October 25th, 2023 – 2024 Election Soundings in The New UT/Texas Politics Project Poll

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. Sir, I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these 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.

[00:00:36] 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. It’s the only University of Texas in Austin, but still, um, they, I don’t know if the style guide still has Well, you don’t wanna the, in it,

[00:00:52] Josh Blank: well, you don’t wanna be confused with like the University of Austin or any Well,

[00:00:56] Jim Henson: I have no, you know, complaints about that per se.

[00:00:59] Daron Shaw: This, this started with Ohio State and so I, I have a negative sort of vibe about it, but the Ohio

[00:01:04] Jim Henson: State B Ohio State, yeah. . Yeah. Well, you know, anyway, uh. I am happy to be joined by the UT Texas Politics Project polling team, uh, my esteemed colleague Darren Schopp, Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin.

[00:01:21] Jim Henson: Thanks for making it in, Darren. Hello! Well, I’m not going to ask that question, but okay. And Joshua Blank, Research Director for the Texas Politics Project. Thank you, Josh. Sure. How are you this morning? Doing good. Thanks. You’re psyched. ’cause you get to go to a show tonight,

[00:01:37] Josh Blank: right? It’s true. I do get to, I’m going down to San Antonio.

[00:01:39] Josh Blank: Josh is

[00:01:39] Jim Henson: I Rock tonight? Yeah.

[00:01:41] Daron Shaw: Yeah, I would say so. It’s, that’s good. My wife saw you too at the sphere in Las Vegas last week. Oh man. So top that one, you know? Wow.

[00:01:48] Josh Blank: It’s different. It is gonna be a different vibe. Yeah. ,

[00:01:50] Daron Shaw: that’s a little bit different vibe. Josh a Pearl Jam guy, for those of you who don’t know out there.

[00:01:53] Daron Shaw: I did see,

[00:01:54] Josh Blank: I saw both Pearl Gym shows in Austin actually. A two show. Yeah, that’s right. I go into both .

[00:01:58] Daron Shaw: Um.

[00:01:59] Jim Henson: We have Professor Shaw with us today, uh, because we, this morning, published results of the latest University of Texas, Texas Politics Project poll. I mean, in addition to just the fact that he’s stellar company, um, but, uh, we published results at the Texas Politics Project website.

[00:02:18] Jim Henson: If you haven’t seen those yet, that’s at texaspolitics. utexas. edu. Navigate, there’s a link in the marquee box, navigate through the polling section. I’m going to be pretty hard to miss, so it takes a little clicking. Um, and, uh, you know, a big part of this poll is, you know, one of the thematics here, the hook, if you will, was, you know, about a year out from the 2024 general election, what is the electoral landscape look like in Texas?

[00:02:47] Jim Henson: So, you know, we had lots of questions about the. presidential, uh, election in particular, the presidential primary, but lots of probing of, of what seemed to be at this point without, you know, prejudging the outcome, the, the two major candidates, Donald Trump and, and Joe Biden. Let’s just dive into that.

[00:03:07] Jim Henson: Let’s dive in and let’s, and let’s start with the presidential prime, the GOP presidential primary where, you know, we found not too many surprising results on the surface of it, right, Josh, but I think when we scroll down, we You know, there were some interesting nuggets there that we’ll unpack.

[00:03:24] Josh Blank: Yeah, I mean, I think just to run through the top lines real quick, you know, not surprisingly, Donald Trump, uh, really…

[00:03:31] Josh Blank: Trounced his competition. I don’t know if this counts as a trouncing. You know, he’s at 62 percent of, uh, basically registered voters who said they intended to vote in the Republican primary coming up. So this is not a likely voter sample. I see these are potential Republican primary voters. We’re still a long ways out from there.

[00:03:46] Josh Blank: But even among that group, he almost got to two thirds of Republican voters. Followed in a distant, distant second by Ron DeSantis at 13%, Nikki Haley at 7, and then the remaining candidates were at 3 percent or less. I mean, one interesting thing is, you know, at this point in time, I mean, everybody had an opinion.

[00:04:03] Josh Blank: It wasn’t as though there was a lot of people still kind of wait, reserving judgment.

[00:04:06] Jim Henson: Yeah, that was interesting. And we didn’t, you know, obviously at this early point, we didn’t push or anything. So yeah, people did weigh

[00:04:12] Josh Blank: in. No. And the thing is, look, you know, when we talk about the democratic Senate primary, you’ll see people had no problem telling us they had no idea.

[00:04:17] Josh Blank: Right. I mean, not surprisingly, but these are, you know, I mean, Trump’s obviously universally known to Santa’s is very well known. I mean, we know from our prior polling that Haley Pence. Uh, you know, Tim Scott, you know, a couple of these guys are also incredibly well known within the Republican electorate.

[00:04:32] Josh Blank: And so that was sort of the top line piece of this, you know, when we think about Republican primaries, we can see Trump’s support gets stronger as we go from sort of potential Republican primer voters to people who say they’re conservative to people who say they’re extremely conservative, which again, bodes even better for him once we start to get into that kind of likely voter, uh, pool.

[00:04:48] Josh Blank: We also have, we can go on into the other results around this. We asked about second choices. We also asked about candidates we wouldn’t support. Do you want to go in that direction? No, let’s, let’s,

[00:04:55] Jim Henson: I want to, I want to ask Darren. So, you know, you’ve been looking at, you know, a lot of Republican primary polling and a lot of primary polling generally in your, in your various projects.

[00:05:05] Jim Henson: I mean, you know, what do you make of this?

[00:05:09] Daron Shaw: Well, there’s a couple interesting things that we shouldn’t neglect. The first is, you know, we ask people Texas is an open primary state. Are you gonna vote in the Republican or the Democratic primary? And we got about a 12 point spread there. 47 percent said they intended to vote in the Republican and 35 percent the Democratic.

[00:05:23] Daron Shaw: And now you could say, well, you know, there’s a Um, nominally competitive Republican primary, and there’s really no competitive Democratic primary, uh, on the pre at the presidential level, but the Democrats have a very competitive Senate race. Um, and, you know, which one might have thought would draw some people in there.

[00:05:40] Daron Shaw: Well, the, the word that comes to mind, consistent as I’m reading this, is lag. The Texas electorate seems not to be engaged in a way that we see in other places. And that’s, that’s understandable. We wouldn’t expect Texas to be as on edge about the Republican primary as Iowa, or New Hampshire, or South Carolina.

[00:06:00] Daron Shaw: Um, but Josh alluded to one thing, which is on the Democratic side, nobody knows who almost anybody is who’s running for Senate. That’s an indication that this thing has not heated up in a kind of serious way. And then the numbers in Texas are pretty consistent with what we see nationally, but they’re not consistent with what we see in some of the earlier primary states.

[00:06:19] Daron Shaw: That is what we have here is DeSantis is still the number two choice, but DeSantis has fallen away. Nikki Haley is sort of emerged as a two, you know, two A. Or 2B with DeSantis being the other kind of second place finisher. But, but she’s not double digits here the way she is in a lot of the other early primary states.

[00:06:38] Daron Shaw: So, you know, that’s an indication to me that, you know, even though Texas Republicans say, yeah, I’m going to vote. In the Republican primary, it doesn’t seem to me they’re really paying attention at a level that you see in some of the other Republican primary states, which makes sense. Texas is a Super Tuesday state.

[00:06:55] Daron Shaw: There haven’t, I mean, there’ve been just a handful of visits to Texas, largely to raise money as opposed to Iowa and New Hampshire. So, um, There’s not a lot of retail going on here at this point. Right, right. But I guess, I guess for the listeners though, the question is, okay, well, what do I make of that?

[00:07:09] Daron Shaw: Does that mean that this is just going to… Kind of bubble along and Trump is going to win with, you know, as Josh said, two thirds of the vote or, you know, will Texas follow if you see more appreciable movement in some of these other early primary states, um, which is a contingent statement, right? I mean, at first it’s got to happen and then Texas has to follow.

[00:07:29] Josh Blank: I don’t know. In response to that, I think one of the other items actually speaks to that in an interesting way, which I think one of the interesting things about this is we, we also ask again, these potential Republican primary voters, are there any of these candidates that you just wouldn’t support?

[00:07:40] Josh Blank: Yeah. Right. And we give them, we give them the option of, you know, you can select all of them, all but one of them, whatever, and basically all but the one that you didn’t select or what have you. Right. And what’s interesting about this and the survey doesn’t have to work this way, but 62 percent of Repub of these potential Republican primary voters said they were going to vote for Trump.

[00:07:57] Josh Blank: 38%, which is 100 minus 62, just for those of you who, you know, a little bit of math, said they would not be supporting Trump. And that’s interesting. Again, it doesn’t work that way. It’s not like all these add up where you say like, okay, you know, for Ron DeSantis, 13 percent said they’d support him, 22 percent said they couldn’t support Ron DeSantis.

[00:08:13] Josh Blank: And so what’s interesting is, I mean, on the one hand, at least in the Republican primary, it indicates something of a ceiling, potentially, for Trump in Texas. But to your point, you know, to the extent that like, you know, if Trump starts to, you know, get out. In the myriad number of things that could happen between now and election day that could impact, you know, the trajectory of Trump’s candidacy with respect to his legal problems, other things, you know, you could say there is a base of support for somebody else, but absent, you know, again, Trump cratering somewhere.

[00:08:41] Josh Blank: It seems unlikely that that’s really going to manifest in any serious way. Would you agree with that? Yeah,

[00:08:45] Daron Shaw: it’s a, it looks like a two to one, you know, two out of every three Republicans in Texas are fine with Donald Trump, but one out of three. But they just aren’t fine with Trump and and they’re sort of scattered amongst all these other different contenders right now.

[00:08:59] Daron Shaw: It’s it’s unclear whether the the the two of the three are just wholly committed to Trump no matter what happens. Um, just for clarification on the I think we asked everybody the who would you not vote for? Right?

[00:09:12] Josh Blank: Yeah. Well, they would mean no, no, no, no. It was just Republicans, just the

[00:09:15] Daron Shaw: Republicans, just Republicans.

[00:09:16] Daron Shaw: Right. I’m sorry. Cause I was looking at the crosstabs and I thought I saw it.

[00:09:20] Josh Blank: Democrats those would be those. So because the filter on that is actually saying you’re gonna vote in the Republican primary that probably represents the three Democrats. You said, I didn’t vote. Yeah.

[00:09:29] Daron Shaw: Okay, good. That’s. So for those of you dig down into the crosstabs that’s

[00:09:32] Josh Blank: that’s what crosstabs can be dangerous.

[00:09:33] Josh Blank: Does that say you want to do that? You wanna make sure you have a part. Have a partner.

[00:09:37] Daron Shaw: Have fun, but don’t hurt yourself. So the other the other one who you know, Kristen Pence also, you know, they’re kind of the next two wouldn’t vote for. Yeah. Yeah. They’re the top two. They’re the top two. Right. And then there’s sort of every, so there’s, you know, those sort of three characters and then everybody else, Republicans seem open to it.

[00:09:55] Daron Shaw: It’s

[00:09:55] Josh Blank: like one in five might say like, eh, not for me. Yeah. That’s about right. Yeah. Unless you’re Tim Scott. In this case, it’s one in 10. Right.

[00:10:02] Daron Shaw: Which I found interesting as well. He is very hard. I bought a lot of Tim Scott stock early on. I’m not sure if that’s going to transfer well, but.

[00:10:08] Jim Henson: Yeah. I, you know, don’t tell your financial advisor about that

[00:10:11] Daron Shaw: as it’s turning out.

[00:10:12] Jim Henson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I. You know, I’m just going to ask the obvious thing and, you know, Josh, you and I were talking about this earlier and I’m, I’m honestly curious what you think about this. And we’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but I mean, it’s really striking to see just how dominant Trump is in these numbers, even allowing for all the path dependency we might see in the future and the things that could change.

[00:10:41] Jim Henson: But you know, you look at the. Media coverage of Trump and Trump’s public image in the last month. And what do you see, you know, people flipping on him in his various trials, you know, him sort of seeming to throw kerosene on the fire in Congress. Um, and you know, I don’t want us to have to go through the usual, okay, well, the guy’s Teflon whatever.

[00:11:05] Jim Henson: But I mean, is it wrong to be a little struck by the fact that his, you know, he still exerts just such powerful gravity in Republican politics.

[00:11:14] Daron Shaw: Yeah, well, you know, we all remember the statement that Trump made. I’m paraphrasing, but I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and, you know, wouldn’t lose any support.

[00:11:24] Daron Shaw: And that struck us at the time as having a kernel of truth. And as time has passed, it’s more than a kernel. Um, and I think it reflects a couple of things. The first is that when you rise to power, by articulating a critique of the system that the system is rigged, the system is biased, then everything.

[00:11:45] Daron Shaw: And if your supporters are amenable to that critique, they believe that they invest in it by voting for you a couple of times, then you have a ready made explanation for, you know, these. Misadventures or, you know, illegal activities or investigations, which is this is a system of lashing out at me because I’m the one who’s trying to take it down and I do think that’s a big part of it.

[00:12:05] Daron Shaw: You know, the system is seen as corrupt. Um, and not just Republicans, obviously, but Democrats and Trump has primed people for that. And everything I think is seen through that lens. And then the second point, which is really related to the first is that both the Democratic, um, backed Investigations and the media’s kind of portrayal of Trump have fed that narrative and, and, you know, if we’ve talked amongst ourselves early about, uh, the four major kind of investigations, right, the, you know, sort of in, in, in order, the, uh, the Manhattan district attorney investigation into campaign finance, right, then the, the files.

[00:12:43] Daron Shaw: Um, White House files that were taken when Trump left, then the January 6th investigations and then the Georgia cases. And I’ve always kind of thought that those, that those are important in reverse order in some ways, right? Yeah. Not January 6th and the, and the Georgia investigation are, you know, related obviously, but, um, but they led with the Manhattan investigation, which I think to a lot of people seemed like Yeah.

[00:13:07] Daron Shaw: You know, what is going on

[00:13:08] Josh Blank: makes the reaction to the others being like, Oh, and another, here’s another, another one.

[00:13:12] Daron Shaw: Right. And, and, and that’s not to, to blame the messenger or, but, but it is to say that if you think of this thing as, as a piece. That, uh, that first one, which sets the tone for the kinds of investigations that are going to occur, and of course this comes on the heels of an impeachment after he had left office.

[00:13:29] Daron Shaw: You know, Republicans, I don’t know if you say could be forgiven, but it’s not, it’s not as surprising the reaction you get. It’s not to excuse it, it’s not to say that, you know, we don’t have problems, it’s not to say in the data we don’t see, you know, lots of people, including independents. Who do take these things seriously, and I think ultimately provide a cap on how well Trump could possibly do in Texas, right?

[00:13:52] Daron Shaw: That’s there, but you’re right, Jim. The main thing is like, my gosh, this guy’s still completely dominating the Republican primary. He’s up, you know, seven or eight points on Biden in Texas. He’s actually got a larger lead than, you know, he ended up carrying the state with last time, so. You know, that’s all here

[00:14:07] Jim Henson: and he, you know, uh, you know, I, I mean, to, to move to the next little chunk of the data, I mean, you know, as you say, you know, I mean, you know, not surprising in the head to head to Biden, what those numbers look like very much.

[00:14:18] Josh Blank: Yeah, no, I mean, it was pretty comparable to where we pulled Trump and Biden in October of 2019. Right. I mean, so if we go back to the last election, that’s about the spirit. I would also say, you know, in terms of the gap to where it ends up, you know, we expect polling. I mean, in some ways, this is a return to kind of the historical norm in some ways, where we expect the Republican candidate to have somewhere in the neighborhood of I mean, it used to be a bigger lead, right?

[00:14:39] Josh Blank: It used to be like 14, 15 points. And then as the election day would come, maybe it’d be 10 or 12. Now it was, you know, sort of like it used to be 10 or 12. Now it’s like, maybe Maybe 9 to 11 and then you, we think that that might shrink, you know, as we get towards election day, potentially, obviously dependent on everything else, but in some ways it’s a, it’s a return to normality in some sense to see this kind of a gap in Texas.

[00:14:58] Josh Blank: Right. I mean, which to your point, Jim is actually kind of interesting, which like, so this is normal,

[00:15:02] Jim Henson: right? And I, you know, and again, I don’t, you know, I don’t want to seem all like my hair on fire about it, but I mean, I. You know, it’s worth pausing, I think, and kind of going, you know, this is a little strange.

[00:15:12] Jim Henson: I mean, you know, it’s a little unprecedented, you know, it’s a lot unprecedented. And that’s, you know, and I, and again, I, I sort of agree with, you know, all of your explanation for it. And I think, you know, it’s not like there’s not a. Precedent for it in the polling we’ve done before

[00:15:29] Josh Blank: well, well if you think about, you know, another topic We talked about a lot in here, you know, we talked about negative partisanship, you know a lot here And I mean you can’t ignore the fact that you know, you’re talking about him running against an incredibly unpopular president Especially with republicans but also just kind of overall in texas And so I mean, you know, one of the things I think you should the sort of it’s sort of interesting in this In this set of results when you kind of put together and can I move to the trial ballots a little bit?

[00:15:52] Josh Blank: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s where I wanted to go great, which is you know, so on the one hand we’re sort of we’re saying Okay So if you look in the Republican primary electorate, you know, about two thirds say that they’d be supporting Trump, about a third say that they would not support Trump. Now, however, when you get to the general election matchup and you say, well, what if he were running against Joe Biden, uh, you know, over 80 percent of Republicans say they would support Trump and just to be clear, 3 percent say they would.

[00:16:13] Josh Blank: support Biden, which is basically zero and the remainder are kind of holding out, holding out. Now look, are those people going to go and start supporting Biden? No, but what’s interesting about what’s in these results also is that Trump performed significantly better against Biden than the other Republican candidates we tested.

[00:16:28] Josh Blank: And that’s not. Uh, because all of a sudden, you know, Democrats support waivers. It’s because Republican support waivers for all the other candidates. So even though there’s this sort of large share of Republicans who say, Yeah, I don’t think I could support Trump in the primary in the general election.

[00:16:41] Josh Blank: It’s a very small share. And in fact, they’re reserving a lot more judgment for the other Republican candidates. And so what we see is basically Biden running even against DeSantis against, uh, uh, Ron Swami against Haley, against Scott against Pence. Almost running, actually running a little bit ahead of Pence because in Mar, again, because Republicans have such negative views of Pence, not because of any difference in support among Democrats for Biden.

[00:17:03] Josh Blank: So I mean, I mean this is one of the thing we talk about a lot, which is they, you know, what do campaigns do? They’re gonna galvanize the party. They’re gonna remind people why they’re gonna be Republicans. And also, you know, just because you know, some Republicans might have reservations about Trump, does not mean they’re about to turn around and vote for Joe Biden.

[00:17:17] Josh Blank: And I think that’s clear in these results.

[00:17:19] Daron Shaw: Yeah, I think, look, in the, the, the marquee head to head matchup, it’s, it’s Trump 45, Biden 37, an eight point spread. And if I were… You know, on, on the Democratic side, I’d say 45%. I mean, that, that is significantly underachieving, you know, for a Republican candidate in Texas.

[00:17:37] Daron Shaw: And we have talked previously about Trump being running about five points, if you guys agree, about five points lower than, than top line kind of popular Republicans in the state of Texas. Yeah, give or take

[00:17:49] Josh Blank: a point or two. Yeah,

[00:17:50] Daron Shaw: sure. Yeah, yeah. Um, and, and, you know, we… We haven’t called it the Trump tax, but pundits speaking of this phenomenon nationally have talked about it.

[00:17:57] Daron Shaw: I wouldn’t call it a tax

[00:17:58] Josh Blank: in Texas, but

[00:17:59] Daron Shaw: yeah, well, but you know, I’ve never thought that Trump was a Trump’s rhetoric was particularly well suited to Texas. It’s better suited to Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Michigan in those states because the sort of less well educated white working class that exists there.

[00:18:16] Daron Shaw: The populist rhetoric plays really, really well here in Texas. They’re yeah. There’s that element of the party, but that element of the party is also kind of bound up with social issues in a way that makes him a little less kind of enthused about Trump. But, but two things I would observe about that, having made that argument or made that statement about sort of where Trump is compared to the others.

[00:18:36] Daron Shaw: All the Republicans, as Josh mentioned, are running, you know, in the mid to high thirties, you know, Biden’s a con, Biden’s basically a 35, 36 percent against everybody. Um, and the Republicans have. You know, the Haley’s, the Ramaswamy’s, the DeSantis’s, et cetera, DeSanti, uh, are running, are running in the mid to high thirties because they haven’t consolidated Republican support.

[00:18:57] Daron Shaw: Now, the question then, long term, I think this is not just a Texas question, but a national question, is if you don’t have Trump, what are the two, two things? Do Republicans rally around the Republican nominee? My answer to that is absolutely yes. There’s almost no question they would rally around a Tim Scott or a Nikki Haley, right?

[00:19:13] Daron Shaw: Um, you know, if you’re talking about a Pence or, you know, a Christie then, but since we don’t think that’s going to happen. So I, I think the consolidation of the Republican vote. But,

[00:19:22] Jim Henson: underlining them. The fact that we’re not

[00:19:24] Daron Shaw: worried about that is actually telling. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Then there’s a secondary question, and that is, okay, so the defection isn’t an issue, but are they mobilizable?

[00:19:35] Daron Shaw: Are they going to turn out like they would if Trump were the nominee? And what we see in the national polls is there’s about a 20 point gap in terms of enthusiasm. We asked in the Fox poll, you know, um, how important is it for you to go cast your ballot if the election is between? And one was Trump and Biden, and the Republican numbers in that context were in the high 80s.

[00:19:56] Daron Shaw: And then we asked if it was Biden versus Haley. And the Republican numbers were in the high 60s. But are the Democrat numbers stable? The Democratic numbers are a little higher with Trump. They’re in the mid 80s, and they come down into the mid 70s for the other Republicans. So this is something we’ve talked about a little bit in Texas.

[00:20:13] Daron Shaw: The turnout variance here, strangely, I think, for people who think of this stuff kind of historically, the turnout variances is really on the right. Right now. I, I’m kind of of the opinion. It’s not that there’s no variance on the left that a better candidate or worse candidate wouldn’t affect Democratic turnout, but I think a lot of it is baked in and a lot of it is negative, which is if Trump’s on the ticket, you’re going to see record turnout.

[00:20:35] Daron Shaw: If not, you’ll see pretty good turnout. I think the variance on the Republican side is really to be determined.

[00:20:40] Josh Blank: We’ll see. I don’t want to discount the variance on the Democrats because when you were talking about, um. You know, Trump may be in the level of his alignment with Texas relative to some other places.

[00:20:49] Josh Blank: I was thinking, you know, part of the issue with Trump in Texas also might be to the extent that, you know, his rhetoric strikes particularly, you know, for counter mobilizing the groups of Democrats, you know, just have a hard time mobilizing in Texas. You know, it provides, it just provides ready made, you know, messaging and ads and all that kind of stuff.

[00:21:07] Josh Blank: Again, with the groups of really Democrats have had a hard time mobilizing young people. young people of color, especially. And, and, you know, and we did see again, record turnout, which was March, you know, which was marked by, you know, record democratic turnout last time, but also. I mean,

[00:21:22] Jim Henson: that’s been one of the, one of the tales here, right, is that when the, when Democrats have begin shown some signs of being able to inch towards and actually delivering on, you know, the mythic mobilization of Democratic non voters, we’ve seen Republicans, you know, make efforts sometimes as in 2018, kind of at the last minute and have something of a panic mode, being able to go and say, Hey, you know, there are You know, Republican non voters too, but we got to go, we got to go get

[00:21:52] Daron Shaw: them.

[00:21:52] Daron Shaw: Yeah, and if you go, if you talk to Republican operatives and you talk to them regionally about West Texas and the panhandle, those are places I, you know, take a drive out there. And look at all the Trump signs on the ranch houses and stuff. It is, it is really remote. It is not Houston. It is not Dallas.

[00:22:08] Daron Shaw: And, you know, you wonder if a Nikki Haley or, you know, even a DeSantis has that kind of mobilizing potential. But, but I guess the, the, the point I’d make, uh, this is a really interesting question. If, if you’re not Trump and you’re another Republican and you’re getting whacked in these polls and you want to make an electability argument.

[00:22:26] Daron Shaw: Like, hey, Trump, look at all these problems. He is not, he lost in 2020. He fed the party, he’s fallen. Okay, but he’s, he’s beating you all in the trial ballot. He’s running stronger. Now, I actually think if you look under the hood a little bit and you see the numbers with independents and you see the opposition to Trump.

[00:22:43] Daron Shaw: But, but that’s a complex professorial argument to make and what you’d want if you’re Haley or DeSantis is, Hey, I’m, I’m beating Biden 50 to 42 and Trump is tied and we don’t have those numbers.

[00:22:55] Jim Henson: It’s one thing to make that argument in Iowa or New Hampshire. It’s another thing to make it in Texas.

[00:23:00] Josh Blank: Yeah.

[00:23:00] Josh Blank: Well, especially, especially in a moment when, you know, you’re looking at, you know, the, the, the nature of Republican politics is not to look at and say, well, what would the general electorate think about this? Right. I mean, that’s not what’s going on right now. And that’s not what’s driving Republican politics at the national level or, you know, really at the presidential or at the state level.

[00:23:16] Josh Blank: Yeah, I could

[00:23:17] Daron Shaw: be wrong, Josh. But one of the things that strikes me as being very different from the Democratic campaign in 2022 retake the White House. Yeah. Was this craving for electability? You know, I don’t care who you give me as long as they can beat Trump. And I don’t get that sense on the right. I don’t get the sense the right is as hungry to get Biden out as the left was to get Trump out in 2020.

[00:23:39] Daron Shaw: They would like to beat Joe Biden, but would they sacrifice their sincere preference? To achieve that. I’m not so

[00:23:47] Josh Blank: sure or do a significant shared. I mean, look, you know, I was watching something with Trump this morning, basically, you know, saying at an event, you know, to Republican voters, you don’t even vote.

[00:23:55] Josh Blank: It doesn’t matter. Just watch what’s going on and surf. Sure. People speculating why he would why anyone would say that, you know, and the most cynical version say, Well, you know, if you’re not going to believe the outcome, you know, the results of the outcome anyway, then you know, what difference you can kind of build this in.

[00:24:09] Josh Blank: And that’s the sort of thing here. I mean, you know, they are the overarching context of what you’re describing is, you know, severe distrust of the whole electoral system and the ability to actually like aggregate votes reasonably.

[00:24:20] Daron Shaw: Right. The other thing, Jim, before we move on, and maybe you all like to take a whack at this, but, uh, people are going to go to the, the data are going to notice the very high number of.

[00:24:32] Daron Shaw: Uh, we’re looking for other or else responses in the ballot questions and, um, part of that we should, you know, advise our, our, our listeners and readers, that part of that is because when you know, you take the polls, we give it, that is an option. It’s not, we don’t say, Hey, or somebody else. We’re not

[00:24:47] Jim Henson: mentioned.

[00:24:48] Jim Henson: Or there’s somebody on there that was just too small.

[00:24:50] Daron Shaw: But it is, it is an option and you know, a lot of people check that box and, and in particular, if you’re looking for a reason why these. Non Trump Republicans ran so mediocrely against Biden, it’s the Republican numbers. Um, a number of Republicans choosing other or else are really off the charts,

[00:25:10] Jim Henson: right?

[00:25:10] Jim Henson: So, so we’re going to need to… And I think that’s an interesting characteristic

[00:25:13] Daron Shaw: of all this. Yeah. Right. And I mean, you could, I think it’s, you know, yeah, you could say like, well, maybe that’s reflection of support for Kennedy or support for Cornel West or I think in a lot of ways it’s two things. It’s, I don’t think.

[00:25:24] Daron Shaw: Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s really like one could say that. Right.

[00:25:28] Jim Henson: In Texas. I don’t think it’s a hidden. One could

[00:25:30] Daron Shaw: argue. Yes. Incorrectly. But, but I, but your point is well taken. Yeah. Yeah. And I think since it’s, it’s disproportionately concentrated on the right, I think it reflects partly Trump. supporters who are like, well, if it’s Haley and Biden, I still want Trump.

[00:25:47] Daron Shaw: And then part of it is just dissatisfaction with, you know, both candidates, both major and, and a way, a cheap way of registering your sense that the system is

[00:25:56] Jim Henson: broken. Yeah. And at a distant, at some distance from the election. Right. Yeah. I think that’s important. We keep saying early, you know, everything is early soundings.

[00:26:04] Josh Blank: Well, I think it’s important. I mean, we just have to acknowledge here. I mean, these, these are some. I mean, DeSantis in particular is very well known. Scott is pretty well known. I think the last time we, we checked in, you know, I think he had name ID around, you know, 50%, which was pretty high for, you know, again, a senator from a very different state.

[00:26:20] Josh Blank: Right. But I think, you know, you have to, the context of this is you have, you know, between Trump and Biden, two universally known candidates. And then in the remainder, you have Biden and somebody who’s going to be. variously known even among the Republican electorate.

[00:26:34] Jim Henson: I want to go backwards and forwards at the same time.

[00:26:36] Jim Henson: So I want to go backwards to reach hit this point of, you know, what the mobilization environment is going to be like as we get closer to the general election. But I want to look at the. Senate race through that lens. And so, you know, do you see, you know, and look, I mean, I think the look, the answer to this is, as you already said, Darren, there’s just not a lot of awareness of the Democratic primary race yet.

[00:27:01] Jim Henson: But as you look forward and we consider Ted Cruz and we consider what seemed to be the two front running candidates here in Congressman Colin Allred and state senator at some level behind, at some extent behind him. All red right now. State Senator, uh, Ron Gutierrez, I mean, is there, uh, you know, what are you seeing at this early stage granted in the ability of that Senate race to, you know, be material to the political landscape and to political efforts and when, as we get closer to general

[00:27:34] Daron Shaw: election?

[00:27:35] Daron Shaw: Yeah, I think, you know, the number we cited earlier is consequential, which is the number, the percentage of people saying they’re gonna vote in the Democratic versus the Republican primary. And maybe that number goes up as. You know, perhaps the Trump lead persists and people don’t see that as being a particularly entertaining contest and, you know, money gets spent on the Democratic side and that, you know, race kind of catches up a little bit, but you’re still talking about, I think, a top end, maybe 40 percent of, you know, in this case, registered voters who say they intend to vote in the Democratic primary.

[00:28:05] Daron Shaw: Um, The enthusiasm numbers we registered in this cycle, I mentioned, you know, when Trump’s on the ballot, everybody’s, well, everybody’s interested, everybody’s motivated. But when you ask how enthusiastic you are about participating, the 2019 poll we ran, same time, 2019, 50 percent of voters said they were extremely enthusiastic.

[00:28:25] Daron Shaw: October 2023, 39%. All right. So that’s, that’s obviously an 11 percent drop in enthusiasm. Um, so I, I, and I think that reflects just the general, God, can’t we do better? And that

[00:28:39] Josh Blank: drop was apparent both amongst both Democrats and Republicans. It wasn’t like it was one or the other. I mean, it was everybody.

[00:28:45] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:28:45] Daron Shaw: So now having said all that, I would love to be in Allred’s position right now. Um, you know, we’re, we’re clocking him at, uh, you know, 40, little over 40%, 41 percent have heard. Josh, what’s the number amongst Democrats?

[00:29:01] Josh Blank: It’s, I mean, it’s, it’s about that. is among the people who said they’d vote

[00:29:03] Daron Shaw: the Democratic primary.

[00:29:04] Daron Shaw: All right. And then, you know, so, you know, 59, 60 percent said they haven’t heard of him, right? So two out of three have heard of him. That’s significantly better. I think, uh, Gutierrez is at, uh, 70 percent haven’t heard of. Everybody else on the Democratic side is upwards of 84 percent have not heard of.

[00:29:21] Daron Shaw: Yeah. That is an enormous… You know, lack of awareness to overcome, as we say, the analogy is you’re shouting in a crowded cafeteria, you’re going to have a lot of presidential noise, and you’re going to be trying to grab attention as a Texas, you know, Democrat running in the Senate race that You know, I know it’s been targeted, but I don’t think it’s considered one of the top five or six Senate races.

[00:29:44] Jim Henson: Well, you know, I was looking at a list the other day. I was kind of canvassing some of the lists of the Senate race, just thinking about this and what you usually see is crews like on the kind of on the list, but what I would honestly say on the bubble, right? And I don’t know if that is, you know, wishful thinking, both in terms of sentiment towards Cruz and, or, you know, there’s a desire among analysts and certainly in the press, you know, to have as many competitive races as you can to talk about and write about.

[00:30:16] Jim Henson: And I don’t know about that, but there is this sense, I think we talked about this after the last poll. That Cruz’s position is kind of bubbling on the edge of this, you know, and I think in part it is a certain, you know, antipathy among the pundit class towards Cruz, frankly. And, but it is also that, you know, Cruz has created some problems for himself that seem like unforced errors.

[00:30:40] Daron Shaw: Yeah. Right. I mean, before Josh kind of says something intelligent about this, I’ll say one more thing. And that’s… I mean, if you, you know, in the, the actual ballot, Democratic ballot question, we’ve got already 21 years at 10, but we’ve got 34 percent haven’t thought about it enough. Don’t have an opinion.

[00:30:57] Daron Shaw: 12 percent don’t know. Basically, let’s just take that as 50 percent saying they’re really not. So, double Allred’s numbers. Nice. I love when you do this. Go to 42 or 43, right? Say, okay, let’s assume that as people get informed, these candidates are going to grab their proportional share. Alright, well that puts Allred at 42, which is great.

[00:31:18] Daron Shaw: He makes the runoff, but he does not avoid the runoff. Right. Um, and that’s something, that’s a complication, right? If you want to, as Jim says, if you want to set your sights on crews, Well, you know, I got to try to win outright on March 3rd, and then, if not, um, you know, the, the runoff is in May, I believe, right?

[00:31:33] Daron Shaw: It’s, it’s not just six weeks later, it’s significantly later than… I think that’s right, this cycle again. It typically is, yeah. And, and so you got to, I’ll use the term waste a lot of time, that’s not quite fair, but, um… Well, you got to spend a lot of time and You got to spend a lot of time and a lot of money.

[00:31:48] Daron Shaw: Um, and that’s not something that O’Rourke had to do in 2018, um, you know, the presidential is going to suck up a lot of the oxygen in the tent. So while I, while I would like to be in all reds position to win the nomination based on these numbers, it’s, it’s, it’s tough, Jim, you’re right. I mean, I, I’ve seen the same rankings.

[00:32:03] Daron Shaw: Uh, you always see Texas and Florida as the two seats that Democrats are going to target out of the top 10. Yeah. Top 10 Senate seats. It’s always Texas and Florida. And they’re like nine and 10. Nine and 10. Right. It’s almost as if like, well, if they’re going to turn something over anywhere, it would probably be in those States.

[00:32:19] Daron Shaw: I, and, and yeah, if you have antipathy towards Cruz and you look at those favorability numbers, uh, numbers amongst independents, then like, yeah, he looks like a ripe target,

[00:32:30] Jim Henson: is he? Well, and ripe target based, you know, in part I’m looking on what you have to go on, which in addition to favorability numbers is his last race.

[00:32:38] Daron Shaw: Yeah.

[00:32:38] Josh Blank: Right. Yeah, I mean, I guess I’ll just make a couple scattered observations related to this conversation, you know, I think to the cruise point, you’re asking about mobilization. And I think that’s what you said is how I view it. I’ll just add one piece to that, which is, you know, cruises, uh, you know, a counter mobilization dream to some extent, right?

[00:32:56] Josh Blank: I mean, you know, like, I think, you know, to get into the winter and kind of see what happens with the grid and all that kind of stuff. I mean, you know, he does have You know, a fair amount of history that I think is pretty easy to, to, to dredge up. And I think that’s one of the things about Cruz in particular, you know, he’s, he’s spoken on every issue that’s, that’s happened in his on record.

[00:33:12] Josh Blank: I mean, unlike a lot of people who really avoid doing that kind of thing. And so I think that in and of itself provides you a mobilization,

[00:33:18] Jim Henson: creating a lot of work for interns and campaign where he’s got to go listen to all

[00:33:22] Josh Blank: those podcasts, right. You know, transcribing, not to

[00:33:25] Jim Henson: throw, you know, people in glass houses,

[00:33:28] Josh Blank: but you’re right.

[00:33:28] Josh Blank: I mean, the notable thing about Cruz was, you know, there’s a turning point in Texas where independence kind of got. You know, you’re using negative towards everybody, but they were marginally Republican here and held, you know, pretty marginally Republican attitudes on a lot of issues. And then you start to look at Cruz’s numbers just tanked during the 2018 election with independence.

[00:33:43] Josh Blank: And I think you say, like, what made that race closer? Well, you know, high quality Democratic candidate and independence with a really negative view. Cruz for the most part another piece of this. I think that’s important is cruises numbers among republicans are stellar I mean, you cannot discount how strong cruz runs among the state’s majority party voters You know, he does like basically I would say it’s trump cruz Abbotts in that order, probably most consistently, I mean, maybe Cruz and Abbott sometimes trade spots, you know, they can trade, they can trade spots, but they’re pretty close.

[00:34:15] Josh Blank: And so it’s not as though he has weakness amongst, you know, his own voters. So I think there’s that kind of piece of this, you know, I was looking back to think about the democratic trial ballot. And, you know, when you look at all right, and we say, is it 21%? You know, in the trial ballot, you know, ha ha, you know, Democrats.

[00:34:30] Josh Blank: But the thing is, is, you know, you go back and look at prior polling and you look at where, you know, MJ Hagar was, you look at where, you know, someone like Mike Collier was and all these people kind of at the same time in the cycles and their cycles and, you know, on their trial ballots, they were sitting there like 17%, 12%, right?

[00:34:45] Josh Blank: And, and I would say this is pretty close to that, but the difference is that Oliver is raising. A ton more money, right? And I think for Allred, I mean, to just kind of sit there and just be quiet and sit back and have every news article that comes out every quarter, how much money you raised and how it compares to Cruz.

[00:35:00] Josh Blank: It’s fine for him because ultimately Cruz isn’t going to single him out. There’s no point in doing that at this point. The more interesting thing, I think, looking at these numbers about the Democratic Senate primary is when you break it down by race. Again, these are me small samples, but Allred is leading among, uh, African American voters who say they’ll vote in the Democratic primary with 27 percent of the vote.

[00:35:18] Josh Blank: Gutierrez is at 2 among Hispanics. Gutierrez is at 18. Allred is at 12. When we look at name ID among African Americans, Allred, 45 percent of African Americans. Gutierrez, 24 percent among Hispanics. Gutierrez, 39%. Allred 25%. And so if we think that there’s some sort of, you know, piece of identity that’s playing into this in terms of maybe Allred might, uh, appeal more to black Democrats, I mean, he has a power base in Dallas, which is really what I think of as like sort of the black power base some ways in democratic politics in Texas.

[00:35:49] Josh Blank: I mean, you could say Houston. I don’t know. One of them. One of them. South Dallas. Yeah. Yeah. On the other hand, you know, you could say Gutierrez probably has A lot of room to grow if he is really leaning into his Hispanic identity, if that becomes important here. And the thing is, what we know from past polling is, you know, having a Hispanic name on the Democratic primary ballot is not unhelpful, especially if it is a low information election.

[00:36:11] Josh Blank: And look,

[00:36:12] Jim Henson: Roland Gutierrez has been completely straightforward about this. You know, I mean, I did the interview with him at the Tribune Festival a few weeks ago. You know, he is going to lean very hard.

[00:36:32] Jim Henson: And so, you know, I think, you know, as you guys have described it, I mean, his campaign knows this. The Alright Campaign knows this because they’re not saying anything about him that Gutierrez is an underdog in this race. He’s not, you know, he’s not been particularly successful at raising money this far as you guys, you know, are, have both kind of implied or said.

[00:36:55] Jim Henson: But there’s something interesting that’s brewing in that race and maybe it doesn’t happen. Right. But if you wind up going into say, January, February, and Gutierrez, as you were saying, Darren, gets enough traction to drive this into a runoff, all of a sudden, it’s a very interesting kind of dynamic for Democrats, you know, cause you, cause you haven’t seen, you know, uh, you know, it’s been a while since we’ve seen a.

[00:37:27] Jim Henson: I’m trying to make sure I’m saying, I’m thinking about this correctly, but you know, a significant, you know, a Hispanic statewide candidate in a race like this on the democratic side.

[00:37:37] Daron Shaw: Yeah. I have a good friend, Karen Kaufman, who was at Maryland and did her PhD work at UCLA. I think she’s back in the B school at UCLA right now, wrote a nice piece, gosh, 10, 15 years ago called Cracks in the Rainbow.

[00:37:50] Daron Shaw: And it was, it was interesting how controversial that piece was amongst my colleagues at the time at UCLA. Uh, because I thought the observation that, that Kaufman made in that piece was fairly straightforward. And that is that there, there are inherent, uh, black brown tensions. Within the Democratic Party, especially in an urban area like Los Angeles, and Jim knows L.

[00:38:10] Daron Shaw: A. really well, like, like, like I do historically. And, and for those of us who’ve been in Southern California generally, or in L. A. in particular, this wasn’t news to us that, you know, I don’t know that politics is necessarily a zero sum game, but when it’s a Democratic city and the question is who’s representing, who’s got the, you know, who’s the leader, who’s got the money, um, you know, there’s, there was a very…

[00:38:32] Daron Shaw: You know, historically salient cleavage between Hispanics and Latinos in Los Angeles and the African American community. And so, it’s not like this is new, but we don’t talk much about it. Um, you know, there’s sort of a presumption in favor of kind of racial and ethnic solidarity because of, you know, shared historical grievances, which is, you know, entirely legitimate.

[00:38:52] Daron Shaw: Yeah. But when it comes to practical politics, who’s, who’s going to run in the name of the party?

[00:38:56] Jim Henson: There are still distributive and transactional politics going on here. And I think. You know, Josh and I have talked about the, you know, I’ve talked about this a little bit. I mean, you know, I think that, you know, the idea that, you know, I’m trying to think about how to, you know, I’m phrasing this a little carefully, but not too carefully that, you know, if you have nonwhite coalitional partners, they must automatically just get along and everybody’s pulling in the same direction.

[00:39:23] Jim Henson: You know, it’s kind of a, you know, inflected very strongly by a kind of white perspective, right? It’s like, well, you know, must all be part of the same coalition. And, you know, look, I mean, you don’t have to look very far in Texas or, you know, talk to anybody who’s been involved in democratic politics in Texas in the last several decades, and it’s a fact of

[00:39:46] Daron Shaw: life.

[00:39:46] Daron Shaw: Yeah, and it’s not just, you know, African American Latino in Houston, there’s a growing Asian population and within the Asian population, there’s, there’s Vietnamese and Chinese and disparate interests and, and sort of getting everybody on the same page, um, and especially in a primary context where you’re supposed to have

[00:40:04] Jim Henson: these expressive and that, and that is one of the things it’s, you know, very interesting again, going back to, you know, just the posing of this race and the particulars, you know, of how, you know, where there, there are some kind of, you know, there are other, um, Meaningful distinctions between all red and Gutierrez that are that are interesting here.

[00:40:26] Jim Henson: I mean Gutierrez is not I mean, you know, his district, you know, involved, you know, it’s a very big district that involves part of San Antonio, but also Uvalde. It’s a very, in terms of its, you know, population density, it’s a very mixed district, unlike Allred’s district. And, you know, Allred is the establishment candidate in this race within the party.

[00:40:47] Jim Henson: Um, and so I think, you know, you can’t. You know to me again. I think you’re right Darren. It’s a it’s a little bit. It’s clearly an uncomfortable conversation in some ways But that is very much going on. So,

[00:41:04] Josh Blank: um, I just want to say one other thing about that Which is just I mean, I think you know looking at these numbers.

[00:41:10] Josh Blank: I don’t think I’m not saying, you know I can’t predict the future obviously I’m just a pollster. Are you? I, well, that’s what I’ve been telling people and they don’t listen. They just constantly say, we’ll just do it anyway. Um, but you know what I mean? I think the point of this is, you know, I look at this and I said like, I don’t, you know, I don’t know what’s going to happen.

[00:41:25] Josh Blank: It’s very early. I think already is in the cat bird seat here. I mean, look, you know, I mean, my, what I’ve been saying, and I think this is true is I’m going to say it again, which is, you know, I think he was indicated to him before he ran that he was going to be well funded and he has been well funded. And it seems like that’s the one thing that like, he’s definitely.

[00:41:40] Josh Blank: Hanging his hat on early in this candidacy and we’ll see how long that carries and what he does with it all that kind of stuff However, if we do get to the primary and all red sits there gets 41 42 of the vote gutierrez comes in with 20 30 That runoff is going to be real interesting and how and I would say it’s not one of those things where it’s not gonna I mean, it would be surprising if that was like a a statewide campaign where they’re trying to hit everybody I mean you could see them trying to mobilize very different groups of voters.

[00:42:05] Josh Blank: And it’s going to be very, it would be very interesting again for having watched this for a while. That’s not a race I’ve seen recently that would look like that.

[00:42:11] Jim Henson: A little sideshow on this. I just want to flag and then we’re going to run out of time because I know we’ve got, we’ve all got to be someplace places, you know, it’s going to be interesting to see how the, you know, very recently, uh, a party switched black mayor of the Dallas area plays into this.

[00:42:30] Jim Henson: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

[00:42:31] Daron Shaw: Um, put a pin in that one. Another wrinkle. Yeah, another wrinkle. Put a pin

[00:42:35] Jim Henson: in that one. That’s a good way. All right. Very, you know, we’ll do very quickly so we can get everybody to the stuff they have to go to. Darren, what else is in the poll that you noticed that you want to, you want to flag for people?

[00:42:44] Jim Henson: Well,

[00:42:44] Daron Shaw: I’m always interested in the economic numbers. And, um, we, we spoke of, uh, Well, we mentioned affective partisanship. I’ll, I’ll throw out another Ph. D. word or Ph. D. phrase is motivated reasoning. Ooh, I love motivated reasoning. I love motivated reasoning. Um, which, which I used that over breakfast. I was going to say that was, yeah, that was a pump in my fist.

[00:43:03] Daron Shaw: Yeah, that was Josh’s, uh, nickname in high school on the soccer team. Um, I’m

[00:43:07] Josh Blank: just going to think about that,

[00:43:10] Daron Shaw: but the motivated reasoning in this poll is, is people’s evaluations of the economy. Um, if you look at, cause we, we offer a variety of, of. Measures of this we ask how do you think the national economy is doing compared to a year ago?

[00:43:21] Daron Shaw: How is the Texas state economy? How are you and your family doing financially and the partisan divide on these things? Well, first of all Only Democrats think, you go to the Independents or Republicans and ask them, is the economy doing much better, national economy, than it was a year ago? And there’s literally zero Independents who say it’s doing much better than it was a year ago.

[00:43:41] Daron Shaw: But a good chunk of Democrats say the economy is doing better, national economy. When you go to Texas… Democrats are much less enthusiastic about the Texas economy. Um, and for obvious reasons, the Republicans are in charge of the Texas economy. And so the Texas economy apparently is lagging consumer and I’m pointing out the Democrats, but the The motivated reasoning is obvious on both sides.

[00:44:05] Daron Shaw: You can flip it in the views of Republicans. And then Republicans think like, Oh, the Texas economy is doing okay, um, compared to the national economy. Independents, by the way, across the board say, No, the economy is terrible. The Texas economy is bad. The national economy is bad. So, you know, thank goodness for our independents in that regard.

[00:44:20] Daron Shaw: And then, you know, take a look at the financial numbers. How are you and your family doing? I would suggest it, it bodes poorly for the Bidenomics messaging. Uh, however much you talk about job growth, et cetera, those, how are you and your family doing? That’s not a macro assessment of Joe Biden and Bidenomics.

[00:44:40] Daron Shaw: That’s how are you and your family. The numbers are not good here for a party seeking to win back the White House.

[00:44:47] Josh Blank: Josh. You know, I was going to do something about leadership in the Republican Party, and I really do suggest you go and look at the job approval numbers that we have both for state, you know, basically state level leaders, but also some of the national leaders.

[00:44:57] Josh Blank: We tested job approval for all all the leaders in Congress, including McCarthy, outgoing Mitch McConnell. Numbers are very interesting, but I just want to point something out. It’s still about the 2024 stuff. We asked about a bunch of trait questions about Biden and Trump, whether they have the temperament to serve effectively, whether they’re honest and trustworthy.

[00:45:10] Josh Blank: And we added one to this, which is whether they’d be too old to serve in 2025. And first of all, you know, Biden scores significantly worse than Trump on this. 69 percent of voters say that he’s too old to serve in 2025 percent who say the same with Trump. Majority 54 percent disagree that Trump is too old to serve in 2025.

[00:45:27] Josh Blank: But the real, the real stinger on this is that the majority of Democratic voters said 52 percent that said that Biden was too old to serve in 2025. 58 percent say the same of Trump. Among Republicans, there’s no problem like this. 52 percent disagree. I’m sorry. 75 percent disagree that Trump is too old to serve in 2025.

[00:45:45] Josh Blank: 81 percent think Biden’s too old. So this is not, this is an asymmetrical argument. I mean, even though they’re both, they are both old, trust me, I would say so. They’re both very old. But when you look at sort of the way that voters are reacting to this, Democrats have really taken on this view that Biden is the one who’s too old and don’t necessarily feel as strongly about, about Trump, or at least Republicans don’t feel that way.

[00:46:05] Josh Blank: So that’s sort of

[00:46:05] Jim Henson: just sitting out there. Yeah, no, I think that’s, you know, I mean, I think You know, there’s a big, you know, the discussion of the age of both the candidates is kind of ebbed and flowed, you know, almost from the day Biden was elected, really. Um, and I, and I think there’s a desire among Democrats to say, look, this is just a media construct.

[00:46:25] Jim Henson: It’s not, this is not real. And you know what? It’s real. Yeah. You know, I don’t know if it’s going to matter or not, you know, because of some of the forces of negative partisanship and polar, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it’s, it’s not made up. Well, you know, it’s like

[00:46:39] Josh Blank: one of those things, if you were saying to me, right, I mean, again, I said I wasn’t gonna predict anything.

[00:46:42] Josh Blank: But if you asked me right now, you know, what would have a bigger effect on the election, you know, Trump getting another indictment or being, you know, let’s say found criminally liable in one of these cases, or Biden falling down the stairs, I’d say Biden falling down the stairs. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:46:54] Daron Shaw: That’s probably right.

[00:46:55] Jim Henson: I think that’s, yeah, I think that’s, that’s fair. Um, you know, I had a few things I’m going to, I’m going to just highlight something I highlight a lot, but I’m going to highlight it because it’s got two different hooks for today as we close out. And that is, you know, the continued preeminence of border security and immigration and the most important problem, batteries.

[00:47:15] Jim Henson: Um, uh, particularly among Republicans, but with some attention from Democrats as well. If you fold that into some of the other polling that we did recently in August and the results on spending on border security, um, the increased centrality of that, you know, uh, and the continuing prominence of that issue, but particularly among Republicans as we’re sitting here today, the House of Representatives, the Texas House of Representatives is looking at.

[00:47:43] Jim Henson: I think three bills on border security and immigration that are all clearly tailored to appeal primarily to Republican voters, but while they’ll be fought by the Democrats on the floor are not going to, you know, probably alienate as many Democratic voters as one might think. And we’ve been talking about independence, immigration and border security, then the salience of the issue, still an area where these largely disaffected independents that right now kind of hate everybody.

[00:48:14] Jim Henson: And everything still look at immigration and border security and look more like Republicans. And as we talk about that electoral environment in that Senate race, whatever is going on in the presidential race, and there will be a lot of border security politics, whoever is running for president, that is going to be front and center in the Cruz campaigns campaign in Texas, whether the opponent is all red or Gutierrez or someone else or someone else.

[00:48:42] Jim Henson: Right. Right. And so. You know, the centrality of this, it’s a little like the Trump Teflon thing. I think we’re so familiar with it that we just kind of go, yeah, you know, border security, immigration at the top of the MIP again. But it remains really central to, I think, trying to figure out what’s going to happen in the next cycle.

[00:49:00] Jim Henson: I’ll just

[00:49:00] Josh Blank: say one thing about that, you know, people might say, well, yeah, but look at all the number, look at all the apprehensions, all the crossings, but this number has been consistent regardless for the last. You know, decade basically, so it’s not as I mean, even in ebbs and flows and migration, seasonal changes over this is not a reflection of necessarily even.

[00:49:16] Josh Blank: I mean, I think it’s not a reflection of the environment. It’s still a reflection of the environment, but it’s not being driven by the current environment because it’s existed

[00:49:22] Jim Henson: long before that, right? There’s no proximate event drivers here. So with that, thanks to both you guys for coming here as always.

[00:49:30] Jim Henson: I found it interesting and fun. I hope you out there did as well. Um, thanks again, as always, to our excellent production team in the Dev Studio in the College of Liberal Arts here at UT Austin. Um, all of these results that we’ve talked about, and actually many more, we’ve focused primarily on, on 2024 and this conversation.

[00:49:49] Jim Henson: Lots of results on the fallout from the Paxton impeachment, job approvals. Tons of stuff on education and vouchers slash ESAs. We’ll be unpacking more of those in the very new future on the blog and in this podcast. You’ll find both the, all of the data, you’ll find all of the data. You’ll find more analysis and links to podcasts at texaspolitics.

[00:50:14] Jim Henson: utexas. edu. So thank you for listening. And we’ll be back again soon with another second reading podcast.

[00:50:25] Jim Henson: The Second Reading Podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.