September 10th, 2024 – The Presidential Race in Texas

[00:00:00] Jim: Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin.

[00:00:05] Intro: The Republicans were in the Democratic party because there was only one party. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the constitution, they have become the norm.

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

[00:00:34] Jim: 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 Um, well, we didn’t produce a podcast last week because we were busy. Oh so busy You know not to be those people that go.

[00:00:51] Josh: Oh, i’m so busy

[00:00:53] Jim: But, you know, we were busy trying to push out the results of the latest University of Texas, Texas Politics Project poll, which we [00:01:00] did, you know, relatively quickly, a little more quickly than we usually do.

[00:01:04] Um, and that poll was conducted during the last week of August, right after the conclusion of the Democratic National Convention, before Labor Day, um, amidst all of the recent polling discussion of the, You know, what do you want to call it? The, the, the end of the Harris boom, the flattening, you know, I think how people describe that as even kind of loaded, but I think, yeah, we were at the, there you go, sugar high, good one.

[00:01:30] Um, uh, so it’s, though it’s been a few days, this is our poll release podcast. Um, and as is customary, I’m happy to be joined by, um, my colleagues in the polling troika here, uh, at the Texas Politics Project. Uh, Darren Shaw, professor, professor of government and co founder of this project, of the polling, uh, project among other honorifics and enterprises.

[00:01:55] So welcome back DRS. Always a pleasure to be here. Always a pleasure to have [00:02:00] you, sir. And of course, Joshua Blank, Research Director for the Texas Politics Project, who I should say helped push out that poll in a 48 hours when he was sick as a dog, which, you know, we’re going to blame on him having children because that’s what happened.

[00:02:15] Daron: We’ll hit that in parents corner at the podcast.

[00:02:18] Josh: I’ve got a long list of those.

[00:02:20] Jim: So greetings, Josh.

[00:02:21] Josh: Good to be here.

[00:02:22] Jim: Um, you know, we also have to note, I suppose, that it is debate night, uh, as we’re recording this late Tuesday morning. So, you know, it’s appropriate that we’ll start with what our latest poll tells us about the state of the presidential race and almost certainly dip into the subject of the debate.

[00:02:39] You know, briefly, a little at the end, by the time most of you are hearing this, the debate has already happened.

[00:02:45] Josh: It might come up a little bit here and there anyway,

[00:02:47] Jim: but yeah, I think it’s pretty likely to come up. I think it’s a, that’s a, what a premonition. All right. So let’s jump into it. Let’s start off with a top line trial ballot.

[00:02:55] results in the presidential race, Josh, you want to get us started?

[00:02:58] Josh: Yeah, sure. So in [00:03:00] both the multi candidate, uh, trial ballot that includes, uh, Jill Stein and Chase Oliver and in a two way race just between Trump and Harris, Trump leads Harris 49 percent to 44%. So a five point gap, that’s a slight improvement for, for Harris on Biden’s June numbers in which he was leading by seven up 46, 39.

[00:03:18] And I think it’s important to point out real quick at the outset, any comparisons we make to June are kind of interesting in and of themselves because they occur before. Almost everything, right? So in the sense that, you know, this was before the debate performance. So this is where Biden was sitting before the debate performance, before the assassination attempt, before the conventions and the replacement of buying the top of the ticket.

[00:03:38] And so this is where the race stood. And so Just to kind of put that out there as an aside. And so Trump’s, you know, overall support increases from 46 percent in June to about 49 percent Harris’s from or from Biden’s 39%, which is a whole question we could have. That’s the right way to do this to where she’s at it at 44 percent right now.

[00:03:56] 6 percent say they’re undecided, which I think is just important to throw out [00:04:00] there to you. We’re gonna with the debate tonight and everything that’s going on. It’s important to know that, you know, most people don’t. Yeah. Voters who intend to vote know who they intend to vote for and probably are going to vote for that person at this point.

[00:04:11] I think that’s probably Is that safe? Is that good? Is that too strong,

[00:04:14] Daron: Darren? I mean Yeah, what do

[00:04:15] Josh: you make of this, Darren?

[00:04:17] Daron: Well, I think, uh, you know, we’ve seen a raft of national polls that have come out since, you know, the The switcheroo or the replacement or, you know, not quite, I as surpris

[00:04:28] Josh: as you don’t have like a, a pithy, you know.

[00:04:29] Yeah, I’ve been

[00:04:30] Daron: working, I’ve been workshopping a few ideas, , but, uh, let’s just say the emergence of Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. Um, and, uh, as well as a lot of state, uh, numbers from the state. Uh. you know, the battleground states, which is, it’s interesting just as a comment, you know, amongst polling, you know, the polling team here.

[00:04:46] One of the criticisms in 2016, um, that I think was actually more on target than some of the ones about the accuracy of the polling was the paucity of polling in states that turned out to be really decisive, most notably Michigan, right? We only had, I want to [00:05:00] say half a dozen credible polls in the last month in the state of Michigan.

[00:05:04] Um, but that’s, you know, we’re not suffering from a lack of data. This time around, um, some of it higher quality, some of it less. This is obviously the highest quality you’re going to get. Um, but we haven’t had a lot of Texas polls. Ours was, you know, kind of one of the first out there. And so we’re looking also at some of the, you know, underneath the hood stuff.

[00:05:21] Um, you know, not to, you know, we need to cover this ground. We can kind of have a conversation about it, but almost no defection on either side, right? Only, we’ve got only 4 percent of Democrats defecting to Donald Trump. Only 4 percent of Republicans. You know, defecting to Kamala Harris, we’ve got, uh, Harris, I think it is notable, and this has been a consistent finding, whereas Biden was losing amongst self declared independents by 6 to 12 points, Harris seems to be winning.

[00:05:50] Amongst that group. Now that’s not a decisive group in Texas because of the, you know, kind of lopsided party split favoring Republicans, but she’s a 43 34 amongst independents, which is [00:06:00] considerably better than Trump

[00:06:01] Josh: Trump was leading Biden 3420 in June.

[00:06:05] Daron: Yeah. So that’s a, that’s an important shift. The gender gap here is about what you see, uh, you know, nationally.

[00:06:11] We’ve got, uh, Trump up 16 points with, uh, with men. We have Harris up six points with women. Um, I was really interested in both the African American and Hispanic numbers. We’ve got Trump still pulling 20%. Amongst African Americans, which is down a little bit from his high watermark versus Biden. But boy, I tell you, it’s difficult to see Harris winning if Trump actually were to draw 20 percent of African Americans across battleground states.

[00:06:40] I’ll take that

[00:06:41] Josh: bet on the markets though, personally.

[00:06:43] Daron: Okay. And then just to throw it out there,

[00:06:45] Josh: you know, if you want to,

[00:06:46] Daron: Oh no, I think, I think that number is likely to come down. Yeah. I’m saying if it were to stay,

[00:06:50] Jim: Can we pause on that

[00:06:51] Daron: for just a second? Because I want to, you know,

[00:06:53] Jim: I think we’ve talked about that it, you know, we, I think we talked about this even the last time the three of us were together, but [00:07:00] maybe not on the podcast though, you know, it does seem to be, you know, a bit of a pattern and I, you know, I keep swearing to go back.

[00:07:06] I’m going to go back and look at this and we still just haven’t. And I, I have a little bit, um, but it seems like this is not new and maybe the extent of it is new, but I sort of have. You know, have got, had this discussion before where, you know, we do a poll a few months ahead of the election and the African American numbers tend to be higher in the polling and Republicans than they are in the final outcome.

[00:07:33] Now, I don’t remember it being this high, but that seems to me to be a, a typical characteristic of polling in Texas going into election and to some degree, even nationally.

[00:07:43] Daron: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. Um, you know, so, for instance, in the, uh, The late summer, early fall polls we were doing nationally at Fox in, in 2020, um, you know, it wasn’t so much the Trump number being in the 20s or approaching 30.[00:08:00]

[00:08:00] It was the Biden number being sort of capped at 69, 70, 75. And so, you know, a lot of that undecided vote, a lot of that, I’m not sure I’m going to vote number ends up coming home. For the Democrats, um, this time around, though, two interesting possible changes. The first is that this, the absolute number of voters for Trump is increased appreciably.

[00:08:21] It’s, it’s not, uh, you know, it’s not 70 for Biden, 10 percent Trump, 20 percent undecided. It’s closer to, you know, 70 Biden or Harris, 20 Trump, 10 percent undecided. So the one point is that, you know, Trump is objectively higher, so he’s going to have to lose votes. Right. And secondly, the undecided is lower.

[00:08:41] The number of people kind of available to break seems a little lower. You’re going to have to have persuasion, not simply mobilization, which is now, by the way, I do expect it to happen. I think the, the magic number from 2020 is 8%. That’s what Trump got in the national surveys, 8 percent amongst African American voters.

[00:08:58] Um, I [00:09:00] think kind of to Josh’s point, anything south of 15 for Trump is probably good news for Harris. Anything north of 15 is going to cause some angst, right? That I think is that that’s it. So for listeners out there, I think that’s kind of the benchmark. Because

[00:09:17] Jim: that’s what I recall. I mean, I recall, I mean, it’s not unusual looking back over our past polling in the state and looking back over, you know, to see Trump or to see a Republican candidate You know, in the 12 to 15, 16 percent range in, you know, among African Americans and then, you know, people that want to, you know, I don’t know, rag on the poll or rag on polling or whatever, go, Oh, you know, I bet the farm that’s not going to be what it looks like.

[00:09:44] It was like, well, okay.

[00:09:46] Josh: And usually it’s the inverse of people start to point out first, which is say, Oh, so the Democrats only going to get 75 percent and it’s like, yeah, you know, I think a lot of this does come down again. We, we talk a lot about, we’ll see if we talk about it today, but you know, this does come down to where likely voter surveys, you [00:10:00] know.

[00:10:00] screens are pretty helpful, right? I mean, to the extent that there were discussions that I think were very premature and in many cases wrong, you know, in the spring about African American voters and especially, you know, African American, you know, young African American men who were interviewing, how many, a thousand persons sold, you know, survey 20, 15, you know, there’s a lot of variants around those numbers.

[00:10:19] Right. And so this idea that, you know, and I think this is, I mean, I’ve looked at this data a little bit with with some of our stuff going back, but I have to go back and look at it a little bit more closely. But, you know, to the extent that Trump is pulling from less attack, less democratically attached African Americans and just generally less politically engaged and younger African Americans, it’s like, hey, go with God.

[00:10:41] Good luck with that. That’s not really a major electoral group for the most part. And those are the sort of people that we would expect to really fall off when we start really starting to screen, when we start to really look for who the actual electorate is going to be. And then I think that number is going to.

[00:10:53] So it’d be more to your point. Darren’s not wrong. I mean, the difference between, you know, 10 for the Republican and 20 undecided [00:11:00] versus 20 for the Republican and 10 undecided definitely matters. But I think in the over and again in close elections, it matters. But just to put like a some math on this, right?

[00:11:08] I mean, even in a state with a large African American population, you’re talking about like, uh, Mhm. A percentage point, take Georgia, yeah, percentage percentage points. Georgia,

[00:11:16] Daron: you’re talking about 30 percent of the electorate is going to be African American, right, right. So if you’re talking about, uh, you know, three

[00:11:22] Josh: points,

[00:11:23] Daron: right, exactly.

[00:11:24] Which is, you know, an electorate of 6 million, that’s tens of thousands of votes. That’s decisive in a place like that. There’s also a place where Georgia that’s going to be closed, right, exactly, exactly. You’re only talking about probably a 25 to 10, 000 vote spread one way or the other to begin with. The other thing is it presents targeting.

[00:11:43] Issues for the, you know, if, if traditionally Democrats can simply target African American communities, knowing that the yield is going to be nine to one. Right. Every, you know, for every 10 African American voters I register and mobilize, I’m probably going to get 90 percent of those, right? If it’s eight to two, well, that’s a different [00:12:00] math.

[00:12:00] It, it, it not only, you know, your yield is less, which means you have to mobilize more to net a sufficient number of voters in those communities to meet your targets. And you know, I don’t want to bog down too much, but I, I, I think that’s a fairly simple kind of way to think of it. Yeah.

[00:12:15] Jim: So anyway, I interrupted you.

[00:12:16] So you were going through groups. Yeah,

[00:12:17] Daron: that was a dream. How about Hispanics? But it was a good

[00:12:19] Jim: one. Yeah.

[00:12:20] Daron: Let’s go move on to something simpler. Yeah, exactly. And you know, we find and Josh can kind of fill in the back on this. It was 43 for Trump, 45 for Biden, for Biden, I’m sorry, for Harris, for Harris. And then 13 percent either other, I think it was 8 percent other and 5 percent undecided.

[00:12:38] So, and that’s a, that’s a high number for our groups. And that’s, but it’s not unusual. Hispanic voters in Texas tend to have slightly higher levels of undecided than other groups, right? But you know, this isn’t unusual given our polling. I would, again, expect a lot of that undecided vote probably to break.

[00:12:57] For Harris, but can [00:13:00] she get to the kinds of numbers? And later on, we talk about Allred, can they get democratic candidates get to the kind of numbers to make this thing a contest?

[00:13:06] Josh: Yeah. And I think the answer is going to be now. I’m just, I’m sorry, but I’m just looking at the numbers and I mean, this is one of those things where we’ve been saying this for years and I can’t go back on it now.

[00:13:14] Right. Which is to say sunk costs. Well, you know, as someone who says a lot of things about politics, you have to eat some stuff. Sometimes you buy that

[00:13:22] Daron: stock. You got to hold it. Yeah. Well,

[00:13:23] Josh: sometimes you can forget about it at least, you know, but in the penny stocks. But in this case, you know, we’ve been saying for a long time that, you know, for Democrats to be competitive here, if, if they’re, if, if their strategy relies on mobilizing a lot of Hispanic voters, then they’re going to need to get, you know, probably in the neighborhood of like 60.

[00:13:43] Let’s just say 60 to 65 percent of that vote, and they’re just not even close, and it’s not even that they’re not even close, but I think, you know, the more we’ve looked at the data, at least for me, and I’m just kind of jumping out a limb here over time, you know, I would say Republicans, the state have really solidified their minority of support [00:14:00] among Hispanics in a way that puts a bulwark there.

[00:14:01] It looks closer to be right at that 40 and is bumping up to 45

[00:14:05] Daron: pretty

[00:14:05] Josh: regularly.

[00:14:07] Daron: You know, Josh, I’ve talked with some, some friends of mine who are on the Republican and the Democratic side or watching the registration numbers in South Texas, and this is a problem for the Democrats. Yeah. Um, the registration now, now you don’t register by party, but you know, if you look at the, the modeled party, which is highly dependent on participation in the primaries.

[00:14:25] Um, you look at primary turnout in the Republican side. Now you could argue there was no real contest on the Democratic side, but that’s not true because there was a Senate race. Um, if you look at the primary participation numbers, you know, as James Carville said famously, you know, about the Virginia results in 2016 as augering bad for Hillary, that ain’t good.

[00:14:44] Look, I mean, I think that’s the problem with the numbers we’re seeing right now.

[00:14:47] Josh: You know, having been here for a while, you know, I know what the Republicans are doing. to increase their numbers and their margins among Hispanics. It’s very clear and it’s, it’s very targeted. In some ways, the challenge is a little bit, I think, in some ways, it’s [00:15:00] actually easier here because really what you’re targeting a lot of cases is rural Hispanics who are just happened to be, you know, who happened to be Hispanic.

[00:15:05] They’re also just, you know, rural voters who are overwhelmingly Republican. What the Democrats are doing here. I cannot really say with any serious confidence. A part of that is the targeting piece of this, which is that, you know, if you’re Democrats and you’re just targeting, you know, people overall in cities and suburbs, you know, you’re looking at all the data that you can to parse that out.

[00:15:24] It’s also the case that there are people that they’re targeting these suburbs who happen to be Hispanic. But in terms of the story and sort of how people think about it, it’s it’s Mhm. It’s changing, I think, in a lot of ways before our eyes and it’s not going to be, I mean, right now it doesn’t look like the Democrats are going to ride a Hispanic wave to victory anytime soon.

[00:15:40] This

[00:15:40] Daron: is something that, you know, Professor David Leal has talked about here about, you know, as the, as the Latino middle class, you know, develops in Texas and places like San Antonio and Austin and Houston, um, as the population diversifies economically, it’s going to diversify politically. Um, and I think that’s something that people who’ve.

[00:15:58] You know, who assumed demography [00:16:00] is destiny have probably overplayed. I mean, you look at the issues right now that Republicans are using for micro targeting. It’s guns. It’s abortion. It’s a set of issues where, right, the economy, economic opportunity, you know, regulation, anti green new deal, all this stuff.

[00:16:17] Um, it doesn’t necessarily work with broad populations, but it works with a segment of the Hispanic population. And I’m not quite sure. Josh, to kind of back up what you’re saying, I’m not quite sure what the Democrats are doing on that front. Um, they’re doing a little bit of abortion targeting with younger Hispanic voters, but as we were saying, I mean, that’s, that’s a, that’s a slender read to kind of hang your hopes on, you know, an election like this.

[00:16:39] Josh: Yeah, and I mean, you know, this gets into a broader conversation about how, yeah, I mean, other people have written about this, talked about this, but how Democrats have misread the room kind of in, in the context of Trump in such a way that, you know, I think has led, You know, you can see this in the democratic convention, you know, kind of the response in some ways, which has led them towards a lot of policies that honestly don’t speak to these concerns.

[00:16:57] They don’t speak to these kind of bread and butter [00:17:00] economic safety concerns. And so when you’re talking about, you know, again, like, you know, I mean, this is where we’re talking about, let’s say, D. I. In the schools, you’re talking about gender stuff. You know, you are actually bumping up against a population that leans traditional.

[00:17:14] Yeah. Yeah. That leans in that direction, and it’s sort of like, what are you guys talking about? And you can see that in the open ended questions when you say, what should they be talking about? The economy, the border, these fundamental issues. And I should

[00:17:23] Daron: clarify, when I say guns, I’m not talking about gun violence or school shootings.

[00:17:26] I’m talking about gun ownership rights, and especially as Josh was sort of suggesting, with rural Hispanics, this is an issue that, and you think about the history of a lot of, especially first generation people who come from Mexico, um, for whom, you know, were gun ownership is banned. Individual level gun ownership is banned.

[00:17:42] Coming to the United States and being able to purchase a gun to protect your family is a, is a big thing in a lot of places in rural Texas. Well, and I just

[00:17:47] Jim: think there’s a, you know, you know, to the Point kind of lurking here is, you know, what is, you know, what are the determinants of these political attitudes, you know, in a sense, or, you know, what, what, you know, [00:18:00] and I think there’s that question of, you know, the, the, I, I think you can’t overemphasize the rural focus and, and that being where the action is here, even if it’s not where there are tons of votes, it’s still, you know, you, You know, Republicans are fishing where, you know, they’re a fish.

[00:18:19] Fish and the

[00:18:19] Daron: micro part of microtargeting.

[00:18:21] Jim: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And, and again, you know, to the bigger picture, looking at the margins we have here, you know, it’s, uh, it’s a pretty good strategy given that, you know, I mean, I, you know. I don’t know what Republican or what Democrats are doing either per se.

[00:18:37] I mean, in terms of Hispanic targeting, I know that there’s been some ad purchases in Spanish language. You know, and so well, you know, I mean, you can be dismissive of that, but I mean, depending on where, I mean, look, that’s probably where there are more likely Democratic voters, you know, to do that. But I also think it’s, you know, I agree with you to the extent that, [00:19:00] you know, that sounds a little like.

[00:19:02] You know, the 1990s called and they want their mobilization tactic back, um, given, you know, kind of like the lay all arguments and the kind of stuff that David talks about, given the increasing differentiation of the Hispanic population, a lot of the places, I mean, I think in a lot of the. Places particularly actually among urban Hispanics, where you’re going to find more Republican success are in households where Spanish is not the primary

[00:19:29] Daron: language.

[00:19:29] It’s yeah. Jim, it’s a good point talking about urban too. Cause I was surprised and I may, I may not have, I focused on the rural and suburban numbers typically when I look at these. And sometimes I ignore the urban. I would encourage our listeners to take a look at the urban numbers because the urban numbers are very competitive in Texas.

[00:19:43] I mean, we all know that that’s where Democrats get their votes, but You know, the split in the urban areas. What do we have, Josh? I want to say it was 48, 45, 48, 45. So about a plus three democratic split. I mean, that’s, that’s quite different than you’ll see in the battleground states where Democrats dominate in those urban areas, [00:20:00] right?

[00:20:00] I’m not suggesting you’re not going to win in Dallas. And they’ll expand that. Right, exactly. But, but that’s, those are numbers that the Democrats need to improve on.

[00:20:08] Josh: And I think, you know, one of the things that’s overhanging this, and if I can jump to something that I think is sort of important, you know, Uh, is that, you know, I mean, a lot of the focus sort of again in in sort of the wake of the last number of months and everything has been on the impact that Harris’s entrance into the race has had, and specifically essentially had on democratic attitudes, had on attitudes towards the presidential ticket, all these things.

[00:20:29] But one of the things that sort of struck me in the poll, we didn’t really highlight it that much, but I think it’s all, you know, maybe equally important is, you know, the Republicans also had a convention this summer, right? Donald Trump. Survive an assassination attempt in a way that really, you know, galvanizes base.

[00:20:44] Now, he was already at such a high point. Anyway, it wasn’t like Harris had a lot of room to grow with with Democrats. Trump didn’t have a lot of room to grow with Republicans. But nonetheless, when we look at the favorability ratings for Trump in this poll among Republicans, he’s a pretty good candidate.

[00:20:55] 88 percent said they had a favorable view of him. That’s the highest ever recorded over 24 [00:21:00] surveys going back to November of 2015. 62 percent very favorable, also high. That is clearly, you know, a reflection of the events. But also, you know, this is the other thing, every, you know, part of this has been such a focus on the Democratic Party because they were in such disarray in some ways, you know, because of Biden.

[00:21:16] Uh, you know, the Republicans have also come home and we were talking about this before the podcast, right? Republicans have also taken the summer, you know, had the convention showing up in the fall. And, you know, Trump’s numbers did go up right among a lot of groups. And so I think that’s kind of what you’re seeing.

[00:21:31] And, and some of this is something we just need to parse the data a little bit more and say, well, you know, was it among, you know, male versus female? We’re talking about, you know, looking at the race by gender tabs on some of this stuff a little bit to see where he got stronger, but he got stronger too.

[00:21:43] And I mean, that may not feel that way because of all the focus on Harris, but you know, Trump is not in a bad position here, given, given all this polling.

[00:21:50] Jim: You know, it strikes me, you know, I mean, at the, at You know, the absolute 30, 000 foot level, you know, as we go through these considerations [00:22:00] that we’re really seeing kind of, you know, this, you know, collision or this, you know, this kind of intertwining of short term and longer term deeper kind of structural factors here that, you know, I mean, I’d have been frankly shocked had we not seen some improvement in democratic numbers as a result of the replacement.

[00:22:17] I think if we had not seen something, I’d have thought there was something wrong with the sample. You know, on the other hand, you know, there, you know, there are the other things that are just the normal part of the cycle, more people are paying attention, you know, partisanship is, is set in and, you know, it’s not like there was any reason to expect that there was going to be a big change in the Trump preferences and all things being equal.

[00:22:43] We should have expected Trump’s numbers to include. To improve as people started paying more attention,

[00:22:48] Josh: it’s just that the range for them to improve is so small. And so when we look at those key groups and we look at the trial ballot shift and we look at independence, we look at suburban voters, we look at suburban women voters, we look at college educated voters just to see, yeah, Harris [00:23:00] does better among all these groups that she needed to do significantly better than than buying was.

[00:23:04] And Trump, for his credit, basically stayed at the same place, which is fine because it ends up with him with a five point lead, which is about what he won the state by last time.

[00:23:13] Daron: Yeah, I think, you know, the. In political science, there’s a conversation right now, sort of a minority, but a strongly, um, strongly held opinion and one that gets a lot of play at conferences and things like that, that, um, well, Whatever, we had a, you know, we had this historic debate, we had this assassination attempt, a Republican naming a vice president, a convention, a replacement of the Democratic incumbent president with another candidate who then had her VP selection and then the convention, and, and yet, we’re only, we’re within a couple of points of where we were at the outset, and therefore, you know, all you’re really talking about is movement that essentially amounts to activation of Democrats who are probably gonna come home anyway.

[00:23:56] This is the, you know, The political science argument, um, [00:24:00] and I would just offer two things. And first of all, everybody should kind of know that that is what, you know, academics say about this sort of stuff. Not everybody, but a lot of people. And one is that, uh, you know. Our conversation is informed by the way in which that happens that the notion that therefore we should dismiss all this stuff, uh, strikes, uh, speak for my colleagues here as being nonsense.

[00:24:21] Of course, it matters. Um, the way it matters here. My second point would be you had an election in which the entire conversation was about the mental capacity of the sitting president. That was it. It was just dominating the discussion in the conversation. So yes, yeah. But President Biden was down a couple of points and you look at those numbers, you think, well, that could, we could erase that, but not with that, that cloud hanging over.

[00:24:49] Well, now would that be in the conversation? Yeah. You could not cut through. And, and that election was always going to be about, you know, where you’re trying to fight through the perception that the guy was just too old. So [00:25:00] now at least, you know, you’re a couple points better. But I think you’re significantly better off from the democratic perspective, both in Texas and nationally, because it’s a different conversation.

[00:25:10] It’s about, okay, is Harris really a change candidate? Is she too progressive? You know, all of these issues are allowed to emerge. And all of them, almost by definition, are better than Is the president senile, which is not the conversation you want to be having and

[00:25:26] Jim: not that it’s working, but it also, I mean, not that it seems to be working at this point, and we’ll see what happens in tonight’s debate.

[00:25:31] Right, right. But it also shifts that very fatal argument. Oh, yeah. To the other side.

[00:25:37] Josh: Yeah, the, you know, and this is, I enjoyed this for my own reasons about methodology and you know how people think, actually. But, you know, it’s surprising we ask about a bunch of trait questions about, you know, whether strong leaders, you know, knowledgeable, the temperament.

[00:25:49] First of all to say, you know, it’s, it’s. It’s they were surprisingly similar. I mean, just overall in terms of, I mean, it wasn’t the same Texans ascribing the same traits to them, but in terms of the share of Texans willing to say that Donald Trump or [00:26:00] Kamal, you know, Kamal Harris was, is knowledgeable, is, you know, a strong leader.

[00:26:04] It’s a surprisingly pretty, it’s a pretty narrow gap in most cases, except yeah. Where was it? It was one that we repeated and it was to compare with the last time is really compare Trump with himself, which was too old is too old to serve a president in 2025. Nobody thought this about Harris, obviously.

[00:26:18] And we, you know, talked about whether you include the question and methodology, methodology, blah, blah, blah. You know, we’ll do that on the after hours podcast, right? But for Trump, you know, where we can easily make a comparison between what people thought in June and what they thought. I think now it went from 33 percent of Texans saying he was too old to be president in 2025 to 46.

[00:26:37] Right? That’s a big, right. Shift your point. You know, another question we see huge it is in voting enthusiasm where we went from, you know, 39 percent of Democrats saying they were extremely enthusiastic about voting 2024. This was in June jumps up to 52%. So it was up 13 points where Republican enthusiasm dropped six points from 55 to 49.

[00:26:55] point about like, you know, what is actually going on here? Well, something [00:27:00] happened, right? If Biden didn’t say in the race, these numbers don’t change the idea that Harris’s underlying numbers just, I’m sorry, that Biden’s underlying numbers just move in the same direction that Harris’s would have, is pretty crazy.

[00:27:10] Daron: Yeah, I think that’s on his face. Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. I mean, now, you know, what Harris does, and again, relevant for Texas, but also nationally, is, you know, she takes the age issue off, not only You know, are the Democrats not defending on age now they can attack on age. Yeah, if that’s such a big deal.

[00:27:27] Right, exactly. Hey, we thought we thought it was such a big deal. We replaced our candidate. You guys were right. I’m glad we all agree. And then the other thing is, what’s the other major liability? I mean, you know, we’re not going to get into an argument about whether Biden is should be on Mount Rushmore and he’s been underrated, but, but the approval ratings for the incumbent administration are low.

[00:27:46] They’re, you know, around 40. Um, in our poll, Josh, we’ll get to this in a second. No, there’s something else I’m thinking for later. But, um, but you know, it’s unclear whether Harris is even necessarily playing a lot of defense on that because she’s not Biden. Yes, it’s [00:28:00] the Harris Biden ministry, but, um, I think that’s something that will probably come into sharper focus, but strangely enough, she’s, Competitive as the change candidate even though she is running is

[00:28:11] Jim: I mean I think that that will probably be one of the themes of the debate tonight I would rank at least I mean you would think that the Trump campaign is going to do everything they can Right, you know to you know attack and undermine that argument

[00:28:23] Daron: Yeah, so, you know you have an electorate that thinks boy these candidates are too old and we’re not happy with the direction of the country so you have a younger candidate who’s not necessarily as responsible for the direction of the country and it just Know, it allows things to breathe and it allows maybe somebody like Colin Allred to get some oxygen and a race where otherwise he’d just be smothered, I think, you know?

[00:28:43] Josh: Yeah. I

[00:28:43] Jim: think you gave me a great opportunity to do a transition, but I’m not quite ready yet.

[00:28:49] Daron: Oh, man. I

[00:28:49] Jim: appreciate it. But I really, I was Magic

[00:28:50] Daron: Johnson. I gave you the assist. I know. And I, you know what I did and you pulled out for a three pointer. I, I just, I just

[00:28:55] Jim: watched it. I watched this, I watched that pitch sale and, you know, you’ll probably hit the [00:29:00] corner, but I’m not gonna swing quite yet.

[00:29:02] Josh: Double bogey.

[00:29:03] Jim: Look at that. Is that certain?

[00:29:04] Josh: I think we

[00:29:05] Jim: just used three different sports metaphors in one 20 second passage, which is, you know, makes me want to stick this pen in my ear. But I do because, because I, and I’ve got a good reason for not wanting to swing at that pitch quite yet because we did do this open ended issue question.

[00:29:22] And I thought the results on that were very interesting because they do align with the conversation in interesting ways or not. I’m interested in what you guys thought because in part, because we have talked about. Part of campaigns being about agenda management, you know, we’ve had this about every other time the three of us are together for a podcast, we talk a little bit about issue publics and things like this, and I thought that the issue results on this were really pretty interesting.

[00:29:52] Josh: Yeah. I mean, are we talking about, so we’re talking about which candidate trust on the issues? Yeah.

[00:29:55] Jim: The candidate trust on the issues. Yeah.

[00:29:57] Josh: Yeah. So, I mean, in some ways it was And that was,

[00:29:59] Jim: you’re right. That was [00:30:00] not the open ended question. But the open ended question is the background to this in some ways.

[00:30:04] Yeah.

[00:30:05] Josh: Do you want to do that? Why don’t you do the open ended and what we’ve question just thinking about the election.

[00:30:09] Jim: We want you to do this. Yeah. This is good. Right.

[00:30:13] Josh: This is great. We asked people, open

[00:30:15] Daron: ended, we, you know, we should clarify when we say an open ended question, The respondents are not presented with response options, right?

[00:30:21] We’re just asking them, tell us what issue you think is. And I think we asked what are the one or two most important issues you want the presidential candidates to talk about? So, you know, it’s a, I kind of like what I think Josh probably did this question and way to kind of get at this. Yeah, it’s a, it’s a folksy way to kind of ask about, you know, what do you want to hear about, right?

[00:30:39] I am

[00:30:40] Josh: known

[00:30:40] Daron: as being

[00:30:40] Josh: pretty

[00:30:40] Daron: folksy. He’s a man of the people. Everybody says that. Um, and we got, uh, you know, the economy. It’s your rural

[00:30:46] Jim: upbringing.

[00:30:47] Daron: 24%. One quarter of voters said the economy. Another

[00:30:49] Josh: 16 percent said inflation. I want to say, just because the person who coded that, you know, inflation is the basket of things.

[00:30:56] Prices, cost of living, you know what I mean? Inflation is a very specific [00:31:00] term that’s not being used specifically right now, but it means the way that it’s not being used in the nonspecific sense, prices, costs. So 40%,

[00:31:05] Daron: 2 out of 5 voters said they want the candidates to talk about the economy. And that just absolutely obliterates every other thing on the docket, right?

[00:31:12] The next highest is immigration border security at 18%. It’s not even half. Right. So, uh, and those are the two dominant issues. Um, then you get into single digits. Nothing else scores double digits. So you have abortion with seven. Now, a small point that I’d make is that you look at the top end issues and you go, man, how are the Republicans not win this election?

[00:31:32] Because now this is Texas, but the economy’s number one and people’s views in the economy are pretty, pretty sour still and immigration border security, where their views are pretty sour. Um, about the performance of the incumbent administration. So, you know, you look at those things and say, yeah, I’m all up.

[00:31:46] It’s like 58 percent are talking about issues that are, you know, Republicans are probably owning. John, we’ll get to that in a minute. But you look at these other issues and there’s a hodgepodge. Abortion, women’s rights, seven. Healthcare, five, [00:32:00] climate change, four, democracy, three, housing, homelessness, two, you add them all up.

[00:32:05] I’m not saying it gets to 58%, but the Democrats have this sort of quilt of issues that if you, if you cobble them all together and you speak to particular constituencies, this, I think was one of the underrated stories of 2022 people got enamored with the top end issues. And the Democrats, I think, did a fabulous job of kind of making the election about.

[00:32:25] smaller sets of issues and kind of stitching them together in a way that made them competitive. So I have an eye on that. I don’t think it works as well in Texas just because those issues aren’t quite, you know, they’re not quite as robust as they are in Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or some of these other states.

[00:32:40] But, but they’re not, it’s not terrible. It’s not like the Democrats are totally outmatched on these.

[00:32:44] Josh: Yeah. I mean, moving between a couple of those comments you said there, I think, uh, It’s interesting because you’re right. I mean, so when we ask sort of, you know, who do you trust more to handle these issues, you know, uh, Harris or Trump on these key issues, the economy, Trump 50 Harris 40 on inflation prices, Trump [00:33:00] 49 Harris 40 on immigration and border security, Trump 53 Harris 36.

[00:33:05] I think that would be her lowest rating, uh, and his highest would be on that issue, right? And that makes sense. And I mean, to your point too, I mean, I think one of the things that kind of comes out of that is, you know, how much responsibility does Harris have for the economy, for prices, for the border, and how, how successful are they at, at, uh, at that?

[00:33:21] Uh, essentially, you know, making her part of at least, you know, at least partially, if not fully responsible for what people are feeling at the same time, you can also see the extent to which, uh, you know, Trump does have some weakness. I mean, one thing that stuck out on this is, you know, on the abortion access question, right?

[00:33:35] So on who would do better for abortion access. 55 percent of Texas voters said Harris, uh, not only it was the highest who said, who picked either candidate on any issue and Trump only 27%, which is why, you know,

[00:33:47] Jim: it was the highest on, on, on that end. And it was, okay. It was the lowest in terms of trump’s

[00:33:53] Josh: He was tied with type of climate change, but yeah, but exactly and that’s sort of the point here I mean, I think what’s interesting in some ways is that you’re not only are [00:34:00] the issues that are good for democrats to your point You know climate change, uh, you know abortion access health care.

[00:34:05] Are they are they good, you know What’s interesting is that they sort of add up to the Democratic issues, but they’re actually also the issues where even Texans give her the benefit of the doubt over him on these issues. So to the extent that Democrats are capable of moving people towards, or micro targeting, and that’s really what it comes down to, micro targeting especially, and I say especially women, on the women’s health access abortion issue, that is hanging out there.

[00:34:28] But at the same time, I also feel like this, and you’re much more of a, I mean, you’re much more of a campaigner than I am, you know, if you’re trying to educate, you’re The electorate, that’s a, that’s a tough one. If you’re trying to move people in their focus, that’s a tough one because you just sound like you’re not actually talking about what people care about.

[00:34:43] Daron: No, that’s true. And that is the catch 22, which is shifting the focus possibly at the expense of making voters think that you’re connected to their issues. I do think one of the things that shifted with Harris in the race as opposed to Biden is earlier on Trump’s advantage over Biden on these issues like inflation and [00:35:00] prices On border security was on the order of 3035 points now.

[00:35:04] I mean, it’s still huge on border security, but on on the economic issues, it’s like 8 to 10. Meanwhile, the democratic advantage on these sort of smaller bore issues has expanded. So, you know, yeah, she doesn’t have his, you know, they’re not as large a percentage of people who hold those issues to be top.

[00:35:22] But she’s killing it with those groups, and that sort of shrinks the overall Republican identity.

[00:35:27] Josh: And I think a lot of that, I’m sorry, I think a lot of that probably accrues to the groups that, like, you know, Democrats were quote unquote supposed to be doing well with, you know, back in June, and they weren’t, you know, and so I wonder, you know, some of, and this is kind of in between the two points you’re making, right, and that on the one hand, the campaign got them there, on the other hand, a quality campaign from the beginning, they would have been there already, probably right?

[00:35:48] Jim: Well, you know, the other thing I kind of know, and I thought that’s why I wanted to talk about that was all that stuff you guys were talking about. I also think independence on the, you know, the issue stuff among independence was also pretty interesting in that Trump [00:36:00] enjoys, you know, more trust among independence on economy, inflation, immigration, and the border.

[00:36:05] But more independence, of course, By virtue of who they are, you know, fewer independents have views of that. More of them, you know, just say, I don’t know who I trust on this. Trump, but Trump has kind of single digit leads on economy, inflation, immigration, border security. Um, Harris has a really big lead. In, you know, an artifact of the larger lead overall, but, you know, 59 18 among independent true independence on abortion, you know, and again, you know, do the Democrats have the wherewithal?

[00:36:36] Is it too much of a stretch in the way that you guys are talking about? You know, it’s but it just seems like such a winning issue for Democrats if they talk about, you know, I’m curious and they can move it up and I don’t, you know, I’m

[00:36:47] Josh: curious what Darren thinks about this because I mean, on the one hand, I mean, you know, I feel pretty confident in in the observation that economic attitudes, you know, generally dominate the context in which under which people vote, [00:37:00] um, you know, an incumbency clearly matters, you know, at the same time, it’s hard for me to imagine how trump takes a position on abortion that either doesn’t, you know, You know, accelerate or or reinforce mobilization advantages that that Harris is going to try to, you know, really use or the flip side of this is, you know, say something more moderate that actually has a demobilizing effect on, you know, kind of again, we’re talking about margins here, but the key parts of his coalition as well.

[00:37:31] Daron: Yeah, he’s I actually think he’s, you know, kind of reading a classic. Literature and political sciences issue ownership, litter literature, which is associated with John Petrosic is formerly UCLA or, uh, budging Farley who did this in a comparative cause. And their, their argument was simply that parties have higher credibility on certain issues, right?

[00:37:48] That’s more complex than that, but that’s kind of the idea. And therefore campaigns are about agenda control. Um, you know, if, if, you know, we were to tell you today, the, the election is going to be about abortion and climate change, [00:38:00] we can pretty much predict who’s going to win. If it’s about, um, you know, crime and it’s about border security.

[00:38:05] We can pretty much tell you who’s going to win. Um, the question then for campaign becomes, what do you do with an issue? That’s obviously important. You can’t not talk about it. How do you neutralize it? And I think the interesting thing is that the, the task for the Democrats is a little, it’s a little easier on the economy because no one owns the economy.

[00:38:25] It’s a pure performance issue, right? So, you know, the key is to make it prospective. Right? Where are we going? Um, the key is to, in Harris case, sort of distance yourself a little bit from what’s going on. Just talk about future, future, future, which he’s going to do. And turn it into a, you know, question about tax cuts for millionaires or something, right?

[00:38:42] To, to pivot it, or to frame the economy issue slightly differently. Trump has tried this, he’s tried to neutralize abortion. He’s tried to, and he has done it stunningly because he’s never doing this. He’s done exactly what political consultants would tell him to do on the issue, which is to basically say, I would veto a national [00:39:00] ban.

[00:39:00] Um, I would probably veto some of these state things if I were the governor, which I’m not, but I’m happy that it’s in the hands of these different places where they can make the rules according to, you know, preferences of their own constituencies, which I think all of us in a meeting in June would have said, yes, Mr.

[00:39:15] Former president, that’s, that’s the right thing to do. And I don’t think it’s worked at all. Um, and now part of that is, is people don’t believe him. Um, and I think part of it, and to be candid, Harris has lied about what Trump has said. You know, she said he will do this and he said quite the opposite. Now, I’m not saying she’s wrong because he’s notoriously kind of unreliable about what he would or wouldn’t do, but it’s, it’s clearly not what he has said.

[00:39:39] Um, and, but that’s the trouble when you’re, When you’re fighting on the other person’s turf, um, is that you’re in a, you know, do you really want to be in a debate about who’s credible on abortion? Yeah, I mean,

[00:39:51] Jim: because on this, I mean, whether Harris is, you know, lying, shading the truth, you know, cherry picking his comments, however you want to put that.[00:40:00]

[00:40:00] You know, he’s going to have a hard, you know, it’s just impossible to my mind, you know, political science or no political science, him to move away from the credit he’s taken for the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. And that’s, that’s just going to be hard to get away from. That’s how he’s tried to

[00:40:16] Daron: thread it, right?

[00:40:16] He’s tried to say, I’m happy with the court. I like my judges. You know, this was a bad, The

[00:40:22] Josh: states are figuring it out,

[00:40:24] Daron: you know, uh, but I wouldn’t, you know, I personally, which by the way is, uh, you know, not to defend Trump, but it’s intellectually very defensible position, but intellectually defensible positions don’t work in campaigns.

[00:40:35] And, you know,

[00:40:37] Jim: intellectually defensible, but, but also not. Not tonally consistent with the way that he has approached that is he was approaching that issue when he was president.

[00:40:46] Daron: No, it’s a, I still, I’ve mentioned this before, I think, but I think the key with the abortion issue too, is I think it’s a marker issue for Republican insensitivity or antipathy towards women and women’s rights and women’s issues.

[00:40:57] And that’s, yeah. And so it’s, it’s, it’s the, [00:41:00] the issue manifestation of a broader feel. And he’s fighting against that feel, um, you know, and plus, I mean, Josh is not of this generation, but Jim and I are of a generation where role was, um, it was just the issue defining women’s rights, you know, um, and so for a, for a certain generation of women, it still has that resonance.

[00:41:19] Yeah, I think that’s

[00:41:20] Jim: right, you know, and, and, and, you know, and that’s where the legal threading of the needle or like, well, it’s a lot, you know, it’s legally logical for me to say really all what I wanted all along was for the states to decide, you know, it’s not going to pass the sniff test very well, I don’t think, or it creates a rhetorical opening that I, I don’t think he can close.

[00:41:41] Well,

[00:41:41] Daron: I think from a campaign point of view, the problem too, is I have limited time and bandwidth to articulate messages. How much time and bandwidth do I want to spend on abortion? Because it’s a complicated position he’s articulating and every, every second he’s doing that, he’s not talking about inflation and the border [00:42:00] and crime and the set of issues where he wants to be.

[00:42:03] And also, and

[00:42:04] Josh: everything that he’s saying about the issue is getting parsed against everything that he’s already said about the issue. And then, you know, and

[00:42:10] Daron: frankly, a media that’s hostile to him generally and in particular on this issue.

[00:42:15] Josh: Yeah, well, he’s hostile to them, too. So I’m not doing a lot of hostility

[00:42:18] Daron: to go around.

[00:42:18] I’m not defending. I’m just saying that, you know, that’s the reality trying to communicate communicating subtlety to a press. That’s not.

[00:42:25] Jim: Well, there’s also there’s also a good conversation to be had. We can’t necessarily have it today about. You know, campaigns, hostility towards the press, you know, I mean, I’m actually I’m

[00:42:38] Daron: I’m writing a paper on this.

[00:42:39] Uh, I would recommend, um, uh, Bruce Melman, a democratic consultant has these, uh, is I think he calls it six chart Sunday. Yeah, it puts out these these data driven charts. Um, And he had this very nice kind of breakdown, the difference between the Harris and the Biden campaigns. And the very last point was, you know, they’re, they’re holding, they’re holding [00:43:00] similar events and for Biden, it was sort of scripted teleprompter events with limited media and for Harris, it’s scripted teleprompter events with no media and.

[00:43:09] It’s a complaint that’s occurred. I think there was an article in the Atlantic on this same subject, basically saying that it’s the one bad thing that the Harris campaign has done is bringing the Biden people on with the same media strategy. That is a belief that the media is You know, there’s antipathy on the part of the media towards them, and therefore they don’t want to do any press.

[00:43:28] It’s, it’s not that they don’t, it’s they don’t like the media. They don’t trust the media. They don’t think they need the media. And so, Jimmy, your point, there’s a real long conversation about the relationship between public and elected officials and the news media in the United States. Because, you know, we’re, we’re, we’re in, we’re in an experiment right now about whether you can completely ignore them.

[00:43:46] I’m not, I’m not ragging on Harris. I’m, because clearly the Trump campaign isn’t interested in doing interviews with anybody but Hannity or, you So yeah, I mean, there’s a,

[00:43:53] Jim: you know, there’s a couple of different things there. There’s like the different forms of that hostility towards the media and how it’s expressed because I’ve, you know, [00:44:00] I don’t know as you’re working on this, what you’re finding, but it became pretty clear.

[00:44:05] It seems to me that the press was very unhappy with the Biden strategy of very few press conferences, limiting expose, you know, what in retrospect, I think one can pretty plausibly argue was true. Trying to keep him under wraps, and then when he made the mistake, it validated. That objection and the, and the, and the made the coverage just brutal, right?

[00:44:32] I mean, I mean, look, it was going to be brutal anyway after the debate, but I mean, there was a lot of pent up frustration that got expressed and now it’s getting transferred to some degree into this, into this Biden’s into this, the, what the Harris strategy is now in the way that you kind of spun that out.

[00:44:48] And it’s an interesting dynamic and you know, part of it is kind of an elite driven strategy question, but there’s also this overall arc, I think, in which, you know, people are saying, why? You know, I don’t, [00:45:00] you know, I don’t give a shit if Peter Baker thinks I’m not having enough press conferences,

[00:45:05] Daron: you

[00:45:05] Jim: know, when I can go and, you know, if you’re the Trump, if you’re the Trump guys and you’re, or, you know, you’re upset because they don’t like you for some other reason, or you’re just going to go talk to Joe Rogan or, Whoever, anyway, put

[00:45:18] Josh: it on social media yourself, put

[00:45:20] Jim: it on social media yourself.

[00:45:22] And I think the Harris campaign is toying with that. I mean, I think they’ve not executed it quite yet, but I will not be surprised if we’re going to see Harris on the view and all this other kind of stuff.

[00:45:33] Daron: But this goes, it goes from Harris back to Biden, but back to Hillary Clinton. And the Clinton’s very strange relationship with him.

[00:45:39] Jim: Right, right. I mean, talk to the Obama administration people about, you know, their relationship with the press. Well, this is not a lot of love.

[00:45:45] Daron: Right. This is a question. I mean, you see it coming. Matt Taibbi raised it. Um, you know, the, the notion that you have to go through the guardians here is no, is really coming under fire.

[00:45:54] I mean, we’ve, we’ve done some work with, with people in Texas about whether it’s worth [00:46:00] it. Right. the time and energy they spend responding to press inquiries. Um, does it effect the kind of coverage you get and then does the kinda coverage you get effect public opinion. So it’s this sort of two, two separate relationships, right?

[00:46:13] And because. And which

[00:46:14] Jim: press entities.

[00:46:15] Daron: Right. Because elected officials spend a lot of time and energy responding to media inquiries and there, there is this interesting Jim as you said, in a polarized world where you’re speaking to more segment electorate, and when there are alternative means of communicating with them.

[00:46:30] The role of the media has really come under question. It’s, it’s an important academic. One thing that I, that I want

[00:46:34] Josh: to insert into that and I’ll be quick is just, but also to polarize world in which the political systems are so ineffective, the incentive to, to go out and take ownership over policy that most likely will never happen seems to be pretty low.

[00:46:46] I mean, this is kind of my whole thing overall. I mean, in the longer arc, you know, the argument that I’m sort of testing is the fact that, you know, part of what allowed Trump the way to enter in is the fact that we expect our presidential candidates to meet with everybody and have a policy for everything.

[00:46:59] And like, [00:47:00] Yeah, good luck. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Democrat or Republican or whatever, you know, the issue is like, you’re not going to get that bill passed. You know, I’m really only interested,

[00:47:08] Jim: you know, and also, I don’t know how self conscious they are about it, but I mean, given that as the backdrop right now, I mean, I, you know, I think candidates could be forgiven for going, you know what, yeah, I’m not going to have a well fleshed out position on every policy under the sun and, you know, you know, what’s the Kabuki theater of saying, aha, you know, you don’t have any policy.

[00:47:31] Josh: Well, and again, like Trump, Trump benefited from it. from this. I mean, this is the thing. And when I say he benefited from this, I mean, he’s benefited from it right now because people are saying, well, you know, Harris needs to have this detailed policy proposal on everything. And it’s like, really? Why? You know, I mean, Trump doesn’t unless you want to take project 2025, which I’m not and just say, so what?

[00:47:50] But the other side of this is, I think Trump’s, you know, success in some ways of painting all politicians as liars is because he can point to every single presidential candidate who’s ever run for the office in the modern era, at least [00:48:00] and say, how much of that stuff did they really get done? Yeah.

[00:48:02] Daron: Yeah.

[00:48:02] Well, but remember, I do think it’s important to recognize the context right now. It’s particularly interesting right now because you have a candidate who has just emerged. Yeah. Who had, uh, who had a detailed set of policy positions as recently as 2019 and who we think has moved off of those policy positions, but we’re not sure about that.

[00:48:24] And the press is screaming bloody murder because they think they ought to be able to, you know, kind of help sort this out. And I think. You know, like Josh is saying, I think, without putting words in your mouth, that the Harris campaign is like, I’m not so sure, I’m not so sure we have to do that. And that’s very interesting.

[00:48:40] I mean, I have some views of that as a citizen and as a voter, but, but from a campaign point of view, this is an interesting test. I’m not sure she’s going to have to do this, but we’ll see.

[00:48:49] Josh: I hate to be, I hate to be normative and we should move on to the Senate race. But I mean, there is something to my mind, just having watched all this, it’s like, you know, I think you can kind of look at these two candidates and the question becomes, you know, if a, if a bill came to [00:49:00] either of their desks that would be a six week nationwide abortion ban, regardless of what anybody said, what do you think each of them would do?

[00:49:07] Would they sign it? Or would they veto it? If a climate bill came up, if a gun bill came up, if a tax bill came up that increased the taxes on corporations and the wealthy or a tax, you know, bill that gave brought more broader base cuts or whatever you want to describe it. I think, you know, you know, honestly in America today, like I think, you know, just a general directional sense of where these people are going to go is probably about maybe the most valuable thing that people could have because the rest of it is nonsense.

[00:49:31] They’re not going to, the spending bill is not going to be passed as they, as they propose it. None of the bills they put forward are going to be passed, you know, or even taken up in most cases. And to the extent that legislation has like passed in recent years under Biden, a lot of that was, I think in some ways his willingness and ability to like step out of the way and not make himself a poison pill.

[00:49:51] Anyway, I’m

[00:49:52] Jim: thinking I’m not sure that’s a whole that’s

[00:49:53] Josh: a side, you know, this is I’m on it. I’m gonna get back. Yeah That was a

[00:49:57] Jim: little ranty. Sorry. Sorry guys [00:50:00] But hey, you know, I was thinking this feels a little more like lunch than the podcast, you know, but that’s fine Hardly the first podcast to sound like a lunch conversation But let’s let’s talk a little bit about the Senate race before we get out of here to jump into it.

[00:50:15] All right, jump into it.

[00:50:16] Josh: So in the race, Cruz is still leading all red, uh, 44 to 36. Uh, with the Libertarian Brown at 2, 4 percent say they are going to vote for someone else and 14 percent are undecided. So notably a lot more undecided voters at this point in that race, you know, reflecting to a large extent, probably all reds.

[00:50:33] You know, lower name. I. D. One of the things that I was thought was notable about this was if we look back to December when we started looking at this trial about cruises leading by 16 in December, 14 in February, 13 in April, 11 in June and eight as of August, his numbers cruises in the trial about have remained pretty static.

[00:50:52] 43 We’re already has gone from 27 and back in December. Climbed up to 36. This is almost [00:51:00] entirely Democrats. I mean, just to just to be clear. I mean, it’s interesting looking at this and in August of 23, 34 percent of Democrats had a favorable view of Colin Allred. 11 had an unfavorable in August of 24. A year later, 69 have a favorable view.

[00:51:13] Seven have an unfavorable view. So he’s just climbing on up. You know, the couple areas of, you know, um, I mean, again, I think Cruz is still comfortable. He’s obviously been working very, very hard and sees this race, you know, a little bit differently than he did his last, but, you know, independence might still be a bit of an issue here, right?

[00:51:32] You know, if we look at the last two surveys, Cruz was leading among independents in both, uh, And the last one he was up 3320 and this one all red is leading 3427. When we look at the favorability numbers again, all red, uh, 3022, fave, unfave, and Cruz is 2355. And this has kind of been something that’s hung around Cruz’s neck, especially among independents for quite a while.

[00:51:52] Quite a while. And it’s important to say that just because an independent doesn’t like a particular candidate or doesn’t like the current governing party. Right doesn’t [00:52:00] mean that they’re ready to jump on board with the other party. I think that’s important You know Republicans are the object of evaluation much more here because they hold all the offices So there is that but nonetheless you you know, if you’re gonna cut into that lead, that’s gonna be a part of it Let’s say, you know, all red is is is doing the work I mean, I you know, I’ll just make one come more comment about the all red race I’m looking at these numbers, you know to the extent there were a lot of articles sort of questioning all reds Strategy, you know, commitment, you know, whatever, you know, throughout the summer or, you know, I think his numbers look fine, you know what I mean?

[00:52:34] I think you look at kind of where O’Rourke was throughout his races and O’Rourke was, you know, meteoric, more meteoric and also was during the Trump midterms, already doing a pretty fine job and seems to have benefited in a lot of the same ways that Harris had kind of from the summer. And so, you know,

[00:52:48] Jim: I mean, it seems to me there’s two things I really noticed about that along those lines is one.

[00:52:51] You know, this, this, this race has been very slow to develop, right? I mean, just [00:53:00] overall, right? And I think, you know, that’s contributing to some degree to the variability we’re seeing in the polling, although I think there’s a lot of methodology. involved in why we’re seeing so much variability. We can or cannot circle back to that.

[00:53:15] You know, the other thing that I’m really sort of, you know, interested in here, you know, if you look at that favorability number you just quoted on all red, you look at Democrats in the trial ballots, You know, depending on what you want to use as an indicator, you’ve got, you know, roughly about a fifth of Democrats still not kind of weighing in on this and committing to all red.

[00:53:38] And I think, you know, that you can interpret that positively or negatively, or, you know, figure out what the balance between the two is, right? I mean, on one hand, you know, you got to interpret that as room to grow, given that the chances of, you know, Ted Cruz getting, you know, given his history and his image

[00:53:56] Josh: and how Democrats feel about him.

[00:53:57] And

[00:53:58] Jim: yeah, well, that’s what I was going to say, getting a big [00:54:00] chunk of this democratic vote now pretty small. On the other hand, you know, we’re not talking about March numbers anymore or even June numbers in terms of that big a chunk of Democrats, sort of not, not being on board and not being attentive to the race.

[00:54:18] I mean, you know, I think in the last, and it, and to set you up, Darren, I think if the last podcast, we were in the same position, we talked about all this other stuff and we’re jamming in the cruise all red race at the end, I think you, you kind of said, look, you know, as part of your balance, if you’re Ted Cruz and you’re, you know, you’re running a third time and you know, you’re still in the mid forties and you haven’t, you haven’t hit 50, if you’re, if you’re calling all red, looking at that.

[00:54:46] You’re thinking that’s, you know, not a bad indicator for us.

[00:54:50] Daron: I mean, you know, I hate to continue to kind of articulate the, well, I would, if I were in the Allred campaign, I would see it positively. And if I were in the Truce Cruz campaign, I’d see this positively, [00:55:00] but I would, um, you know, the overall numbers is 44, 36.

[00:55:03] Now it’s kind of stunning in a Senate race this late, you know, we’re in September, Jim, as you mentioned, and we’ve got, you know, essentially 20 percent who are either other or haven’t decided. Yeah. Yeah. One out. That’s your one out of five. Um, you know, 72 percent of Democrats have committed to Allred. Only 82 percent of Republicans have committed to Cruz right now, which is another number I find that’s kind of incomprehensible.

[00:55:27] Um, you know, you look at younger voters and I, you know, I’m not going to, it’s difficult to pull younger voters. Um, they’re always a little volatile. Um, it was, you know, it’s, it’s hard. So they’re always a little tricky, but right now, um, you know, Ted Cruz, a 37 percent with younger voters, those under 30, well, that’s nine points better than all right.

[00:55:48] Because, because, you know, we’re getting, uh, let’s see, 26 and the 35 37 percent of young. Those under 30 say they don’t have, they’re either voting for third party or they don’t [00:56:00] have it. So this race just has not come into focus yet. So if I’m already, um, you know, at least Cruz isn’t running away from me.

[00:56:06] I’m, you know, eight points down, he’s under 50 percent. Um, and I’ve got my money. You’re chipping. Yeah. I’m gonna, I’m gonna. I’m going to start, uh, you know, getting well known. And if I, you know, go from 72 percent to 90 percent with Democrats and, and hold my share of independence, maybe I make this a, you know, hold this regulation points.

[00:56:23] And, you know, then who knows what happens? Right. Uh, now if I’m Cruz though, um, on the other hand, uh, the committed vote, if you look at the committed vote right now, which is just, uh, you know, Cruz over Cruz plus Allred, right. He’s at 55%. 55 percent is a tough number. Um, even with, you know, a fifth of the electorate still kind of hanging out there, right?

[00:56:45] And it’s unclear exactly what the issue basis is, where Aldred kind of undoes that. Um, Cruz is tied with Hispanics, basically. Um, you know, he’s leading with younger voters. And here’s where I would really be a little disturbed. [00:57:00] He’s getting killed with seniors. Um, he’s killing Aldred with seniors. He’s 18 points up.

[00:57:05] And one thing we do know about elections is midterms even more than presidential, but those people vote,

[00:57:10] Josh: we’ll say, we don’t know who the, who of those under 30 are going to show up. We know that most of those people over 65 are showing up.

[00:57:16] Daron: So the, you know, the kind of really reliable portions of the like, look, a strong Republicans, 89 to one for Cruz, strong Democrats, 80 to six for Allred.

[00:57:25] There’s a little bit of growth potential there for Allred, but you know, it’s not clear to me this race. Thanks. Proportionally isn’t a 55, 45 race kind of moving forward. I mean, that, that’s, that’s the default. And the question is, can Aldred, you know, alter that composition? Can he win two out of three or three out of four of the remaining voters, which then pulls it into a, now it’s a contest and who knows what happens, right?

[00:57:48] But, but I’m looking at that group and I’m thinking they probably split 55, 50, 50, and that, that won’t get it done, but.

[00:57:56] Jim: Before we go to our, to our sort of wildcard portion of the show, I [00:58:00] want to, you know, with you in here, Darren, and we’ve had this, you know, there’s this discussion that, you know, it’s come up a couple of times in this conversation, this, you know, from the political science kind of, you know, this whole notion of our people coming home, what’s, you know, the continuity versus change thing.

[00:58:16] I mean, I’ve kind of said a couple of times, and I’m curious whether you guys would agree with this or not, that, you know, And I, and this is not, you know, a lot of people have said this, I’m not like, this is my idea. I’m workshopping. But it seems fair to me to look at these numbers and kind of say, you know, when we were having this conversation in June after the June poll, it was looking like, if you looked at the trend in presidential.

[00:58:41] So the concern, the concern was, is that, is that it’s gonna have a lot more bad, you know, effect in the election. There’s a lot more good that’s gonna come out of this. So that’s, that’s sort of the concern is, is that this, uh, kind of, uh, kind of kind of make it a little bit more difficult for, for Biden. We don’t know who will win.

[00:58:59] [00:59:00] So what we do know is that, you know, we’re sort of moving pretty quickly. You know, during the election season, again, he’s been really willing to Bare minimum trend. You know, you’re beginning to expect that, you know, if it’s a three to five point race this time, that’s what we might expect at the top of the ballot.

[00:59:20] Harris seems to have bent that curve back towards the more normal direction. But to me, the question is, how much does that make sense to you?

[00:59:30] Daron: Yeah, I think so. I mean, we’ve we’ve another way of putting the most obvious,

[00:59:33] Jim: you know?

[00:59:33] Daron: Yeah. But what’s, you know, What’s the high end versus the low end kind of, you know, Democratic or Republican, depending on our perspective, vote total here.

[00:59:42] And I think we’ve gone from, you know, when, when Jim, you and I started this, we’d have probably said something like, you know, 18 points on the high end for the Republicans down to like eight, right? That, that 10 point band. When we started,

[00:59:54] Jim: you know, probably not even that far down, probably more like 10 or 12.

[00:59:56] Daron: And now I think we’re down to, you know, [01:00:00] 15 and three or, or 13 and three, if we wanted to keep it at 10. Right. So the, the best of Democrat high quality can like better O’Rourke in a good democratic year can get to within a couple of points.

[01:00:10] Josh: And that’s, and that’s between, uh, you know, 2018, right. That’s cruise.

[01:00:15] Well, that’s a good democratic. But that’s cruise cruise to Abbott basically. Right,

[01:00:19] Daron: exactly. And, and whereas, you know, if you, if, you know, the Democrats insist on running a candidate, that’s not going to spend any money or do a campaign or get known. Then you get Abbott numbers, basically, you know, 13 point.

[01:00:30] I think, um, has that moved in the last four or five years? I think, I don’t think it has. And I think that might, and we could differ on this. And I think the reason it hasn’t is that the, the younger people and Hispanic voters who are becoming a larger portion of the population that we thought would continue to bend that curve.

[01:00:50] I think they basically come in at roughly 50 50. So they’re not moving it back. But, but I don’t think they’re contributing.

[01:00:56] Jim: So we should, so if I’m reading that, you know, just to oversimplify, you’re saying we shouldn’t [01:01:00] expect the trend line to continue downwards. It’s maybe plateau.

[01:01:04] Daron: Yeah. It depends. I mean, those segments are so, I think the reality is, I guess my end point would be the, the parties have done such a crummy job of speaking to those voting segments, Republicans and Democrats.

[01:01:15] And until one of the parties, maybe both, hopefully both, but one of the parties figures out, you know, that these are important segments of the electorate and you really can’t keep articulating the politics of the 1930s and expecting them to respond. I think you’re going to continue to have this sort of, you know, oddness.

[01:01:31] I think what might occur is that the band might increase. That is to say, we’ve been talking about a 10 point band. It’s possible you could see like a 15 point band where a really good Democrat could break through and a, whereas a really good Republican could push it upwards back to 15.

[01:01:45] Jim: Okay. We’re getting past the hour mark.

[01:01:46] So I’m going to, I’m going to go and say. Let’s do the, let’s do the dealer’s choice. Oh, sorry. But you can go first since you want to talk. How’s that?

[01:01:55] Josh: Well, okay. What else in the poll did you

[01:01:58] Jim: really like? What stuck [01:02:00] out that we haven’t talked about?

[01:02:01] Josh: You know, I’ll just start something kind of on the side that was sort of interesting.

[01:02:04] You know, there’s a lot of talk about Biden’s exit, you know, and I think there was some national polling on the side that sort of saw an uptick in his approval numbers. And I’ll just say right now, none of that happened in Texas. His approval numbers stayed exactly where they were before the June debate.

[01:02:16] Uh, you know. Democrats, independents, Republicans, Republicans don’t like him, you know, etc. Democrats are fine, you know, so they didn’t move and I thought that was kind of interesting in it and the context of that was we did ask a lot of questions about his decision to exit it and overwhelmingly the response was that it was the right move that he should have exited Democrats more so than Republicans.

[01:02:35] I mean, You know, nearly 80, 90 percent of Democrats, depending on what the question was, essentially took the affirmative that Harris is a stronger candidate. Biden should have exited. Good stuff.

[01:02:45] Jim: But, and also just, we also had the, you know, the other piece of that is, and he shouldn’t, you know, but he shouldn’t have to leave office.

[01:02:51] Yeah, he

[01:02:51] Josh: should finish his term. And that was, you know, since we’re floating around there, it’s a little bit of skewed everything. It’s one of those, we’re not going to ask those again. They’re not trend questions, but we thought we want to look into it and see [01:03:00] whether there was any, you know, sour grapes. I mean, that was still some of the talk, I think, right.

[01:03:03] I mean, you

[01:03:03] Jim: know, in terms of the behind the scenes stuff a little bit, I mean, sometimes, you know, we have these discussions about, well, we kind of know, we kind of think we know what the answer is going to be, but, you know, better to ask.

[01:03:14] Josh: Yeah. Well, it’s fine. It’s more, it’s especially fun when you don’t know, I mean, you know, to some extent on that.

[01:03:19] And it was, you know, to the extent that there were loud voices on both both Republicans and Democrats sort of, you know, Lobbying some criticisms towards the whole thing. We did want to get a sense of whether that was widespread. And the answer was no, it just wasn’t. So

[01:03:33] Daron: Darren, how about you, uh, Josh, I believe, Josh and Jim probably, uh, asked a series of really interesting questions about, uh, different, you know, potential problems with the 2024 election and how serious people thought these problems would be, you know, things like secrecy of the ballot, uh, people voting multiple times, voting machines being hacked.

[01:03:51] Uh, foreign governments are bad at all this stuff. Like, how concerned are you? And far and away, wasn’t even close. The top answer was misinformation spread on [01:04:00] social media. And when I say not even close, 57 percent of Texans said that was an extremely serious issue. The next highest voting problem would be votes being counted inaccurately, 39%.

[01:04:12] If you, if you add up extremely and somewhat serious, 83 percent think that misinformation spread on social media is a serious problem. So I thought that was a really interesting finding and one that I’m sure we’ll talk about a lot in future surveys.

[01:04:27] Jim: You actually did emcee to panel on, moderated a panel on disinformation at the Tribune Festival Sunday.

[01:04:32] It was at four o’clock and I mean, I, we did not get. 70 something percent of the conference attendees to come to my panel. But, uh, but with somebody, you know, with Sasha Eisenberg and, and, uh, Ellen Rosenbloom is the, the AG of Colorado, but, but the people that were there were very interested in, you know, very serious about this.

[01:04:52] Um, you know, I thought both of those things were actually pretty interesting and worth noting. You know, I mean, [01:05:00] uh, To presage, you know, a discussion that will come, you know, we amidst all the national, uh, politics that we did here, we had a result in which we asked people, you know, to assess, you know, what might be, you know, what, What was important in the realm of public education, essentially.

[01:05:18] Josh: Public education priority.

[01:05:19] Jim: Yeah. What, what should be the priority when the legislature comes back? And obviously this is speaking to the churn that is, that is resulted from vouchers. And, you know, the question was, has all the attention to vouchers among political elites in the state? I mean, to my mind, how much does that seep down among the electorate?

[01:05:37] And at least in terms of this indication, not much indication that this is something that, that people are seeing. As a real driver of what should be happening in public education policy, you know, that does not discount, you know, in the past when we’ve asked and we’ve seen support for vouchers or some kind of choice system kind of move into plurality majority [01:06:00] territory, but in terms of how it’s prioritized in the policy process, we’re just not seeing any movement in that.

[01:06:05] We’ll talk in more detail about that later on. you know, as a state thing that really stood out to me. And also the fact that, you know, that, that issue has kind of poked its head up in national politics, even. I mean, I think, you know, one of the many considerations of, of Josh Shapiro joining the ticket or not joining the ticket was that he had taken, you know, I would classify as a politically pragmatic position on vouchers in Pennsylvania.

[01:06:32] And I think that, You know, there was significant pushback among teachers groups education groups in the democratic in democratic circles on that I don’t think it was the main thing, but it is out there floating around in national politics, too Um with that darren josh, thank you so much as always A lot of fun.

[01:06:55] Uh, thanks very much to our crew here in the audio [01:07:00] studio in, uh, the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. All the data we’ve talked about and much, much more at texaspolitics. utexas. edu. Um, if you happen to listen to this before the debate, uh, Josh and I gathered up a bunch of data, much of which we talked about here today.

[01:07:19] Okay. relevant to the position of Biden Harris in a lot of different ways, I’m sorry, and Trump, but Trump Harris in the, in the election, although there’s some on Biden in there too. Um, uh, so, you know, you might want to look at that, that’ll be in the blog section, um, and if, you know, you listen to this after the debate, you can look and see if any of that was, was helpful, if we picked it well.

[01:07:41] Um, so, especially all for listening, and we’ll be back soon with another Second Reading podcast. The Second Reading Podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at [01:08:00] Austin.