September 13th, 2023 – Talking 2024 with the UT/Texas Politics Project Poll Team

[0:00:00 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. So I tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the constitution, they have become the norm. At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?

[0:00:30 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. Happy to be joined today by the UT Texas Politics project polling team, Darren Shaw, professor of government at UT Austin here with us today. Welcome back, Darren. How did Jim also Josh Blank research director for the Texas Politics Project? Good morning, Josh Still morning. So we are recording Wednesday morning with the Paxton trial still grinding on in the Senate though with word that we may see a conclusion to this a little sooner than later. Word on the street goes to the jury maybe Friday or Saturday. Now that is word on the street under a gag order. So that could be remarkably accurate or wildly wrong. So I am not offering it as a fact. Your honor.

[0:01:29 Daron]  Don’t, don’t

[0:01:30 Jim]  aggregate that. We have talked quite a bit about that dominant story in Texas politics for the last couple of weeks and, and we’ll no doubt, you know, have, have reason to touch on it during this conversation, but especially given that Professor Shaw has made time for us today. I, I thought we spent most of our time on some of the results in the latest UT Texas politics project poll that we released in its entirety last Friday and talk about what we got is readings from the GOP presidential race. Let’s start with the Republicans since that’s where the action, most of the action at least is so far. So, so we set this up as a, a set of fave un faves and, you know, favorability ratings for a list of most of them, all of the major candidates at this point. I think. So, I’m gonna start with you, Darren. What do you, you know, what, what do you notice in this?

[0:02:24 Daron]  Well, I, I’m, I’m missing some key players here like Suarez and, and others. So, you know, the, the team obviously needed to include more information as supposed to us here, but I’ll start small and go slightly larger. The persistent unpopularity of Chris Christie amongst Republicans is is kind of remarkable. you know, he’s a, a figure who I guess had some national prominence, you know, as Governor of New Jersey for a long time and a former presidential candidate. But I can’t quite figure out exactly why. you know, people in, in who follow politics closely will, will say the Republicans don’t like him because he embraced Obama literally and figure it to, yeah, prior to the, the 2012 presidential election, and that he’s, in my embrace,

[0:03:13 Jim]  we should say Obama arrived with disaster aid after the, after a hurricane and, you know, they hugged on the tarmac.

[0:03:22 Daron]  Right. And, and there are Republicans who, who to this day actually blame Christie for the, you know, Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012, which II, I don’t think the data, you know,

[0:03:32 Josh]  support if Chris Christie were that powerful, he’d be in a better position.

[0:03:35 Daron]  Right. Right. Exactly. But, but, you know, he’s a, he’s a prominent governor and yet nationally he’s, you know, he’s known by almost every, I mean, I think was only 15% of people do not register an opinion on Chris Christie, which is, which is pretty striking., but he’s, as we say underwater by 32 points, his, his unfavorable ratings, he clips his favorable ratings by 32 points. And, you know, that’s, that’s pretty remarkable. the, the other kind of companion to that would be Mike Pence. you know, we’ve, we’ve had kind of fun and listeners who have followed the podcast for a while know that we, we continue to be baffled by John Cornyn’s relative unpopularity in Texas compared to Ted Cruz and other kind of, I guess more hardcore conservatives., Mike Pence seems to have taken all of the baggage of the Trump administration and accrued none of the benefit. you know, that he doesn’t seem to have much support amongst some of Trump’s core rural, less well educated white constituents despite the fact, he’s the most socially conservative candidate in the mix. and, and he’s minus 36 overall here. and what’s

[0:04:40 Josh]  crazy too is this isn’t, this isn’t just Democrats, right? I mean, this is something that’s sort of important. You know, we’re talking about the overall results. You know, these guys are underwater in a, in a, you know, basically Republican state. But even among Republicans, you know, Chris Christie’s favorability is 12, favorable, 59 unfavorable among Republicans, Mike Pence. Correct me

[0:04:57 Daron]  if I’m wrong, I think he’s less favored by Republicans than he is.

[0:05:01 Josh]  Everybody else. Let me take a look

[0:05:03 Daron]  here.

[0:05:05 Josh]  Yeah. Let me see if we look at, if we look at, let’s see, Chris Christie. He’s, yeah, actually there’s higher unfavorability towards Chris Christie among Texas Republicans than among Texas. Now.

[0:05:14 Jim]  He’s 18 43 among Democrats. It’s,

[0:05:17 Daron]  it’s really remarkable. So, again, I’m, I’m working my way. Up and I’ll try to be quick about

[0:05:22 Jim]  that one thing I would about Christie in terms of name recognition. He spent a lot of time and, you know, this does not make him galactic well known, but he did spend a lot of time as a commentator on network news. He was on the ABC this morning show a long time and a regular

[0:05:37 Daron]  presence. Right. And developed a reputation for being a never Trumper. you know, his, his, his current campaign is seen as, as being something of a,, a kamikaze mission with a goal of taking out Trump or at least raising fundamental questions about Trump as a Republican.

[0:05:53 Jim]  So as you move up the ballot, we’ll show how well that’s worked. Yeah,

[0:05:56 Josh]  I mean, so like, you know, you, you put Pence’s results against among Republicans 29 have a favorable opinion. 50 have an unfavorable opinion of Mike Pence. I mean, in my mind, I sort of lump Chris Christie and Mike Pence into a similar bucket in the context of these results as sort of being standing somewhat contrary to Trump. I mean, I think Pence a little bit less aggressively obviously than Christie, but also just the fact of his mere running in some ways seems to be like a, you know, a rejection of Trump. I mean, is that your take on that or did you see it differently?

[0:06:24 Daron]  Yeah, I think, you know, we’ve talked also about theories of public opinion and what does the Ivory Tower have to say about this? And, and most of the literature on public opinion suggests that it’s, it’s elite driven. In other words, you know, people are paying attention, especially partisans who are attentive, pick up on elite cues very readily and the ability of the public or the tendency of the public to pick up on these cues, kind of mirrors the extent to which they’re paying attention. So the attentive people pick them up first, the less attentive people later. And I think there’s a pretty decent amount of evidence that Trump singling out. He, he, he went after Christie in, in 2016. I think that stuck a little bit. But, but Trump going after Mike Pence, has, has really hurt I, I, but let’s not be completely captive to the moment. Pence’s ratings have never been as solid as one might expect given his policy positions and his kind of persona within the Republican party. So Trump has, you know, kind of further put torpedoes into a listing ship. but, but why that ship was, was unbalanced and kind of vulnerable in the first case. I’ve, I’ve, I, I think it’s an interesting story. I don’t think it’s just reaction to January 6th. I don’t think he was nearly as popular amongst Republicans as Trump was. And,

[0:07:41 Josh]  you know, you bring, I mean, you brought up John Cornyn and when we talk about John Cornyn’s numbers. We tend to sort of highlight the fact that Cornyn is, is such a good avatar of like a prior generations conservative and a prior generations Republican and watching the last, you know, GOP debate, you know, it was hard not to look at Mike Pence up there and feel like it was like a time warp to like the 19 eighties or 19 nineties relative to the stage and everybody else’s kind of orientation.

[0:08:04 Jim]  And yeah, that’s one of the things I kind of wanted to flood. I mean, what’s interesting to me about Pence is that aspect of it that you were talking about Josh, in part that he seems like yesterday’s Republican or at least one of yesterday’s Republicans. But I think it also points to the fact that, you know, one of the things that has come out in Trump’s more or less, you know, takeover of the Republican party, not just, not just physically, but in the, you know, refashioning the ideological orientation of the party is that, you know, I, I think there was a misjudgment that Mike Pence would be kind of the conscience and he would represent the way that evangelicals would view political figures and clearly the judgment that somehow evangelicals would reject Trump for all the reasons. One might posit that they might reject him, turned out to be wrong. And one of the big losers in that dynamic and miss the misapprehension of that is In fact, Mike

[0:09:01 Daron]  Pence. Yeah, I, you know, even a month ago I would have told you that I’m, I’m buying some Mike Pence stock. Right on the, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m buying low, I’m buying low. And

[0:09:12 Jim]  another reason why it’s good to have a financial advice.

[0:09:14 Daron]  Right. Exactly. But the, the reasoning, I’ll defend my reasoning if not the conclusion. The reasoning is that the Iowa caucuses have traditionally been a place where social conservatives have, have outsized influence on the results. They’re,, they know how to organize. they’re ideologically motivated, they’re sort of, in terms of issue profiles are very consistent and, and coherent. And Mike Pence alone amongst the Republicans has a profile that one would think matches what’s going on amongst evangelical Christians and more socially conservative Christians in Iowa. But, but Jim, I think you put your, you know, your finger on the pulse here going on, which is I, I think social, social conservatives like that Trump fights, they like who he fights and the way he fights and the results, right? And, and so the fact that he is not consistent on abortion, for instance, the fact that he’s not consistent on any range of, you know, socially conservative issues seems to matter less, you know, they’re with him because he’s taking on the people that they think need to be taken on as opposed to Mike Pence whose issue positions are much closer to. I think their preferred positions. but doesn’t have the reputation as being a fighter or representing those interests in the public arena the way that Trump does. That’s

[0:10:29 Jim]  what I mean. They’re, yeah, I mean, and they’re different, you know, look, the Mike Pence persona is part of this, very hard to operationalize, you know, but, you know, there are things about Mike Pence that simultaneously come off as the epitome of what we used to think of as a republic, a midwestern republican evangelical leader. But there are also things about Mike Pence that come off as professional politician, you know, and, and those things sit uncomfortably, particularly sitting on top of this dynamic we’re talking about, about, you know, the fact that to put it one way, you know, I think, you know, evangelical voters and evangelical conservatives have proven to be much more strategic thinkers than, than they were got credit for

[0:11:11 Daron]  in the past. I think, the one other thing I just mentioned before, we, you know, work our way up the ladder, here with respect to the candidates is that I did think Pence was, was actually pretty effective in the first debate, at two levels. The first was he took the time to lay out his biography in that debate. I think he’s gonna have to continue to do that. There’s a tendency on the part of former vice presidents to think that everybody knows enough about who they are. So they don’t need to bother kind of spelling out their credentials. But when Pence said, you know, look, I was a governor of Indiana, you know, I was in the United States House and I had, you know, positions of authority with respect to the party and on foreign policy. I’d forgotten about some of those things and, and he’s gonna need to do that if he’s gonna, you know, not disappear beneath the surface of this thing without a trace. The second thing he did, I thought the, the exchange between Pence and Haley on abortion on Dobbs was the most interesting exchange of the debate. II, I went into the debate by the way, thinking that, you know, how long is this thing gonna take? And, and when can I flip over to yeah, to preseason football. But I was, I was actually kind of captivated because the Republicans generally said very little about the Dobbs decision and, and what their response was going to be in the 2022 election. I was fascinated by what I thought was a really interesting strategic exchange between Haley who said the proper position effectively. She said the proper position is we would like to do this, but we don’t have the votes, we need to convince people it’s not realistic to do much at the federal level on jobs. And Pence comes back and specifically articulates the, the sort of biblical source of his position, principled position and then, but says, look, even though we don’t have the votes, if we frame it as a limit on the, you know, time under which a woman could, you know, effectively have access to abortion. You put the other side in a position of being on. And I thought that was very, it was an extraordinarily adult conversation for a, for the format. And I, I thought so I was kind of interested in that and, and again, the fact that Pence, despite doing what I thought was a pretty good job, got no bump. It, it, it’s further kind of suggested, maybe,

[0:13:27 Jim]  you know, but I think moving up the list illustrates why that’s the case.

[0:13:30 Daron]  Right. Right. Right. Exactly. Now, hey, so we’re looking at I think the clear winners of the debate were, were Haley and, and Ramaswami. Rob Swami’s numbers here. He’s a little lower here in terms of recognition than he is in some of the national polls. But this was a poll that was done towards the end of August. Just

[0:13:47 Josh]  to make a point here among Republicans. He had the third, I’m sorry, the fourth highest favorability rating of everybody we tested, he only trailed Rhoda Santi Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. And again, for someone who literally just came on the scene,

[0:14:01 Jim]  we’re not confusing cruises in the race. You’re just, you’re just reporting that

[0:14:07 Daron]  and the fact that that everybody went after Ramaswami very hard in the. So, so Christie went after him, Pence went after him. Haley went after him, tells me that they’re reading not only the same poll numbers but probably some more recent data in specific states that indicate that, you know, it’s getting a little traction. I would actually say that, that he took more hits in the debate than desantis.

[0:14:29 Josh]  Desantis was almost, you know, I mean, I wouldn’t say he’s a bi standard but he was not, even though he’s in the middle of the stage, he was not the central figure in that debate. Yeah. And,

[0:14:37 Daron]  and to me again, reading between the lines here, it suggests to me that they, they see the trajectory of DeSantis on a downward path. They see Ramaswami on an upward path. And I thought it was pretty clear there was a strategic decision on the part of the Republicans that they needed to stop to at least halt the Ramaswami train before it gets a lot more momentum. By the way, I’m not sure they did that. I mean, people like us watched the debate and thought he took some hits but people who didn’t know him had never seen him before. I, I think he came out of that with more support now, maybe a little more baggage also.

[0:15:10 Josh]  But, yeah, I mean, I actually thought, you know, he acquitted himself pretty well to all of that. And the truth is, I mean, more often than not, I was thinking to myself, you know, if I’m Mike Pence, I understand why strategically, I might want to get into a back and forth with Ramaswami. But, but the optics of that, I think actually, in a lot of ways, I think elevate some of the features that, that Ramaswamy wants to elevate about his youth, his energy and all this stuff. And actually probably, I think made someone like Pence in particular, like look older, more out

[0:15:37 Jim]  of touch and just, you know, just to put numbers on that. I mean, you know, I mean, Ramaswami numbers, you were saying Josh are very good. I mean, at 51 10 compared to the low double digit numbers of Christie and Pence, you know, they’d kill to have those numbers. Maybe not literally,

[0:15:53 Daron]  but, well, I think that Christie, I think, and if you, if you kind of think more like, you know, your, your average Republican voter and, you know, get away from the ivory tower here, you know, what Ramaswami did was sure he was attacked for not being experienced. He was particularly attacked for his position on Ukraine. And now let’s be clear, I think a lot of us were sort of more versed or maybe have been paying more attention to Ukraine are, are, are probably more sympathetic to what Haley and Pence said about that. Both, both the role that experience plays as well as the substantive policy positions. But the Republican party, this is not as you guys have been saying, not your father’s Republican party or your grandfather’s Republican party. This isn’t the party that, you know, went, went after Ivan Drago and Mikhail Gorbachev. This is a party that has, has moved strongly towards dare, I say isolationist tendencies. And so while Ramaswami is, is getting beaten up for, you know, oh, you don’t understand the geopolitical reality. I think a lot of GOP voters are going well, what I’m hearing is he wants to keep us out of these wars. And so, you know, there’s this issue dynamic going on as well, which is, you know, as you were saying that, that, that Pence and others are scoring points maybe on more traditional Republican positions. But, but optically to your point, Jim, they’re going after the guy, they’re raising his profile and, and secondarily, they’re raising the profile of issues where he’s actually fairly well positioned with respect to the rest

[0:17:23 Jim]  of the Republican primary voters. Now, I think that’s right now as we’ve looked at all this, we’re, you know, we’re rearranging these deck chairs, but the captain of the Titanic is still in charge. Right.

[0:17:35 Daron]  Yeah, I think we, we’ve been having some conversations with some of the media partners that, that I deal with about coverage of the 2024 race and there’s an appreciable portion who just do not think there’s going to be competitive race on either side. And so as, you know, you talking about the media allocating resources towards coverage. They think that barring an act of God that, Trump is going to win and that he’s going to lock this thing up. You know, roughly around the time we have the election interference trial that will probably interfere with the election on Super Tuesday. They don’t see this as being competitive. I, I’m a little more, I’m, I’m certainly more open because politics are politics. I’m, I’m not as convinced as they are that this thing is going to go down the way they want. But, but their point has a lot of support in the data, both Trump’s utter dominance in terms of his, his standing in the Republican party and then, and we could talk, I’ll probably save this towards the end, but just a little spoiler, the, the public’s kind of lumping together of all these different scandals or allegations against Trump that, that Republicans for the most part, see them all as part of a political witch hunt. equally kind of illegitimate in a lot of ways. And so I’ve been on the, you know, my position has basically been that the substance of these charges will ultimately matter. Some of them seem to be less important some more and, but that, that’s going to sink in. There’s not a lot of data for that. It’s, it’s very much supposition on my part right now. It’s just not really, but

[0:19:03 Jim]  let’s talk about that a little because I think that’s, you know, I mean, there’s two things I have one just to get on the table. I mean, Trump’s favorability numbers were, you know, number one on this list. Yeah,

[0:19:13 Josh]  he was, viewed favorably by 79% of Republicans in Texas, unfavorably by only 15. This is very much in line with the trend. So, it’s not as though these numbers have dropped significantly since the most recent indictments or changed dramatically or his UNFAV went up, nothing’s really shifted, nothing’s really done to the Teflon, you know, analogy, it still still holds

[0:19:33 Jim]  and this and this is a question for you. Derek just because you’ve been so involved with so much national polling on this. If you look at the trend in Trump’s favorability in our data in Texas and Texas, I still think is a not. And again, you can comment on, it’s

[0:19:46 Daron]  not a, it’s not a great Trump

[0:19:48 Jim]  state, it’s not a great Trump state and it’s, and it’s also not a but it’s also not a bad general trend comparison to, for Republicans to the country overall. And you know, his peak favorability since his presidency, I think was about 86 or 87 among Republicans. Yeah, among Republicans and now it’s gone, you know, it’s been fluctuating. I mean, this was a little bit on the high end of where it’s been fluctuating, it’s been fluctuating like I think 76 70 between 76 and about 79 in the last year, year and a half or so. But, you know, it seems to me that as we look at a really close national election with all the caveats, you know, we need to look at state polling electoral college, et cetera, et cetera. But nonetheless, with the election as close it is, he doesn’t have that much room to slip. Right.

[0:20:35 Daron]  Yeah, I, I think, you know,

[0:20:38 Jim]  he’s supposing your media. You are right.

[0:20:43 Daron]  But he’s already consolidated the Republican base. Here’s where polling can really be instructive, but it’s also particularized and it requires a kind of careful reading of the data right now. The dynamic in the Republican party is who’s the non Trump candidate. The interesting thing is that both the Santas and Rama Swami aren’t really attempting to define themselves there. They’re, they’re sort of trying to walk this middle ground whereas Christie and, and Haley and Pence and others are, are trying to, Scott Scott are trying to really brand themselves as, as the non Trump candidate. in the absence of the consolidation of that, I don’t think it’s going to be competitive by the way, somebody’s got to, to step up. But, but setting that aside, one of the main arguments that the non Trump candidate has to make is electability if you really want to defeat Joe Biden. I’m the one to do it. The problem with the polling numbers is that Trump continues in both the national polls and a lot of the state polls to be the strongest Republican candidate in a ballot just looking at the ballot. So he’ll be up, you know, he’ll range anywhere from minus two to plus two on this. The other Republicans tend to be, you know, at best even, but using head to head to head in, in, in the polls with Biden. Now, if you look beneath, you know, the covers a little bit, what you see is that Trump has completely consolidated Republican support. He’s winning 90 to 95% of Republicans and he’s not getting independence. You know, there’s a little bit of slippage of Biden amongst Democrats, but, you know, so the other Republicans have not consolidated the Republican vote in these trial ballots. That’s why they’re running kind of appreciably worse than Trump, but they’re doing significantly better with independence. And so the question then, or what, what I would sort of suggest is the, the kind of more sophisticated reading is if you assume that a Nikki Haley or a Ramaswami or pick your Republican would eventually consolidate the Republican vote, get in the low nineties to mid nineties. Well, they’re gonna, they’re gonna run better than Trump at that point. If they approach Trump’s runnings with numbers with Republicans, they’re gonna do better with independents and they’re going to end up running 2 to 3 points stronger than Trump would. Now, there’s a interesting question about whether the Republican base would be as fired up, et cetera, et cetera. But that’s the trouble with the electability argument is that the Republicans haven’t consolidated around these other candidates. There’s no real reason to because their candidacies are hypothetical. They’re not as well known, but it turns into a vicious cycle. Right. I, I can’t make an electability argument when all these polls are showing Trump running as

[0:23:07 Jim]  we were talking about, you

[0:23:08 Josh]  know, the laid out is very clear. I’m sure that’s gonna be

[0:23:11 Jim]  on the way. We were talking, we were talking about, you know, art about strategic thinking among voters. I just think I’m, I’m listening to you say that like that sounds pretty good. But I think that’s not really much. you know, I, I kind of ii, I picture a lot of Republican primary voters putting their fingers in their ears and going nah, that,

[0:23:28 Daron]  you know what Jim I think they hear is, oh, you run better amongst independents. That means you’re not a real Republican. You know, in other words,

[0:23:35 Josh]  you’re compromising already

[0:23:37 Jim]  or, you know, or a real ally of Maga or making America great again or, you know, however we want to vaguely define the Trump agenda without Trump,

[0:23:45 Daron]  right? And then it’s, I think it’s curious that you haven’t heard any Republicans say, except maybe Christie said, you know, I can win over those a little bit, but what they don’t say are independents, they don’t say democrats and that’s, that’s gonna be the task. I, you know, the only way it happens is, you know, we understand it’s not chicken and egg that, you know, a Republican has to emerge, you know, a non Trump Republican and draw, you know, 90 95% amongst Republicans. And then, you know, then it will happen and then it becomes sort of a self fulfilling process

[0:24:14 Josh]  just to, you know, just to bring it, you already said this, but just to bring it into this conversation, make it explicit too, the fact that Trump hasn’t seen any appreciable dent in his support, despite, you know, through these repeated legal problems coming up and through the extensive coverage and extensive attention that has been laid to them really should make, you know, I think anyone question whether at any point any of these things are going to end up becoming an electability problem to your point because that would be sort of, the other argument is to say, well, you know, as long as these things hang around and the trials move forward at some point, this might affect Trump’s support. Now I get it to your point, Jim, it doesn’t need to affect it a lot. Well,

[0:24:48 Jim]  that’s the question, right? And bringing in independence really underline that point. But

[0:24:54 Josh]  if I’m a Republican voter right now, I mean, even so I would, you know, and I was a sophisticated, you know, strategic and I’m looking at the point, I would say, hey, look, you know, nonetheless, if it’s all of my brothers vote with me, we’re good right

[0:25:06 Daron]  now. There is, you know, there’s two elements, I mean, in order not to be kind of the dominant Republican right now,, Trump would have to lose support amongst Republicans or the enthusiasm would have to be diminished. Now, that second part won’t necessarily show up in the ballot numbers very well. But, but that’s how Trump loses an election, basically, right? That, that Republicans, they may continue to support him. But if they’re not as enthused, then he’s got a turnout issue that makes him more. But, but all that stuff is that’s, that’s, that’s in the realm of political scientists. It doesn’t help Ramaswami or Nikki Haley or Christie make this case right now until it’s manifest in those top line ballot numbers, you know, and by the way, it’s not entirely clear to me how hungry Republican voters are anyway. In other words, in 2020 the number one, maybe the only reason Biden won the nomination was the perception he could beat Trump and every democrat wanted to beat Trump just tell us who it is. I don’t know how hungry the Republicans are right now. I, I don’t know if you know the argument I can beat Biden is necessarily as compelling for Republicans in 2024 as it was for

[0:26:12 Jim]  Democrats. I mean, I think they’re making an effort to pump that up as we speak.

[0:26:16 Josh]  But I mean, if I were, I would say, hey, I can win the popular vote. How about that? I mean, yeah, I mean, it’s sort of the under things that I just kind of think about. That’s interesting underlying this conversation and the strategic of everybody is like, you know, Trump lost the popular vote twice. Right. He lost the, you know, he’s one of his two, you know, national elections. And if any of, if any of these stories dents him in any way, I mean, it’s the inverse of, I mean, it’s not the inverse of electability but think about the other way, right? If any one of these stories actually does lead to a significant dent in his Republicans world and by significant here, I mean, like statistically significant, like 3 to 8 points, I’m not talking about like a crater. He’s have a real problem. Well,

[0:26:55 Jim]  that sounds like a, that sounds like an argument for Nikki Haley. I mean, to me, I mean,

[0:27:00 Josh]  I mean, I think just one of the things just to bring the debate back and I think it’s interesting about these candidates, we can move on, you know, but it is really interesting to me watching that debate in some ways because, you know, Donald Trump, I mean, we’ve been talking about this for, you know, now years, but this idea of, you know, what kind of, you know, what does Donald Trump mean about, you know, conservative. What does he say about conservative ideology? What does it mean to be a Republican? What does it mean to be a conservative with Trump at the head of the party? And I thought was so great about watching this debate, which I, again, I thought I’m gonna, I’m gonna see what this is about. I’m gonna move on and then my wife and I are just watching and we’re just stuck in and I’m like, and she was interested too. It was amazing. But it was, you know, you did get to see sort of every flavor, you know, you could see, you know, again, different Republicans really trying to hone in on, you know, let’s talk about the deep state, you know, let’s talk about foreign policy and trying to figure out where to be on this. And there really were differences. I mean, I think between Ramaswami and some of the other candidates, but even amongst those candidates like Asa Hutchinson and some of the other guys, I mean, they really were laying out a little more, I think heterogeneity and Republican thought that we generally tend to give credit for. And so it’s, you know, it’s interesting to see where this goes. So

[0:28:03 Jim]  let’s, let’s move on to the Democrats a little bit. I mean, Darren, you already kind of previewed some of the views of where, you know, people are on Biden, Biden’s numbers, you know, again about where they’ve been, I think 73 favorable 14 unfavorable among Democrats underwater. Overall. Not surprising. We were talking before we started though about Kamala Harris and as this churn and, and you know, the, the issue that will not go away for the Biden campaign is Biden’s age and health. And that inherently puts a spotlight on Kamala Harris in some ways. And I think both the Harris people and the White House have been trying to burnish, you know, what had been kind of a faltering public image for her in the last 68 months, maybe even the last year. You know, she’s at 64 18, which is, you know, among Democrats, which is, you know, OK. You know, but it seems like that’s not quite good enough. So what, what do you see here, Darren?

[0:29:03 Daron]  I think she is a huge liability. I think her role in this and I’m, I’m kind of channeling here. The, the article is the times of the post were Ignatius. David. Ignatius. Ignatius wrote an article basically saying Biden shouldn’t run, but there are two kind of strands to that. The first is this notion that Biden is slipping and that the more public exposure there is, the more this is going to be a conversation of the polling numbers on this. And we, we’ve run this in the past, we didn’t run this poll about Biden’s fitness and ability to serve effectively as president they’re, they’re disastrous. I mean, there’s two thirds of Americans right now say that he does not have the cognitive capacity to serve effectively as president, you know, under any normal circumstance. I’m not quite sure what normal circumstances would be. Right now. Those numbers would be catastrophic. And you couple on that, a very unpopular vice president. It’s, you know, because normally, as I said, the two strands, the one strand be, well, if we think the president is compromised either physically or politically, what are the options with the vice president? And, and, and the fallback is, you know, typically be, whether it’s, you know, Al Gore or, you know, well, maybe not Dick Cheney but, you know, Joe Biden back in support Mike Pence, that, that there’s a sense that, you know, well, that would be ok. But Harris is deeply unpopular nationally. you know, and you saw this II, I think, you know, we could kind of talk about, you know, sexism or racism and how they play into that. I wouldn’t deny that those things are kind of bubbling, but she had a catastrophic run for president. I mean, it really was poor and the areas where she’s been associated with public policy and representation of the Biden administration have not been good, most notably border security and immigration.

[0:30:48 Josh]  That was crazy. I mean, they did not do, I mean, if anything, they almost knifed her in the front, I mean, it was just like, hey, you know, who’s going to be in charge of the border, that, that intractable problem that we’re definitely not going to solve. How about you? It’s like,

[0:31:02 Daron]  I know, and if you, if you kind of game this out not to spend a ton of time on this, but, but, you know, because she was attorney general in California and, and had some baggage with, with progressives because of her record in California. I think they didn’t feel like they could put her in positions where her credentials I think would have suggested or recommended her. because I think she would have been limited politically and, you know, I, I think there’s a real interesting dynamic here, but I think there’s a real fear amongst Democrats that if you ran Kamala Harris against maybe not Trump, but anybody but Trump that it would be a electoral disaster for the Democrats, which is why as, as lots of people have been talking about recently, you have most notably Gavin Newsome, sort of limbering up stretching out in the bullpen, you know, kind of getting his arm loose even though he’s been doing it since before the game started, even though no one, none of the manager nor the assistant manager or any of the coaches have asked Gavin to get loose and he’s still warming up in the bullpen. I, I’ve told this kind of this line before, but it’s like, you know, it’s like the third inning and, you know, the manager looks towards and who, who’s warming up in the bullpen. You know, what, what’s he doing out there?, but I think it’s clearly what, what Newsome is doing. you know, we’ll, we’ll have some numbers with, the national poll. I’m involved with, with Fox, about how, how much forward or how much reticence versus how much enthusiasm people have for this race. And what you see is, you know, if it’s Biden versus Trump, there’s more people saying they dread it rather than they’re looking forward to it. If you say, how about any other matchup? The numbers switch by 20 points. It goes to being, you know, they’re looking forward to it rather than dreading it. And I think, you know, for a lot of us, the prospects of like a Nikki Haley Gavin Newsome election would, you know, this is again kind of an ivory tower egghead thing. But I think a lot of us would go like, oh, that’s, that’s interesting, compelling. And these candidates are represent interesting strains of the parties. But,,

[0:32:56 Josh]  I never even thought about that and I just felt relaxed. Yeah,

[0:33:00 Daron]  it’s, it’s like, you know, smooth jazz music, I think,

[0:33:05 Jim]  but, you know, as somebody who reacts violently against smooth jazz music, I, you know, I, I also wonder, you know, what people may say. Yeah, that sounds more interesting. But, you know, Donald Trump has been a turnout machine. No question on both sides. And so I do wonder, you know, I mean, what the downside of people saying, you know, I just want something a little calmer and a little less worrisome what the implications

[0:33:32 Daron]  are. Well, I think you’re, you’re absolutely correct. Turnout would be down but, but not because of Biden, it would be because, because of Trump’s absence.

[0:33:39 Jim]  So, let’s talk just a minute. There’s not much to say about this, I think at this point, it’s very early. You know, we also ran some numbers in the Texas Senate in the Texas Senate race, the US Senate seat from Texas to be, to be more clear which would be confusing given some of one of these candidates. But, and, you know, Ted Cruz has no operative challengers that I know of. At this point. His numbers have stayed pretty much where they’ve been. It’s my, my recollection of that. That’s right, Josh, isn’t it? I mean,

[0:34:07 Josh]  yeah, I mean, he’s floating around even to slightly net negative on the fave on faves overall, which has been pretty consistent but

[0:34:14 Jim]  high seventies among Republicans. Yeah,

[0:34:17 Josh]  challenging for the top billing in terms of if we put any of the, you know, Republicans at Texas, I’m sorry, any of the Republican elected officials that Texas Republicans would be pretty familiar with. He’s up near the

[0:34:26 Jim]  top. He’s in, he’s in the Trump Abbott Range basically summarize. And then we also did fave on faves, among, you know, and then we’ll look at focus on among Democrats for now among the two leading,, or at least, you know, most prominent candidates for the Democratic nomination in that us senate race. Colin Allred, Congressman and Texas State Senator Gutierrez. So, what do we see there? Not a, not a lot. Right, as expected.

[0:34:58 Josh]  Yeah, I mean, this is, you know, as we’ve said many times to be fair, this is where this is where Democrats start all of these races. I mean, unless they have run statewide before and have spent, you know, many millions of dollars trying to get their name out there. A congressman from Dallas, a state senator from Uvalde, not widely known generally. And so overall, among Democrats, 34% hold a favorable view of Colin Allred 11, an unfavorable view among Senator Gutierrez, it’s 24 favorable 10 unfavorable. So he’s, you know, not as not trailing him by very much for kind of the delay in time. It took him to get out there. But I think, you know, ultimately

[0:35:33 Jim]  and a smaller and, you know, look a smaller, at least in terms of the basics, smaller media market,

[0:35:38 Josh]  smaller media market, more voters actually, but smaller media market, right? But nonetheless, I think, you know, Gutierrez, I mean, the, the, the rationale for his candidacy is Uvalde and, and the massacre there and, you know, to the extent that he has been heavily associated with sort of the democratic response to that. I think you can see that in these numbers and he’s not, basically because he’s not starting at zero. Right. I mean, people have started to form an opinion about him.

[0:36:01 Daron]  Yeah. I don’t know. I’m looking at 50% are known, which I think is the defining, is just, just the defining kind of characteristic of democratic statewide candidates in recent election cycles. You know, to me, there’s, there’s two interesting things, I’ll just point out real quickly and, you know, one is the recent actions by the Governor of New Mexico. I’m interested to see how they were down in Texas. That is to say a very, very aggressive move by Democratic governor to sort of reshape public policy options and thinking about gun violence. I’m not sure that that’s going to improve the environment for someone like Gutierrez whose, you know, calling card is essentially, you know, a public change in public policy in response to this. I, I think there’s a chance that as Democrats and other instances are exceptionally aggressive that that makes it difficult for someone like Gutierrez to avoid being tagged with a line that will, you know, in sort of a positioning that will probably hurt him in Texas in the long run. Now, now it might help him in the Democratic primary. But, but you know, the second thing is this may be one of the very, very, very few, given the map of the Senate in 2012, it’s may be one of the very few opportunities for a democratic pickup. So one thing you know, if, if perhaps the public policy environment may not be quite as, you know, promising as you might otherwise think that is one of the main, the two main issues that the Democrats have for this Senate race, I think would be the Dobbs decision and abortion and then, you know, mass violence, Eovaldi and, and, and guns

[0:37:28 Josh]  and the great if the power goes out even though. Yeah, and obviously that’s gonna come up because of Senator Cruz.

[0:37:35 Daron]  But, but having, you know, very few targets on the, for the Democrats to pick up seats in the Senate to, to kind of protect their, you know, their majority. And having Cruz is one of the candidates who of course, is a lightning rod for democratic money outside the state. I do think that this isn’t going to be like the governor’s race last time with, with Beto and Abbott. I, I think, I think there’s a lot of opportunity for a new candidate to emerge and to have appreciable funding. Now, can you get traction in a presidential year?, you know, and get known, I, you know, I would be more optimistic about Alder de Gutierrez actually getting known and, and possibly in a favorable way than I have been the last couple of

[0:38:13 Josh]  cycles. Well, there’s two things to say about that. One is to point out the fact that we know that these two candidates are running and the filing deadline is not until December. Right is in and of itself a unique thing. I mean, the fact that we’re sitting here talking about these guys, I mean, it’s notable that they’ve started so early now, one, I think that reflects their own strategic calculations. That this is a, this is, you know, a potentially good year, they’ll be funded. Well, they like the idea of going against Cruz all of those reasons. But I mean, I think it makes, you know, it’s going to make a difference for them that they’ve started so early in terms of pumping up that name ID. I mean, I think, you know, the difficulty a lot of democratic candidates have is that by the time they get rolling, by the time they get funded, by the time they get really serious about campaigning, if, you know, there’s a good GOP, you know, candidate on the other side and a good campaign who sees any sort of threat, they’ve already started defining them negatively, but it’s too early for that. And so I think right now for someone like Colin Allred for good years, they can spend a lot, they can spend as much time on the college campuses as they want. You know, they can spend as much time in the big cities as they want, they can really focus their efforts in pumping up their ID that I think, you know, is going to make them more challenging when we actually start getting serious about this race. On the flip side. The other thing I also want to add is, you know, you mentioned in Independence and Donald Trump, but I mean, independent members of Ted Cruz are also pretty negative here in Texas. So we look at his favorability numbers, he’s underwater by 30 points among independents. So 25 favorable 55 unfavorable. So that’s another thing where when we’re looking at the dynamics of this and thinking, why are people, why would people even consider Texas as a, as a potential battleground, whether for president or in the Senate race? That’s what you’re looking at here. You’re thinking about differential turnouts and whether they, you know, Republicans are going to continue to outpace Democrats even as Democrats get the turnout up. But also if the race is getting closer, you are looking at these independents and thinking that doesn’t break very well for Cruz. And I would

[0:39:52 Jim]  say that this democratic primary is getting, you know, a bit more interesting. I mean, state, you know, not this happened after we put the poll on the field. State Rep, Carl Sherman got in the race again, another Democrat that’s not a household name but an, you know, an able candidate probably and, and also African American, which is going to complicate Allred’s position, I

[0:40:12 Daron]  suspect. Yeah, I think this is, this is, you know, you could take a glass half full or glass half empty, a competitive Democratic primary. You know, it, it raises interest in the primary, it could draw more attention to candidates. It also prevents the cruz campaign from focusing on a single opponent until after the result. That’s consequential on the, the half empty side. If you’re, the Democrats would be the consolidation of support and money from outside interests isn’t clear until after this thing is resolved, right? So money that would otherwise be pouring in if it were one dominant candidate is frozen. I, you

[0:40:46 Jim]  know, I would also point out that Scott, you know, the dynamics of what is going on that the composition of the Democratic Party and how Republican campaigns try to get in front and strategize gets very complicated in Texas as it did in the last race when Senator Royce West was in the race. And there were some real racial dynamics within the democratic field that were being, I think, you know, in a low key but definite way, kind of gleefully exploited by the then the corning campaign. And so, you know, that’s gonna be operative here again, not relative to the polling, but hard not to flag that. So we’re running out of time. So let’s move on a little bit. I wanna, you know, we’ve meant to focus on 2024 here and we’ve, we’ve done that, I think in, in to good effect to me, I, I just want the best we can. I, I just wanna ask you guys, you know, let’s end with outside of the 2024 stuff where it can be related, you know, what, what else would you want to flag that, that we haven’t covered today or that maybe you, we started to cover and didn’t quite get, let’s what do you got? what do you got DRS?

[0:41:51 Daron]  Well, I’ll go to the fabled question 23 for those of you following along at home in your scorecards. we asked the battery of questions, attempting to, to disentangle whether voters actually had distinct views of these different Trump indictments. Right. So we’ve got the four of them now on the books. So mishandling classified documents, illegal paying money to illegally paying money to an adult film star conspiring to overturn the 2020 elections in Georgia and then, the January 6th stuff with respect to the federal election. And, you know, we asked basically, do you think these are these criminal charges are mostly based on the facts or are they mostly based on politics? And, first of all, they’re just split, a slight tendency,, strangely enough, strongly related to party, about whether you think it’s mostly political or mostly based on the facts, but that’s was less surprising to me the overall distribution. What was interesting to me was the comparison across these issues that the public just basically lumps them, it seemingly not much different. Yeah. And I mean, Jim pointed out that there’s, there’s a little bit of difference when you look at the the, the kind of complicated case involving campaign funds to an adult film star. But, but on the, the more sort of obviously, you know, kind of policy, legal questions, documents, you know, demo support for democratic institutions, et cetera. It’s, they’re, they’re almost identical. I’ve been in the camp saying that these cases should be rank ordered that from least to most compelling and that the January 6th and Georgia cases were, were 12 on that, but I’m not seeing a lot of evidence for that. And, and part of that, by the way, I would suggest

[0:43:28 Jim]  your Ivory

[0:43:29 Daron]  Tower, I know seriously wrong again. I think part of that is the way the charges have been, have been launched. These sort of when people say novel legal theories and we’re gonna try something we’ve never done before in prosecuting a former president who is an active candidate for the, I mean, it’s not surprising to me that Republicans would be pretty skeptical about that the, the absence of an incitement element of the January 6th charge. I think, you know, I think

[0:43:56 Jim]  it suggested a recognition of that. Yeah,

[0:43:57 Daron]  and, and I, I think that’s so I’m, I’m, I’m still thinking that there the other shoe may drop. There may be specific things that come out of these cases and particularly the Georgia case strikes me and, and by the way, the, the files, the documents case has gotten more interesting to me. It’s, I still would rank it third on this list of four. But, but it’s more in the charges are more interesting and perhaps more damning than I thought last.

[0:44:19 Jim]  Well, and also the evidence seems more direct and a little easier to

[0:44:22 Daron]  understand. Yes. Yes. And, and there could be smoking guns or conversations or quotes that come out. But, but right now Texas public is not feeling it right.

[0:44:30 Jim]  You know, and I, you know, we don’t have to go into this. But I think what one of the interesting things about that and Josh and I have a piece that we’re just finishing right now, that’ll be out. Hopefully, by the time this podcast is up or shortly after is the difference between that dynamic with Trump and much in the much lower level of consensus on the same framing of the question for Ken Paxton. Right. Right. Just a lot less clarity on Paxton. So, stay tuned on that, Josh. How about you? I have a drink of water,

[0:45:01 Josh]  you know, looking ahead to sort of when this trial, when the Ken Paxton trial is over. And, and assuming that the governor does call, a special session specifically with a focus on vouchers or education priorities. We’ll see. It’s up to him. He’s the governor. Right. You know, we’re kind of interested in looking and seeing what sort of public priorities voters think the legislature should focus on. And here we weren’t making, forcing them to make a choice. We’re just asking them how important is it, you know, for the legislature to address? I think we tested about, it looks like 77 or eight different sort of issues. And we had tested these before during the session. And part of the reason was because public education was just such a, an active area during the last legislative session, that one of the questions we had talked about a lot. So if you listen to this was, you know, how do they focus and what do they end up focusing on and knowing that we’re moving ahead to another special session, most likely focus on vouchers. We wanted to see, you know, where the voters are at this point. Should this become the only topic that’s being addressed sort of in, in the, in the state political system? And it was really interesting given the fact that this is suppo, you know, we’re expecting this to be a special session to establish some kind of a voucher or voucher like program. What was really interesting was when we asked about these priorities, vouchers were at the bottom. And so, you know, the top priority for people that they said were, you know, extremely important for the legislature to address was school safety. 60%. So that was extremely important curriculum content. 47 teacher pay and retention. 45 I’ll just kind of skip down to the bottom vouchers, E SAS or some kind of school choice program was 26%. So only one in four voters said this was extremely important. And even among Republicans, what was interesting here was,, well, about a third said that it was extremely important for the legislature to take on, you know, a voucher program almost twice as many said the same about parental rights curriculum or school safety. And so I’m curious to see going into this session if, if the special session is really, you know, by design focus solely on vouchers when these other issues have been so consistently top of mind for voters in the education system. I’m curious to see how that gets received when we get to that point. And

[0:46:56 Jim]  if it’s not focused, if they do add some other things to the call, I think that’s very likely to retrigger or, or re aggravate something. That’s all, you know, that we’re seeing play out in the, in the trial. And that is the intense friction and conflict between the Texas House and its leadership and the Texas Senate and its leadership. So I think it’s, you know, there’s, there’s a

[0:47:20 Josh]  lot, there, lot going on and, and I’ll say, you know, we’re also in another piece on those results in some other an experiment we did to look at voucher attitudes and there’s some really interesting stuff in there that we’ll say for another podcast, but it really does actually put some more, some more substance behind some of these conflicts, especially at a geographic level. I

[0:47:37 Jim]  think. So, you know, my thing is a little, is, is a little more national, I think you guys had a lot of great state stuff and there’s other things to pick here. But I want to pick up on something that, that Darren mentioned earlier. And that is, you know, the and I really noticed the kind of your affect when you said this and that is the nature of like the issue of isolationism in the Republican party. I mean, our number, the, the trend numbers in our, in our question on whether the US is doing too much, too little or the right amount in Ukraine have really tracked in a very interesting direction. On one hand, I think overall, we’re seeing a more or less signs of an expected level of fatigue, but the share of Republicans that say the US is doing too much. And again, we have been doing more over this period of time, but it has really increased. I mean, in April of 22nd of 22 shortly after the invasion, only 19% of, of, of Republicans said that the US was doing too much. That number is now at 56% and it has just risen steadily. I mean, if you look at these numbers after April from June to August, it goes from 39 44 46 50 53 56. It’s just going like, I mean, you know, as we look for trends and we look for things and things look a little uneven. I mean, this is one of the clearest trends that we’re seeing in this polling right now. And it’s interesting if you’re, you know, again, I’ll use the Ivory Tower thing again, Darren, if you’re interested in like the inputs to American foreign policy and the history of divisions in the Republican Party. It’s interesting, but as we speak right now with the US House and the US Senate at loggerheads over almost everything. And as we see the Senate, the US Senate much more supportive of continuing aid to Ukraine and a hardcore faction in the house dead set against it. These numbers are really gonna matter. They are throwing a lot of sand in the gears, you know, in a, in a, in a, in a machine that is already pretty sandy, you know. So I, I think that, you know, watching those numbers, I mean, and then you layer that on top of our earlier sort of discussion about Pence and what’s going on in the Republican Party. It’s another really interesting facet of all that. And I think it’s easy to say, well, foreign policy, you know, often doesn’t matter that much, but it’s really ever present right now because it’s entering so many other discussions, as you said, it was one of the hottest, you know, hottest moments and clearest distinctions in the debate with that. Thank you guys both. It’s been a long, but I think fruitful session enjoyed it very much from my point of view. So Darren, thanks for joining us, Josh, as always, thanks for being here. Many thanks to our crew in the audio studio here in the development studio in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas. to see results if you’re listening to this via a podcast platform and you want to see the data we’re talking about. I urge you to go to Texas politics dot U Texas dot edu, lots of downloadable graphics commentary on this, all of the results we’ve talked about and even the data files. So thank you 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 Austin