promises will transition into the next one. I think you know, But I think you know. But the ultimate thing right now is because we’re seeing such a competitive state. You know, we are talking about these kinds of margins were talking about, you know, does Does Joe Biden do a couple? Does he Does he shift the final outcome by a couple points? Because independents have rejected Trump. Does he shift the final outcome by a point or two because of you know, what turnout looks like in the suburbs, right? Does he shifted because of how he does with Hispanics or how he doesn’t do with Hispanics? Does he not shifted as much of these sorts of, I mean, ultimately we were talking about again a competitive race. This is what we’re talking about. We’re talking about, you know, one and two point shifts amongst groups, really in a state like Texas,

[0:12:56 Speaker 0] and what we’re talking about today actually is, you know, a few of those groups for those one or two points might be coming out. So let’s let’s talk about Hispanic. So we and this will. This will give us, ah, way of talking a little bit about the point in the last few days. So just to recap most people that if you if you made your way to listening to this, you probably know that that since Sunday there have been four polls released that collected data within the space of a couple weeks in the range of I don’t have a right in front of me something between the 13th of October to about the 24th, right?

[0:13:28 Speaker 1] Yeah. Yeah, I think that depends on what you want, including that list, but anywhere from the 11th to the 13th to the 20th to the 25th over, about a two week period period.

[0:13:37 Speaker 0] And they found pretty widely divergent results among Hispanics. They found pretty wildly divergent results, although not as wide as among Hispanics. You know, there was a spread at the top lines that we can talk about. But let’s start with talking about Hispanics because there was a big spread in the results on Hispanic preferences in the presidential race, which fed a very active and ongoing debate, which we talked a little bit about a few weeks ago with Mark Jones.

[0:14:04 Speaker 1] Yeah, this is one of those things that, you know. I don’t think I mean, it would be too strong to say it drives me crazy, because that’s I wouldn’t you know, not a lot. Drives me crazy. This is probably too strong. But, um, I guess I guess you agitated about this Well, you know. Yeah, I suppose so. I mean, I think what it is is that, you know, So we go when we have some polls come out, and then all of a sudden, you know, you start to see some tweets and the tweets air like you won’t believe in this new poll. Joe Biden is only capturing the support of fill in the blank. 59% of Hispanics, 65% of Hispanics, 52% of whatever right now, That doesn’t mean that Donald Trump consistently consistently more than half, you know. But then the other side is you know, Trump is, you know, not hemorrhaging support among Hispanics or Trump is doing well enough among Hispanics. Keep competitive Texas competitive and the thing about these, sort of, you know, again, these exclamations of surprise is that it’s not based on anything e we’ve We’ve been conducting pulling here for a decade, and one of the things that sort of striking is, Well, yeah, that’s right. It’s based on not knowing what you’re talking about. So I mean, we’ve been doing these polls here for a decade. We’ve been watching other people’s polls here, you know, for a least that long. And, you know, I always say this without fail. There’s a floor of 30% of, you know, I think the Hispanic registered voter pool generally over this decade and again that that could be shifting right. But right now, who support Republicans? They support Republican policies. They support Republican candidates. You know, they you know, for all intents, intents are Republican voters. Um and you know, the truth is, I mean, this could be even more complicated because I like that kind of thing. But I mean the questions we’re talking about people who, like, identify as Hispanic or what if we asked people after they identify as white or something else, whether they’re Hispanic, because then it even looks more conservative that that electorate actually to expand or, you know, make which

[0:16:01 Speaker 0] in that particular scenario makes a lot of

[0:16:03 Speaker 1] sense, right? But ultimately, this is this is this is the case here. And so I think you know, these expectations that especially Democrats seem to have are just not based in reality. And I think what I always think is is it seems as though Democrats seem to believe or or want to believe, that Texas Hispanics are going to be a group that votes for Democrats. Maybe not at the rates of African Americans, dio, but maybe close right. So if African Americans go for Democrats, you know, 9 to 1 or mawr right to 90%. Plus, you know, there’s this idea that Hispanics should be a 70 or 80% Democratic group, and that’s just that’s just not the case. And really, you know what makes you know one of the factors you know, along with independence that we just discussed? You know, that’ll make election mawr or less competitive in Texas kind of comes down to do Republicans get 30 35 40 45% of the Hispanic vote because I mean one of the things that people made a lot of a big deal about out of at the time in 2014, when Abbott won by 20 points over Wendy Davis was, according to exit polling, which has a very wide margin of error but gives us a sense. The exit point said that he was received the support of 45% of Hispanics. Now that might sound crazy, except he won by 20 points. So it’s not that crazy. And that’s the thing I think that people sort of failed to appreciate is that the competition over the Hispanic electorate in Texas is a lot more fierce, I think, than people realize, at least outside the state.

[0:17:27 Speaker 0] Yeah, you know, I think it zits yet another aspect of politics in Texas, you know, and and it’s obviously wrapped up in the partisan. You know, discussion of partisan competition were the narratives that people want to embrace, or people want to embrace narratives that just don’t admit of a lot of subtlety. Yeah, you know, Yeah, you know it may, you know, it may be that you know your preconceptions about, you know, Hispanic voting behavior, the ideological context than the cultural context of Hispanics needs a little more subtlety injected into it than you’re willing to bring to the table. And, look, I, you know, that’s going to sound like, you know, we are. We’re picking on the Democrats, frankly, but I think it’s also true of Republicans who often are just like, Well, you know, Hispanics are you know, if you know social things, this is only yeah, this is only a slight exaggeration appeal, you know that. You know, Hispanics or a conservative people I’m like, just, you know, easy.

[0:18:37 Speaker 1] Because that was like, Was that when you say, hey, by the way, Hispanics aren’t the people?

[0:18:41 Speaker 0] Yeah, you know, for example, for example, and I think that those who point out that a lot of the polling of Hispanics is very tentative and you know that you know, there are hard to reach population and a lot of in a lot of cases that, you know, a lot of our samples were small. I mean, you know, the arguments kind of being made, you know, frankly, most recently by Beto O Rourke and his critique of, you know, all polling, it would seem that there that is under s. That he says is underestimating Democratic turnout. I would say a in this circumstance, maybe, but be, You know, the assumptions about about Hispanic political behavior and Hispanic political identification, you know, are, you know, require more research and require are yet to be demonstrated, you know, to be as clear assed people make it out to be.

[0:19:31 Speaker 1] Well, I mean, ultimately, you know, you know where it needs to be demonstrated, for better or because it needs to be demonstrated in an actual election. Not in your perception of how things might be going on the ground that it’s not getting reflecting point. We’ll get to the difficulty of that. I think, uh, but may we should cover a couple more topics before we

[0:19:50 Speaker 0] talk about that. Yeah. I mean, I think the other you know. So then the other thing that it is coming up other than, uh, Hispanic political behavior and probably more directly pulling of Hispanics is what’s going on in the suburbs. It seems like you can’t really and and there’s a good reason for this. You can’t really write a story about the 2020 election right now without making some reference to the suburbs Now. Part of this is completely justified because, you know, at at the presidential level, sure, but particularly and particularly in Texas. But in a lot of other places of the country. Um, the suburban and exurban areas that you know around major urban areas are ground zero for much of the political conflict, and for the most and then certainly in Texas, for the most political, the most competitive races in Congress and in state Legislature because of well, because of what is part of the debate. I mean, it seems to me this oversimplifies. Having just vilified people for oversimplifying, I’m gonna oversimplify, but only for the sake of explanation. Um, that on one hand there’s a narrative says, You know, this is mainly because, uh, conservative and Republican suburbanites are abandoning Donald Trump in droves. Onda on the other side that the demographics that might be a little bit of a straw man. But on the other side the fact that the demographics of the suburbs air changing and so you know that is affecting these races and that that is percolating up to some degree and affecting the statewide and at that level, national races. Well, you know, I mean, I think I don’t want to completely dismissed the abandoning of Donald Trump, but I we’re not seeing any evidence that that’s happening in droves

[0:21:35 Speaker 1] again. I want to add one more thing to your list, actually, And the other piece I’d add to it is that you know what the suburbs have going for them are two things that make them, you know, a knob checked of attention within the state. I think what you’re talking about definitely makes it an object of attention, you know, within the state and beyond in terms of the congressional district and things like that. But the other thing is, is that, you know, the suburbs are whereas, you know, the rural parts of the state are overwhelmingly Republican and the urban, you know, So the urban cores, you know, or where the Democrats are gonna get the lion’s share of their vote. The suburbs are a very high turnout and competitive part of the state s. So that’s Yeah, Yeah, probably about a third of the electorate, you know, but also is competitive and they turn out at these very high rates. And so ultimately you know, this is something that you know you would expect partisans to be competing over because it is really where a lot of the competition is, where you’re going to move margins. I mean, in rural parts state, Republicans were talking about, like, you know, you could think, but it worked. It is 254 county tour. Ultimately, how many? You know, votes of that net hip in rural parts state, Not many, because there aren’t that many votes for Democrats. Republicans. They’re gonna, you know, do their best to mobilize all the votes that can in the rural parts of states. Democrats are gonna do the same thing in the urban core. And it’s in the suburbs where the the fights really are going to take place to kind of define the race. And we’re really a lot of money is gonna be spent. But anyway, I mean, you know, you’re right. And the main thing here about the suburbs, that sort of, you know, I think is most interesting is that it is It’s all these things in some ways, right? I mean, it’s both, you know, the sort of high rates, but the other thing is, if you’ve been following Texas politics for years or some amount of time, or even just this kind of stuff. Generally, Texas’s suburbs have been some of the fastest growing places in the country. And for the most part, you know, the fast growth is not due to people moving from California or New York or wherever its its people moving from other parts of the state and its younger Texans. ITT’s people moving to be in and around the urban core but who can’t afford to live in the urban core. And so this is where you know, again, we’re in Austin. You could look at sort of the growth of Cedar Park and Leander in places like that. Um, Ultimately, if you think, look at the places that are growing so much, these air also overlapping with the congressional districts that are now being fought over, which were drawing 10 years ago when a lot of these places were significantly less populated. And so you’re talking about places that are significantly more populated there, populated with younger and more diverse Texans. And so it’s a different suburb, and that goes back to your first point, which is. You know, I think a lot of people when they start to Seymour competition Texas Congressional District, were real quick to say, Oh, suburban Republicans are leaving Donald Trump. There’s no polling evidence for that, and in particular, you know, the particular in Stan Shih ation of this was, Well, you know, suburban women are leaving Trump and I think, you know, implied when people would say that was, well, suburban white women. That’s what we’re talking about. And honestly, if you’re talking about the aspect of the conservative of the suburbs that are making it more competitive, it’s not older white women. It’s a younger, nonwhite women, younger, non white men. That’s what you’re talking about. You’re talking about a young, diverse Texas that is expanding these urban corridors and making these places more competitive

[0:24:39 Speaker 0] and probably, you know, and also I think, with a dollop of younger, college educated, yeah, white people, right that are, you know, those Those were some of the people that are leaving those urban course and

[0:24:53 Speaker 1] yeah, I think that’s right. Well, that’s try to I mean, if you were a younger, if you’re a younger person who was, you know, white or nonwhite doesn’t really matter. But like a younger, college educated person working in the urban core, renting and you decide that you’re the point where you’re ready to buy, you’re not buying where you’re renting right now that that’s true almost anywhere in Texas, in the major cities. And so that is pushing you into these areas. But it’s also pushing you from being represented by Lloyd Doggett. You know, Democrat right, whose district from Boston San Antonio to maybe living in Roger Williams descript, or Mike McCaul, whose district that’s gonna run from the subject out. Chip Roy. Well, Chip Roy’s. That’s an interesting district. It’s a little boy. It could be a San Antonio. I’m not familiar with the San Antonio geography to say so, but

[0:25:34 Speaker 0] you know, there’s enough that, you know, there’s, um there’s there’s a mosque. There’s Austinites in that district. That’s true. That’s true. Yeah, plenty. Um, so So I think you know, I think you know the only thing I mean, that kind of elaborate, the two ideal points that I was caricaturing. But I you know, the other thing that I would also you know, add to that in terms of the fascination with suburbs in the sense of surprise and the sometimes more intuitive rather than database assessments of this is that you know, if you think back to the good analyses of the rise of the Republican Party in Texas, you know that started, you know, it didn’t all start, but it really took hold in the suburbs

[0:26:22 Speaker 1] in Dallas suburbs

[0:26:23 Speaker 0] and the suburbs were ground zero. And we’re the Petri dish in which Republican in Germany germinated over, you know, the sixties seventies eighties on. And so I think there’s There’s also just a sense of like, you know, as you say, you know, that was that was Republican, the suburbs in most places where Republican territory for a long time and the fact that they’re changing I mean, I think people are are grappling for for, you know, for an explanation.

[0:26:58 Speaker 1] Well, you know, And one thing I think that’s really and I think I love you brought that up because I bring this up with people who care. And now just to really smash away your caricature is one mawr, you know, with that, I mean, I think that there is a fundamental difference to to that change from a Democratic controls to Republican control straight that began in the suburbs. And the change that we’re seeing now to a more competitive state from a Republican dominates. And the difference was that, you know, if you follow that history, is that when the suburbs were growing in Texas and becoming Republican stronghold, that was people leaving the city. There was a part of the white flight that was a rejection of the urban in a lot of ways and movement towards a much more homogeneous socioeconomically, certainly racially, uh, communities, right? What we’re talking about now is completely different type of people coming from other parts of the state who are young, diverse, more likely to be college educated, and they’re moving as close to the city as they can afford. And that’s a very different sense of place, You know, it’s a different movement of people. I think that’s sort of what we’re experiencing right now.

[0:27:58 Speaker 0] And as they’re doing that, they’re not changing parties right, which, you know, in the initial in the initial growth of Republican Party, there was a lot of party switching going on and it you know, really, you know, the big catalyst or the big watershed really is when Reagan runs for president in 1980 they win Texas and there’s, you know, I mean, it’s Ah, there’s still some stop and start because the Republicans, you know, are the Democrats amount lots of rearguard actions. But you know, you’re really on the road to the Texas of the early two of the first two decades of the 21st century at that point, and it’s really that the suburbs were really a huge engine for that. You know, along with, you know, we’re Republicans still have urban strongholds like parts of Houston, parts of Dallas, etcetera. Um, all of this brings us then for just the last couple of minutes to focus a little bit on the early voting number and how we should not caricature that e. I still think the ideal type caricatures of people’s interpretations is useful before you decompose them.

[0:29:08 Speaker 1] Yeah, let me give

[0:29:09 Speaker 0] you my method.

[0:29:10 Speaker 1] So I mean a question that I have been, you know, sort of. I’ve answered a couple times today was you know, people sort of, you know, reporters. I should say I should say not. Not like just random people

[0:29:19 Speaker 0] wanting. Well, they’re really not talking to real people.

[0:29:22 Speaker 1] Well, not no, Not like ordinary people. Um, people choose to be reporters who I love. Anyway, we’re talking to reporters today about the early vote number. There’s been a lot of intrigue in defense in the sense that if you kind of look alike, I think on The New York Times today there was a NAR tickle the nice data visualization that showed that Texas has the most votes cast so far of any state. Okay, Andi, people are kind of surprised by this because they know that Texas is a low turnout state, but also it’s a big state. People are sort of interpreting this to me, wolf. There’s high turnout. This much must be good for Democrats now, I think earlier in the podcast, she said, Well, you know, the actual underlying numbers or not so positive, I would say, based on what we know so far for Democrats, I mean, certainly what competitive, but we’ll see. Um, but the bigger thing here is just to point out, you know, there’s a reason that Texas has such a high early vote number relative to other states, and the main reason is the fact that there’s not many other ways to vote here. Texas is one of five states did not extend male and voted because of the way that elections were running the U. S. Basically, every state has its own set of rules for how they’re gonna handle those mail in ballots. Which means that at this point in the process that we can’t really compare how many mail in ballots. Let’s say you know, Texas has had to go to California compared to Nevada could produce somewhere else because in some states they can’t even like, touch the mail in ballots until, you know, Election Day or the day after or whatever. So we’re comparing in person votes. Well, Texas has had an extra week of early voting, so we’ve had, you know, we’re on our third week of early voting, and a lot of states do not have that, and there’s no other way to vote safely. If you’re concerned about the coronavirus pandemic and you don’t want to vote on Election Day for most people, unless you’re over the age of 65 you have a disability that’s not related to the coronavirus. You know, indirectly, I guess, or you’re not gonna be in the county the three ways you can vote by mail here. And so it’s a little bit of Ah, don’t even say. I mean, it’s an apples to oranges comparison right now. Number one, but number two. The other thing I kind of keep reminding people about is it turned out his way up in Texas turnouts, Probably going to be way up everywhere. You know, I have these conversations we’ve all the time like there’s nothing about this election that makes Texas Texans specifically excited. People bring this up about young voters who were young voters going to decide this election. And I said, Well, look, you know, if young voters turned out at a really high rate, I kind of suspect that everybody turned out at a really high rate and therefore there Wait, you know, on the on the outcome is going to be, you know, not inconsequential. But it’s it’s gonna be minimal relative to their increase in turnout, and I think that’s kind of what we’re seeing here. You know, I think there’s a lot of excitement or not excitement. There’s a lot of interest. Uh,

[0:31:55 Speaker 0] and you know, there’s a lot of intensity,

[0:31:58 Speaker 1] a lot of intensity, right? Right. And so I mean, I think, you know, we should expect to see that. But I also would say that, you know, I’d be surprised if once all the votes are cast and counted If, you know, Texas isn’t kind of where it normally is. What should still see record turnout

[0:32:11 Speaker 0] relative to other states?

[0:32:13 Speaker 1] Yeah. Relatives say we should still you see, record turnout, Texas. We should still see, uh, you know, high record turnout for Texas. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we were still in the bottom tier of states When it comes to turn out, that’s just a guess.

[0:32:25 Speaker 0] Okay, everybody, You heard that. You convey ill If I Josh, if that turns out to be wrong for not having faith in the people of Texas Well,

[0:32:35 Speaker 1] no, I’m not having faith in the people who don’t understand that Texas elections independent, remember? Uh,

[0:32:43 Speaker 0] I think there is something interesting when people call, and I think a couple of cycles ago, you know, dined out on the line of, you know, Texas is still part of the United States. And I think sometimes the you know one feels like it’s the impression that people think Texas is in its own different, tucked away in its own corner of the multiverse and not connected to the other trends. And I think you know, that’s and that’s also frankly gonna make, you know, diagnosing what’s going on in Texas when this election is over. You know, tricky because, you know, say, there is a national Democratic landslide. Well, then Texas is going to be part of that larger macro level dynamic and say in that You know, I I don’t even wanna broach the issue of you know, whether Joe Biden wins Texas or doesn’t win Texas. I’ll just say, Say, say, Joe Biden wins by a large by a large margin nationally, both in the popular vote and in the Electoral College takes Texas doesn’t takes Texas. Doesn’t really matter for what I’m going to talk about. I don’t think, you know, we’re still going to go into 2021 2022 in particular the 2022 election cycle. And yes, we’re talking about the 2022 election. We go into that in Texas in a situation which you have a bunch of Texas statewide incumbent Republicans who still have dominance. And then, at that point, we’ll have a certain amount of structural dynamic in their favor in terms of what we know about the history of how parties, how the out of the White House parties due in the following midterm election. Mhm. And so you know, I think to me that’s one of the biggest qualifiers. When somebody says, Well, so you know if text you know, if the Democrats take the how the Statehouse and they flip another 2 to 5 or six or seven or however many, you know, seats, they wind up flipping in Congress. And I do think that there will be net gains in both chambers. You know, you know, where you finally, you know, where you finally admit that Texas is turning blue. I’m like, you know, no, in fact, no on. And you know, that’s why I think, you know, I mean, settle for being more competitive guys e mean and I don’t mean that. Look, if you’re a Democrat, it’s your job to win elections. It’s your job. The term Texas Blue I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about from an analytical position or from Trump from an interpretive position. You know, the state is already more competitive if the state being more competitive is your criteria for turning blue. Well, then okay. But I think that doesn’t make any sense. And I think that embedded implication is often there or, you know, pick your code words. Texas Turning blue. Is it a swing state? Is it in play? Is it? You know, all of those nuances lets you know. I feel like we need a glossary to clarify those and then try to enforce consistent usage among everyone. E

[0:35:50 Speaker 1] I agree. I mean, I’ve had Yeah, no, I mean the

[0:35:54 Speaker 0] I’m so my joking. But I’m also, you know,

[0:35:57 Speaker 1] no, because it’s ridiculous because we do this all the time. In every election cycle, I think we probably each receive somewhere between you know, I don’t know. 10 and 1000 calls that begin with So Texas turning blue this year, It’s like it doesn’t work that way. It’s, you know, e and I say the same thing as you, which is, you know, No, I don’t think we’re gonna wake up on November 4th and say, Whoa! Oh, Texas’s blue. I think we’re going to say, Hey, it turned out that Texas is competitive, which is what it looked like. Yeah. You know, um, maybe we should

[0:36:28 Speaker 0] traumatic. It’s hard to sell your editors on that.

[0:36:31 Speaker 1] Yeah. Can we talk about

[0:36:32 Speaker 0] it? I get it. And again, I also want to give our reporter friends some slack, having kind of been jokey about them, that, you know, I and for those of you going Oh, come on, dude. You know, I realized that that is a ploy at times to elicit a response. And we’re all

[0:36:46 Speaker 1] I’m only talking about national outlets. I’m not talking about Texas reporters, Right. Our friends, we talk about polling for a second. You think

[0:36:53 Speaker 0] just for a second we’re now over 30 minutes.

[0:36:57 Speaker 1] I think I could do it in less than 25 more minutes.

[0:37:00 Speaker 0] Yeah, probably. Probably. All right,

[0:37:05 Speaker 1] real quick. I’ll do real quick. You point. I’ll

[0:37:09 Speaker 0] make some kind of face or something.

[0:37:10 Speaker 1] Ah, bunch of polls came out really in the last few days, and they’ve ranged, You know, they all kind of covered the same time period And they range from, you know, Trump being up by, you know, a little more than five points to Biden being, uh, Posse’s many as seven points if you go back a little ways. But you know more like, let’s say Biden, you know, up a couple points here, there. So a range of, basically Trump plus five to Biden plus five more or less all within the last, you know, week or two of polling. And, you know, that might leave a lot of people saying, you know, well,

[0:37:42 Speaker 0] they say what they’re

[0:37:44 Speaker 1] That’s a nicer way of saying what I was gonna say, Yes, you know, and the main thing here is I think it’s all these things that we’ve been talking about, right? You know, if you think about the fact of you know, we’re in an election now, where you know, and I brought this up, I think, last week. But after the 2018 cycle, the parlor game that was going on on Twitter was, you know, hey, in 2020 or we’re gonna have more than 10 million voters. Now the question is, are we gonna have 11 million? We have 12 million and That’s kind of what What? What? What? What? The people who try to estimate these things are saying at this point. So this is, you know Ah, huge turnout, election. Ultimately, you know most of these polls that are trying to come up with, you know, these trial ballot results. You know how much of the vote shared Biden? As much of the votes for Trump have to make some sort of a guess about what the voting electorate looks like. And you know what? That’s really heart, and it’s really, really hard when you’re seeing, you know, millions more voters than you’ve ever seen. So we go back to study groups, I’ll use Hispanics. I think is the best example here. Of the groups that we’ve talked about right here is a group that, you know, we said historically has, you know, supported Republican candidates anywhere from, you know, with 30% of the vote of their vote to, you know, as high as maybe 45% of the vote. But the assumption has always been that if you that these air gonna be more conservative, older Hispanics potentially and that you know what you know. This is a low turnout group, which means that they vote lower rates and their share of the population. Whites vote at higher rates than their share of the population. So there mawr represented in the electorate. But this is a big question. And this was, you know, and it’s funny because when I started doing this with you, you know, whatever. Like, 10 years ago, people were always on this. You know, you put out a trial that was like and someone would hit a table and say, What? Share of your samples? Hispanic. And they really wanted to know. Was it? Is it Is it plausible? Is it too low? Is it too high and again now, compared to what? I don’t know, but this was sort of something that we would do a lot this cycle. I don’t think anybody seems to care for some reason about this anymore, But, I mean, this makes a difference. I mean, you know, it makes a difference in two ways. You’re thinking I’ll get out soon, you know, one.

[0:39:36 Speaker 0] No, no, no, no. I want I want to interject to say hello. People care. Well, you know, we’re not hearing I We have not heard is directly about it. Yeah, Aziz, we have in the past. Yeah,

[0:39:50 Speaker 1] Fair enough. But, I mean, the thing is that, you know, if you’re thinking about you know, you’re conducting a poll and you’re trying to estimate the vote, you know the preferences. A voting electorate doesn’t matter if your electorate is 17% Hispanic versus 25% Hispanic. Well, yeah, of course it does, but we don’t know. And so there’s two things going on here. One we don’t know what the composition of the electorate is gonna look like based on age on, based on race and based on both of those things together, number one and number two, we really don’t know what effect it has when you bring in a ton more people into the electorate that you’ve ever seen ultimate. You know, what I’d say is, yeah, I mean, right now, based on what I know, I’d say Yeah, Hispanics or a group that goes 30 to 45% democratic when they make up 17 to 22% of Republicans. Sorry. When they make up 17 to 22% of electorate. But what if they do make up 25 26 28% of the electorate this time because turned out so high. What are the additional? You know, if you think about the additional, you know, 6% of the electorate that comes into our Hispanic do they look like the rest of the Hispanics who were voting before. And we’re, you know, again, a Democratic group, but not overwhelmingly. Or are you bringing in young Hispanics who lean more Democratic Now, all of a sudden, the Republican vote shares it 28%. Or is it that low mark of 30% of Democrats are getting 65 70%

[0:41:04 Speaker 0] or even below the historic low mark?

[0:41:05 Speaker 1] Or what we think is this Whatever. Yeah, yeah. And so And the answer to that question is, I don’t know. And the other answer there was just nobody knows. Nobody knows. And that’s the thing. So when you see you know, for, you know, four polling results come out that say, you know, that basically show different results. You know, one of things you can do is you go and look into the results and say, Well, what was the vote share among Hispanics in which you’ll see. You’ll see different vote share breakdowns amongst Hispanics. Right? Um,

[0:41:32 Speaker 0] a lot of variants among the different results,

[0:41:35 Speaker 1] right? And I mean not to get out and get out of this point and maybe you’ll come back to it. I’m able to send it. But I mean, the other piece to this, I think that’s important to remember is you know, polling results are estimates. And when you’re trying to estimate a race that appears to be, you know, 50 50 51 49 52 48 you know, even really upto like 55. 45. You’re talking about a close race. It’s not easy. It’s not easy to say. This person is definitely going to get 51% of the vote, and this person is definitely gonna get 49% of the vote. It just doesn’t really work that way. And I think that’s something that you know, I think people also have to kind of get ah, hold on, which is that we have a very fluid and very, I would say, a very fluid and dynamic electorate in Texas and more so over the last two cycles. So it’s not as easy as you know. It’s easy for someone like, better represent Well, you’re not getting the right people. And I would say Who are the right people? I don’t know. And I don’t think I don’t think that anybody really does. Until we get through this election cycle and we see what the electorate as

[0:42:30 Speaker 0] well, I think I think, more importantly, who are the right people and how do you know? Because he will have a very ready answer for who the right people are, right?

[0:42:39 Speaker 1] How do you know? Is,

[0:42:41 Speaker 0] But how do you know? I think is the main thing. And I, You know, I we’ve got to close it out. But, I mean, you know what I would say is, you know, it’s and it’s something I think you know. You put succinctly is, you know, at one point in an earlier podcast, which is you know, we’re talking, you know, I think we typically focus on one estimate when we have these questions. When we get these questions about well, what you know, what was the breakdown of your sample? Right? And that’s always a nest emit, right? But it’s an estimate of an estimate. It’s an estimate that then feeds into another estimate, which are is our estimate of Thea underlying population. Right? And sometimes you know a lot about the underlying population that you’re trying to sample ideally, and in this case, we don’t, right, right? And so, you know, the uncertainty baked into this is is always there, and we always try to talk about it. And I think, you know, it’s incumbent on us to talk about it in more depth, but also more clearly to people. And I, you know, that was one of the takeaways of 2016. And, you know, I think, uh, you know, the overall failure to talk about how this exercise works in terms of polling, but also more broadly, how modeling works. And we don’t want to get into that and and at some more metaphysical level, what probability is got us into a lot of trouble in 2016 that we’re still paying for? Because multiple debriefs, multiple analyses, hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of discussion later, we both still get calls going. So let’s start with why 2016. All the polling was wrong. Yep. Yep, that sigh was audible. And on that note, thanks a lot for listening to burn. Staying for the extra bit. Thanks to Josh for being here. Thanks, as always, to our terrific production staff in the College of Liberal Arts and the liberal arts development studio at the University of Texas at Austin. And thanks again to you for listening. I suspect if you’re listening, you probably already have. But if you haven’t get on out there and boat and we will talk to you next week and the next time we all talk, we’ll know a lot more but have probably a whole new set of questions. Thanks for listening to the second reading Podcast. Second Reading Podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin