September 14th, 2022 – Second Reading Podcast

[00:00:00] Jim Henson: Welcome to the second reading podcast from the university of Texas at Austin,

[00:00:05] Josh Blank: 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

[00:00:15] Jim Henson: America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the constitution.

[00:00:22] They have become the norm.

[00:00:24] Josh Blank: At what point must a female Senator. Raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room.

[00:00:34] Jim Henson: And welcome back to the second reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin. Uh, it’s poll release day here at the Texas politics project. Uh, Today we made public the results of a polar registered voters that we fielded from August 29th to September 6th, sample of 1200.

[00:00:55] Uh, self-declared registered voters, um, very happy to be [00:01:00] joined by my friends and collaborators on the polling project. Darren Shaw, professor of government at UT Austin. Welcome back. Hey Darren.

[00:01:07] Good morning. Good to see you. Professor Henson, we missed you last time. You got, I believe you were

[00:01:11] Daron Shaw: travel. You got a hack Ross Rams, you got

[00:01:13] Jim Henson: Ross Rams.

[00:01:14] We pulled him out of retirement. That’s tough. I got, I got an email from Ross this morning, commenting on the poll and he didn’t say it. I, I did tell him we missed him. uh, and also Josh blank research director of the Texas politics project. Thanks for the ride to work today, Josh, among, among all the other tons and tons of work you have

[00:01:29] Josh Blank: done.

[00:01:29] We were definitely, we were, we were definitely carpooling.

[00:01:32] Jim Henson: We were definitely carpooling. Um, You know, Darren, I, I think I kind of mentioned this in passing in response to some of the trolling we’ve gotten on the pole, which is inevitable, but I was wondering, I had, I don’t think you and I have talked about it.

[00:01:45] You realize this is the 51st. Poll since we started this series of

[00:01:51] Daron Shaw: polls. God, I know, I can’t believe it. I can’t play congratulations to you. Not so much to me. Well, I

[00:01:56] Jim Henson: would say congratulations to both of, I, you know, but I, I was thinking, I, this isn’t the [00:02:00] first thing I think I talked to you into since we started, since we began working together at UT, but it may be one of the more

[00:02:07] Daron Shaw: successful it may.

[00:02:08] One of the more consequential, I think that’s probably right. yeah. Well, it’s nice. It’s nice to have a time series. It’s nice to have, uh, some history and mileage so that when you. What we’re looking at here, you, you can draw on a reservoir of, you know, past results and, and compare 20, 22 to 20 18, 20 14, 20 10 for goodness sake.

[00:02:26] Wow. We do go back don’t we? Yeah.

[00:02:28] Jim Henson: You know, I, and we’ve done. I think, you know, one thing that we definitely have followed through on is we, one of the ideas we had was to make something that was at the time, I think pretty uniquely transparent and

[00:02:39] Daron Shaw: public. Yeah. Yeah, no, that’s, that’s been, if you go to the site just in Texas.

[00:02:44] Yeah. If you go to the website, I, I, I find it increasing. You know, as a lot of pollsters. Use a mix of probability and non probability sampling, um, use a mix of what we call modes, some telephones, some online it’s, [00:03:00] you know, I would encourage our listeners to go to any of the, you know, statewide polling that’s done by reputable institutions and universities and try to figure out exactly what they’re doing and it, and part of it is that it’s complicated.

[00:03:12] And part of it’s that I don’t think they trust their audiences to understand what’s going on. And we’ve, we’ve tried to really, you know, open the curtain. And, and let our, you know, let our audience know what’s going on. Yeah. For better and for worse.

[00:03:23] Jim Henson: That’s right. But mostly’s right better. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I , I, Josh said you can’t see Josh’s face like, well, I guess , that’s

[00:03:31] Josh Blank: good.

[00:03:31] No, I like it.

[00:03:33] Jim Henson: well, um, so I thought that today, well, in our time together, I can’t get the Carol. Put this line in these notes and I can’t get the Carol Burnett song out of my Josh is like, what are you talking about? Yeah. Now we’re dating a

[00:03:46] Daron Shaw: joke. Uh, I tell you the story. I played golf with Harvey Corman once, but that’s for another day, I’d like to hear that.

[00:03:53] I would like

[00:03:54] Josh Blank: to hear that it’s on the other podcast.

[00:03:55] Jim Henson: Yeah, exactly. The fun one. So I, I thought [00:04:00] we’d battery inevitable today and spend most of our time just talking about the results related to the upcoming election. And what we think the results overall, tell us about the election environment as we get, you know, right.

[00:04:13] Not next to the election. We’re not right there on it, but we’re getting pretty close and, um, and the poll was very much designed. You know, not just to look at the trial ballots, um, or, or the horse races, but to try to capture and, and get some leverage on what the election environment is, is like in Texas right now.

[00:04:32] So, Jessica don’t, you start us off, if you could, by giving us an overview of what we got in the trial ballots that we did do to kind of set the stage. Sure.

[00:04:41] Josh Blank: So, you know, the main, the main trial ballots we asked about were for governor, uh, Lieutenant, governor, and attorney general. The re results that we’re reporting are among registered voters.

[00:04:49] And we can talk about that, uh, in a little bit overall in this poll, we saw Abbott leading O’Rourke 45 to 40 among registered voters. So a five point lead. This is pretty similar though, slightly narrower than his June [00:05:00] lead of 45 39. We could just say it’s the same if we want to. Right. But it certainly is a decline from where he was back in April and in February when his lead was closer to 10 points.

[00:05:08] Yeah. Among this, this population. Um, so you. I would say there’s stuff in the results that we can talk about, that both sides can be happy with, but right. Maybe one more than other or the other. And then we look at Lieutenant governor’s race. We see that Dan Patrick has a seven point lead over, uh, Mike Collier and a rematch of, of their last 2018 election.

[00:05:26] Uh, so he’s at 39%. Collier is at 32 here. We see a significantly higher share of, of people not having an opinion yet. So one in five voters, 20%. Say that they just don’t have, haven’t formed an opinion yet on this race. Uh, that’s only down five points from June, but that’s kind of what you’d expect at this point.

[00:05:43] Yeah. And then the attorney General’s contest, it’s a little bit tighter. We see, uh, Ken Paxon leading Rochelle Garza, 38% to 33%. That’s uh, a little bit of a narrowing from an eight point lead back in June. He was 37, 29 again, about one in five voters. Have not formed an [00:06:00] opinion yet about this race, which is not surprising, cuz obviously at the top of the ticket with, with O’Rourke and with Abbott, we have two universally known candidates, you know, and then as we move along, even, you know, the Lieutenant governor’s not universally known nor is the attorney general.

[00:06:12] And certainly their challengers are far, far from universally known. Right.

[00:06:16] Jim Henson: And we saw some of that in the, in. Yeah. When we did the approval, the, we, the FA on fave, the, the FA on faves on all the candidates, which right. Which people can see, and I should, and I should mention if you wanna follow along at home, all these results are public at, at our website, at the Texas politics project, which is Texas politics dot U, texas.edu.

[00:06:33] Uh, you’ll see a tag for polling, just, you know, follow your nose. Um, So Darren, we talked a lot. What do you, you know, we’ll start at the top and obviously the more key race, and we’ve had a little bit of discussion about this as we were looking at the data, like what, what do you make of this race right now?

[00:06:50] Daron Shaw: Yeah, I mean, Josh pointed out that, uh, it’s, it’s maybe a, a tick better for O’Rourke than it was in the spring. Um, but I look back, you know, we, I, I think the first ballot we ran [00:07:00] was in February 22. Yeah, that’s right. So, so let’s just read Abbott’s numbers. 47, 48, 45, 40. And let’s look at O’Rourke 37 37 39 40.

[00:07:10] There’s not a lot going on there, frankly. Um, and it’s not unexpected. Over the course of a summer when people are doing other things, maybe not traveling as much as they’d like to because of cow’s prices. But, um, that the race is sort of steady state. I, I, you know, if you told me this race was four points, I wouldn’t be surprised if you told me this race was 10 points.

[00:07:30] I wouldn’t be surprised. I think we’re kind of right in there and there’s gonna be a lot made out of whoa. A it’s five, not. You know, what’s the matter with your, and like, you know, look, we we’re showing that, you know, that, uh, Abbott has a lead, you know, just outside the margin of air. Um, he’s running for, you know, third term.

[00:07:49] I mean, it’s, he’s well known. Uh, there’s. Kind of a, a sense amongst in presidential elections that, um, when a party’s trying to win, you know, the white house for the third [00:08:00] time, that there’s a, you know, Alan Abramo it’s at Emory university calls it his time for a change variable, which is, he just plugs in a negative coefficient basically to drop the expected vote chair of the, of the in party.

[00:08:12] Um, so maybe we’re seeing a little bit of that here. Um, but maybe we’re just seeing, you know, some polling noise. I I’m, you know, I we’ve had a conversation about what we think the default. Party ID spread is, or, or vote spread is in a Texas election mm-hmm . And over the course of this poll, you know, Jim and I were doing in the early 2000.

[00:08:31] Um, you know, I guess we’d probably say it was like 12 to 15 points. Yeah. And now I think it’s like, you know, five to five to 10, um, and you know, you get particularly good or bad candidates, you can fall outside, but I think these are two pretty good candidates. So I’d expect something in that

[00:08:46] Josh Blank: range. Yeah.

[00:08:46] Or, or I’d say, or you have, you know, As we like to say exogenous shocks or, you know, extraneous circumstances like in 2018 when you’ve got sort of Trump as this overwhelming force and in a, you know, again, that force is still impacting. Cuz you have a Republican in the white house, you [00:09:00] expect there to be a tough midterm election, but that made, you know, let’s say in that race you saw RO come to two and a half.

[00:09:05] So we kind of moved out. Side of that five to 10 range you would expect and pushed up?

[00:09:09] Jim Henson: Well, a line. I it’s a line I overuse, but I mean, it’s, it’s easy to forget, particularly when we do so much state level polling and Darren, you, you do so much more national polling, but it’s easy to forget, Texas still is part of the United States.

[00:09:20] Yeah.

[00:09:21] Daron Shaw: yeah. And it’s, you know, the, the context here is, is interesting, right? That, uh, the Republicans are. Defense in the state of Texas in a way they are not nationally, right? Nationally, the Democrats have the house, the Democrats have the sense the Democrats have the white house, anything negative that occurs in the country, kind of accrues to the detriment of the Democrats in Texas.

[00:09:40] It’s just more complicated. There’s, you know, these problems with the economy and, and, um, problems with immigration, border security, but it’s. Clear about the source attribution there. And, um, and I think you see a little bit of that ambivalence

[00:09:54] Jim Henson: in the poll. Let me, you know, let me ask you about that and let let’s talk about this while we’re going.

[00:09:59] I mean, [00:10:00] in probably all combinations of the three of us paired off, you know, we’ve talked at various times about issue ownership and I’m, you know, you were talking about, you know, you mentioned a couple of issues, but part of what seems have been going on in the summer, Is that the issue environment got much more complicated for the Abbott campaign.

[00:10:19] I mean, you just talked about, you know, the stability and the race mm-hmm do you think that, I mean, right. Is, does that come out in the wash that yeah. You know, that, that it seems like, you know, that you know, that the Abbot administration had a kind, a hard time dealing with Aldi. I mean, I think you have to be pretty in the tank, I think, to not look at that and think that that was not what they.

[00:10:40] That was not what they wanted to be talking about. And as it has continued to arise in a kind of negative way, you know, that’s not great

[00:10:48] Daron Shaw: for them, right? Yeah. I think a couple observations. The first is the issue environment, uh, in the early spring, nationally and in Texas was so horrible for the Democrats, that it was difficult to [00:11:00] envision any way in which they’d even be competitive in the state.

[00:11:02] And I, I mean, by that the, the sort of residual effects of foreign policy problems in Afghanistan, um, mm-hmm you had. Prices halting halting the halting kind of response to COVID or at least the reemergence and the new variance, the declaration of victory, a little prematurely on COVID as justice, higher prices, gas prices, inflation, all of these things.

[00:11:24] And, and so you’re looking, I was looking at the state text. I’m like, okay, let’s see. It’s a, it’s still a Republican state. The issue environment is horrible for the Democrats. I mean, short of a failure of the grid. Mm-hmm how are the Democrats gonna be competi? I think that’s changed slightly. I mean, you mentioned gun violence and abortion are two issues, right?

[00:11:42] Um, now I think in Texas, those things. I wouldn’t say they’re 50 50 in terms of their effect on the parties, but anything that’s not 70, 30 in favor of the Republicans is an improvement for the Democrats. Right. Right. Would you rather be talking about border security or would [00:12:00] you rather be talking about, uh, you know, gun violence and, uh, you know, preventing mass shootings and, um, you know, protecting abortion rights and things like that.

[00:12:08] So I, I, I think in Texas, unlike nationally, where the Democrats. Fairly significant advantages on abortion. At least in this context, we’re talking about protecting women’s mm-hmm right to an abortion, um, in Texas that advantage exists, but it’s, it’s kinda watered down a little bit, but anything’s better than talking about gas prices for, you know, another couple months,

[00:12:27] Jim Henson: right?

[00:12:27] Or, yeah, the Biden management of the economy. Exactly. And the border. I mean, Josh you’ve looked a lot. You spent a lot of time looking at these abortion numbers. I mean, there is an interesting dynamic in how the abortion numbers in Texas. Meet where the policy has wound up post ops.

[00:12:43] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, ultimately, I mean, just one quick sort to kind of go back and then come forward for a second.

[00:12:48] I mean, one of the things I think we were asking in June, you know, about all these dynamics that were at play both, you know, the role of, you know, say the economy inflation kind of the, the effect that was happening, even though it was getting a little bit better at that point. Uh, but [00:13:00] these other things like abortion and gun violence, and one of the things I think that we had talked about, you know, in one of the podcasts between then and now is the fact that, you know, maybe all this is already baked.

[00:13:08] Yeah. You know, we’re looking at a pretty steady set, steady set of polling results from a lot of, not just us from different entities that are all kind of showing the race kind of in the space of an Abbott lead of about, you know, five day points. The possibility could have could happen that, you know, you roll out of the summer, inflation’s outta the way the campaign start spending a bunch of money.

[00:13:26] And all of a sudden, you know, now we find out what the election’s about, but to Darren’s point, you know, even on the issues that kind of benefit the Democrats, it’s not enough. Yeah, and it’s not salient enough and that’s sort of the other piece here. So even though, you know, we asked, and that was really clear in this poll.

[00:13:41] Yeah. And we asked a lot of que I mean, you know, I’ll go to where you at and I’ll come back here. You know, we asked a lot of questions about abortion and I mean, not to discount it, cuz there’s some really interesting results in there. I think that, you know, we could dive into maybe on another day, but a lot of it is more of the same.

[00:13:52] I mean ultimately before the laws passed, you know, outline abortion the same before the Dobs, this decision. A majority wasn’t in favor of, you [00:14:00] know, an outright prohibition across circumstances. That’s just never been the case. And it doesn’t look like it’s gonna be the case anytime soon. But the issue here is that I think, you know, for people who think, well now, is this gonna change everything, you know, with this data kind of sell is probably not.

[00:14:14] And the reason is, is because the economy is so salient immigration and the border are SOST. And so when we looked at, in this poll, uh, issue PO you know, basically we looked at a set of 11 issues. That we kind of think that we thought were either, you know, the most sort of salient issues for voters and or that the campaigns were attempting to raise.

[00:14:30] So we had a nice balance of sort of issues that we think Abbott was trying to talk about. Some issues that both candidates were kind of thinking about. And then some issues that I think O’Rourke is trying to talk about. And then we can look at the main groups in the electorate that we think about, and we say, what are your most, you know, we said, first of all, who do you trust on each of these issue?

[00:14:44] How important is each of these issues and which is the most important. And if we look, you know, at the issues by group, what we find is, you know, among Republicans, among independents, among white voters, Hispanic voters, urban, suburban, and rural voters, they all said that immigration and border security was the most important issue.[00:15:00]

[00:15:01] So, this is an issue that Abbott, uh, that again, across the whole electorate, 48% said that Abbott would do a better job. On 36% said of works just a 12 point advantage in the electorate. And most voters think this is the top issue. The only, you know, group of voters who don’t think this is Democrats among whom abortion is the top issue, but.

[00:15:19] 21% shows it as the top issue, right? So about one in five gun control came second. So again, we’re, I mean, in some ways there’s a sense that gun control and abortion are kind of competing with each other for attention a little bit among Democrats. And then the third issue was climate change in the environment.

[00:15:33] So ultimately, you know, O’Rourke can, I mean, like, you know, that’s a tough sell in Texas. Well, I kind of, I mean, you know, not to, not to kind of get to sort of the end of my thing on this, but I mean, you kind of come out these numbers saying, yeah, you know, this prob I mean, my, I don’t like to predict things.

[00:15:45] I mean, cuz we’re forced to predict things even we don’t want to. Right. But I mean, if I were say, you know, what do you thinks gonna happen? I say, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t think O’Rourke has a good looking shot here based on the fact that yeah, he may be closer in the polls than, you know, a traditional democratic candidate has been Lupe Valles than a [00:16:00] Lupe Valdez.

[00:16:01] But if you look at the issue environment, you look at, uh, the di you know, the way that voters react on those issues, both to the candidates themselves, to Joe Biden, to Greg Abbott, you know, ultimately. It just seems like a pretty hard sell, uh, you know, Abbott has the ability to talk to, you know, to talk to Republicans about the two, you know, the two issues that are the most important to them, immigration border of security in, in the economy.

[00:16:25] And those are also pretty important issues to most, every other group of voters. But if you’re, O’Rourke, you’re trying to talk about abortion over here, right. And guns. And so. You know, there’s a mismatch there. Um, and so as, as, as strong as our work looks relative to other Democrats, and he has seen some improvement in some areas yeah.

[00:16:42] That he needs to see.

[00:16:43] Jim Henson: Well, the democratic enthusiasm was up to the extent that we’re thinking about this, you know, this kind of mobilization versus persuasion notion that we were talking about before we started recording, you know, that is a good news for O’Rourke’s mobilization [00:17:00] efforts, but. Democratic enthusiasm is still not a size Republican enthusiasm.

[00:17:04] And I think for you to, you know, for you to win, even get some leverage on that mobilization. Cool. Assuming that we’re getting, you know, good sample drives. You gotta, you know, Democrats have gotta surpass Republicans, I think. Yeah. Isn’t that right? I mean, yeah. It’s, I mean, that’s, I mean, that’s an oversimplification, but at some basic level, or if you’re, if you’re an award, you know, that’s starting from the baseline that you were talking about, Darren of a five to 10 point Republican advantage, you know, independents are probably gonna lean towards Republicans and that’s, that’s showing up in the data.

[00:17:34] Yeah. Then, you know, all things being equal. You gotta drive up democratic enthusiasm so that you can drive up democratic turnout. Yeah. In the

[00:17:40] Daron Shaw: last election, um, you know, in 2018, last midterm election mm-hmm , um, O’Rourke, uh, you know, was a, a new charismatic candidate running against, uh, you know, Ted Cruz as an in intense following, but Cruz was coming off a defeat in the Republican primary, you know, had some baggage presidential primary presidential, sorry.

[00:17:59] Um, in the presidential [00:18:00] primary, um, You know, the notion of crews in vulnerability was, was kind of, yeah. His persona took a hit, right. And by the way, just a quick note, I, I remember a story Ted Kennedy used to tell about his toughest reelection fight in Massachusetts. And he claim, they asked him about 1994, this big Republican wave year.

[00:18:16] And he cited 1982 the year after he’d lost the democratic primary to Jimmy Carter. And his argument was that he took huge hits. And not just hits nationally, but hits that were felt in Massachusetts. And I, I, I kept thinking about that in 2018 when cruise was running. Right. Um, but that was a year in which, uh, democratic enthusiasm, you know, anti-Trump sentiment.

[00:18:38] Um, you know, anti cruise sentiment in Texas knew. You know, hot candidate in Bero was off the charts. Yeah. And the question in that election was, you know, could crews get Republicans to match that democratic enthusi? Cause there was a, yeah. You know, the demo, I talked to several Republican consultants at the time and they said the democratic vote was there.

[00:18:56] It is, you know, yeah. They were gonna show up. And the question was whether, [00:19:00] you know, west Texas Republicans or, you know, moderate repo, you know, were they enthused enough to kind of save crews and, and, you know, turnout was over 8 million and they did, but I, I don’t feel that way in this election, this election, um, you know, it feels like enthusiasm is.

[00:19:16] You know, maybe even slightly favorable to the Republicans because of the national context. And, uh, you know, if, if Beto can get to, to parody, that’s probably pretty good, but he needs is a considerable amount more than parody

[00:19:28] Josh Blank: to off. Well, I mean, you know, one big difference between this election and that one was, you know, all our polling and I think others too, in that election showed independence, breaking decisively for O’Rourke.

[00:19:37] And it’s a small slice of the elector. But when you’re talking about, you know, tight margins, the small slices that add. And that’s clearly not the case, this whole that’s what’s going on here. Hasn’t been the case in these polls. I mean, right. It’s sort of, you know, there’s a glass half full glass, half empty thing for the Democrats here.

[00:19:50] And you can see some of this on the down ballot races too. I think, you know, when we look at favorability ratings, you know, we compare you URS and AVID’s favorability numbers. So not job approvals, but just to put ’em on a similar scale, [00:20:00] right. You know, 41% of voters have a favorable view of, of O’Rourke 48% have an unfavorable view on Abbott it’s even 45, 45.

[00:20:07] It’s not. he’s, you know, overwhelmingly popular here or he’s, you know, even stands at me. One of the things that I noticed recently, I have to go back and look for the August point, but in the June polling, uh, his job approval numbers in June that year were, were more negative among Democrats. Uh, then cruises were at the same time in the 2018 race.

[00:20:25] And the idea was that, you know, cruise is the boogieman Democrats, you know, hate Ted Cruz are gonna turn out to vote him out. And really, you know, I mean, a of attitude towards Abbott are even higher, but I think the thing that strikes me and, and you know about this is that, you know, but the issue environment just doesn’t reinforce anything that would help the Democrats.

[00:20:40] I mean, if we’re talking about immigration and border security, O’Rourke is in trouble.

[00:20:44] Daron Shaw: Yeah, I, I think, and what, the way you’ve expanded the conversation, Josh is, is also illustrative, you know, to, to, to Jim’s point earlier, how does a Democrat win in Texas? You know, given the Republican advantage, you have to have an issue environment that’s favorable, or you have to have a huge candidate.

[00:20:58] Advantage and, [00:21:00] you know, there’s probably some other, you know, a scandal or, you know, some sort,

[00:21:03] Josh Blank: well, we can, we can only speculate. Right? Right. Exactly. We can only speculate that’s since

[00:21:06] Jim Henson: 1990, it’s a four, it’s a pretty abstract exercise

[00:21:09] Daron Shaw: rate. And I I’m with you, you’re reading the tea leaves here and the, just to put some numbers to Josh’s earlier point, uh, what is the most important problem facing Texas?

[00:21:17] Josh talked about numbers within subgroups, but just overall 18% say rising prices. Um, you know, 12% say, um, Actually that’s the country. Wait, wait, let me go to Texas. Okay. Border security, 16 immigration 14. So it’s 30% saying immigration price, which is, which is over half of Republicans, right? Inflation, rising prices.

[00:21:34] 10%. Right? So, so that’s 40% saying immigration border security or

[00:21:38] Jim Henson: inflation, which are the things that the Abbott campaign has been wanting to talk about. Exactly. Exactly. Since the moment they conceived of themselves as a campaign, right.

[00:21:46] Daron Shaw: Mm-hmm by contrast abortion, 8% gun control, gun violence, 7%. So it’s 40 to 15.

[00:21:51] Um, you know, that’s just not an issue environment that smells like an upset to me. And you know, your number’s on the [00:22:00] favorability, the sort of personal ratings towards the candidates also O’Rourke is close to 50% unfavorable. Um, he’s taken a, I mentioned Cruz. I think O’Rourke took on, you know,

[00:22:10] Jim Henson: some water.

[00:22:11] You were saying that, but in many ways after the 20, 20 election, now I, I, I think. I don’t think he has been hurt quite as much, but that, but it, that is baked into the negatives. I mean, you were talking about Abbott being a known quantity, you know, attitudes towards O’Rourke are also pretty baked

[00:22:27] Josh Blank: in, well, it’s the inter inter it’s the intersection of these two things though, right?

[00:22:30] Yeah. I mean, ultimately, you know, I think for independence in 2018, you know, and this is just speculating this and some to some extent, but they were also extremely negative. Trump, who was kind of the main mobilizing factor of student sort of anti-Republican vote sentiment in that election. Right. Um, and so there, that was sort of sitting out there and, you know, and O’Rourke was able to do that without having developed all the negatives he’s developed.

[00:22:55] You know, now when you think about, you know, sort of the, the, the intersection between sort of the attitudes of [00:23:00] independence, combined with the issues that they’re talking about, cause independent attitudes, we should just say they’re gonna fluctuate, right? I mean, when we go and do fave, unfaves on these candidates from one pole to the next, there’s gonna be a lot more movement because they.

[00:23:08] Number one, they’re not paying as much attention in most cases, the next, you know, like really intense partisans, but also partisans are, are mourned by their partisanship. So either they’re looking at different news, they’re processing information in ways that, you know, again, reinforce their attitudes, whereas independents don’t have any of that.

[00:23:23] So is the issue environment, let’s say, you know, let’s just pretend first a second. We can play hypotheticals. Let’s say that the election was entirely about gun laws in Texas. well, if that was what the election were really about, then I would expect independents to be looking more favorably towards O’Rourke based on their underlying attitudes towards guns.

[00:23:39] But if it’s about immigration yeah. And you look at their underlying attitudes towards immigration, and I mean, one of the sort. Attitudes we’ve been highlighting in this poll is the fact that a majority of Texas voters, including large majority of Republicans and a majority of independents expressed, uh, support for the busing policy.

[00:23:55] Yeah. Right. And I think that’s something that, you know, again, if you’re in Texas, you know, I mean that could either seem surprising. You’re not surprising if you’re [00:24:00] outside of Texas. I think it should be, it’s probably pretty surprising based on the coverage you’ve seen. But ultimately the thing about the policy is unless you’re, you know, so you’re paying so much attention that you’re actually talking about an argument about the intention of the policy.

[00:24:13] Which is really like people like, you know, really focused, right? Politicos. A lot of people are just looking at this and you could be someone who has a native attitude who approves this policy. You could be someone who approves this policy on humanitarian grounds, but ultimately

[00:24:26] Daron Shaw: I’m pretty sure the avid people are quite

[00:24:27] Josh Blank: happy that, that, oh yeah, no.

[00:24:29] I mean the avid, I mean, look, it’s hard to look at this data. Not say that, you know, they’re playing. Yeah. I mean, that’s a very good chess match here. Yeah. That’s, it’s not really anywhere for. There’s no,

[00:24:36] Jim Henson: we thinking about, you know, what, to give pride a place and rolling this out and you know, well, let’s, I, you know, it gives you so much leverage on the political environment

[00:24:45] Daron Shaw: right now, I think.

[00:24:45] Yeah. Real real specifically. So Josh mentioned that the there’s good things for both sides. If I’m the O’Rourke people, I’m looking at the fact that, you know, you’re within five or six points, according to this poll, That avid is under 50% mm-hmm right. [00:25:00] That’s something that, um, I’m sure they’re happy about.

[00:25:02] Um, you know, that abortion and gun control are at least on the agenda. Um, you know, and that there, there is not overwhelming, you know, support for the, the Dobs decision and, you know, Texas’s trajectory, right? So maybe you had a little bit of a, you know, shaking up of an issue environment that was, you know, sort of universally bad, but if you’re the Abbott.

[00:25:25] You know, you’re up five points you’re winning with independence. Your side is fired up. There’s no Republican defection. The issue environment looks good. You’re more favorable than your opponent. That’s, you know, that’s a pretty, you know,

[00:25:37] Jim Henson: and you, you know, I mean, I might, I might

[00:25:39] Josh Blank: not have any debates and,

[00:25:40] Jim Henson: and yeah.

[00:25:41] I mean, well, you know, and the numbers that they’re seeing on, you know, not to beat a dead horse here, but the, you know, the numbers that they’re seeing on the busing policy is a real validation, not just. the policy, but of the campaign, part of the selling of that policy, right? Mm-hmm I mean, there is a real meeting.[00:26:00]

[00:26:00] You know, we kind of, we wrote in one of the rollout documents, I mean the style and the substance with this policy are really converging in the sense that, you know, Abbots critics are saying, oh, this is just, you know, to your point about, you know, the intent of the policy or the effect, the intent of the effect of the policy for most people that embrace it is the trolling.

[00:26:23] Nature of it. And the fact that, you know, the way that Abbott is. So it, and that’s a, you know, that’s, that’s an interesting adoption by to my mind, by a guy like governor Abbott of the more contemporary Pius style that, you know, Trump didn’t invent. I mean, you know, it’s fair to say, you know, really in Texas Cruz, Stan, Patrick were there first Abbott has not historically been.

[00:26:48] Quite that guy with this policy. He’s that guy, but you know, you know, you say, I,

[00:26:52] Daron Shaw: I think don’t yeah. I, I, I, I, I think that’s exactly right. I think the, the broader thing I’d say is that sometimes people look at policies [00:27:00] that are, um, pursued in Texas, whether it’s by Cruzs or whether it’s in this case by Abbott and, you know, think boy that’s, you know, that’s too much.

[00:27:08] That’s a, but within Texas, They get covered slightly differently. They’re felt slightly differently and they tend to be quite popular. This is the thing that Josh and I have talked about. And Jim, you probably were in these conversations too, where a lot of the, the sort of, uh, a program tossed on Ted Cruz, nothing.

[00:27:27] I can’t think of too many things Ted Cruz has done in terms of issue, positioning that don’t fit well with his constituents in. You know, and, and that, that’s what avid has really done here. I mean, I’m, I’m, I don’t know that there have been many

[00:27:41] Josh Blank: missteps. Well, I, I just wanna, I mean, I wanna add, go ahead.

[00:27:43] I’ll add something to what you said. Well, I, I

[00:27:45] Jim Henson: wanna move on to something else so quickly.

[00:27:48] Josh Blank: Yeah. Okay. I mean, all I wanna say is, you know, you made the point that, you know, for, for a lot of people who support the policy, you know, sort of the fact that it’s trolling is, is the value. But I would actually say, you know, one, I think we can look in the data a little bit further to kind of figure that out a little [00:28:00] bit.

[00:28:00] But I think the other piece of this is that, you know, this is another example of where I think, you know, national. almost universally, but a lot of Democrats in Texas in particular really undervalue the issue of the border here. You know, they tend to think of it all as symbolic, all as you know, this idea of trolling and all that kind of stuff.

[00:28:18] Right. But the reality is, you know, if you and I serve, this is like a, a weird analogy, but I think it works. You know, if you think about, if you live in, if you’re in a Democrat who lives in any urban area and think about the, the sort of, uh, uproar that occurs when some homeless people start to move on your.

[00:28:32] Well, imagine what happens if you’re in a community and you’ve got, you know, some number of undocumented immigrants, you know, basically driving through in a high speed chase once a week, once a month, it doesn’t really matter. It’s an issue. Yeah. It’s a serious issue. And so really you, yes, some people want to troll, but I think for, uh, you know, probably a not insignificant share of that support, there are people who just say, great.

[00:28:51] You know, ultimately they, you know, I mean, ultimately you wanna move, you want, but partially either whether you’re spreading out, you know, the, the problem, whether you’re moving them onto their next destination. Yeah. [00:29:00] Whatever. But I mean, you know, there, there’s a, there’s a NIMBY aspect that you could imagine, you know, to some aspect of this too, that I think is, is, is that

[00:29:07] Jim Henson: there?

[00:29:07] I don’t disagree with this, that, but I would say that, you know, I mean, you know, per something, you know, data, you put together. the number, the share voter of the electorate. That’s actually experiencing those problems you’re talking about is pretty small. Oh, sure. Right. And I do, but, but I mean, I was pretty deliberate in saying I, it’s not just the trolling, it’s the fact that the trolling delivery and the integration of that trolling aspect of the policy does merge.

[00:29:34] The substance of a lot of anxieties concerns, mm-hmm, objections to, to immigration and border excuse. So, so I think it’s the merging of the substance. It’s not that it’s just completely Vaus or that we’re not. Yeah, but I think that, but what you’re talking about does show up in our numbers in terms of, you know, a non-trivial amount of Democrats say, for example, yeah.

[00:29:58] About one

[00:29:58] Daron Shaw: in five or yeah. Who supportive of the [00:30:00] policy,

[00:30:00] Jim Henson: who, who approve of the policy and some of them are probably. You know, as you were alluding to earlier, people would go, oh, how nice we’re giving these people rides just, just a, you know, real, but there’s also people that are just do like it just a real

[00:30:11] Daron Shaw: quick point too.

[00:30:12] It, the, the Biden administration’s reaction to the, the situation on the border, I think is really interesting. One, it sort of proves this point that nobody’s ever willing to admit they messed up anything at any time, for any reason. Yeah. Uh, this is Republicans and Democrats. Yeah. Um, that unwillingness. I, I think hurts them in Texas and in Arizona and some other places where you’re just sort of saying this isn’t an issue.

[00:30:35] What are you talking about? This is just, you know, right. Partisanship. And now in Arizona, I think they care. I don’t think they care that much in Texas. Um, now they may care because a key constituency seems to be. You know, slipping through their fingers. Um, you know, but, but we’ll see how that plays out. I I’ve got a, a pet theory for another time about, for God’s sakes, with one party or the other, just come up and say, you know what, we didn’t play this.

[00:30:57] Right. But we’ve learned from it and we’re gonna do, you know, well,

[00:30:59] Josh Blank: they do [00:31:00] that sometimes they usually just ignore it within two years.

[00:31:01] Jim Henson: Yeah. That’s what they do. Yeah. But there’s also something, you know, intrinsically difficult about that on the border. Because it’s so complicated. Right. And the things that you have to do are so structural and it’s most of the things most administrations on both sides have tried.

[00:31:17] Yeah. Don’t have much of an impact. I, I wanted to move on to the other races just a little bit. And, um, you know, we were talking about the degree to which that, you know, this kind of stylistic thing helps people and Abbott is, you know, and I mentioned, you know, Dan, Patrick and, and Ken Paxton have already been in that place for a.

[00:31:36] I think it’s fair to say mm-hmm , you know, and that, that , that pugnaciousness was part of their brand pretty early on. Certainly Dan Patrick, you know, Paxton, maybe, you know, even when he was in the Senate was, you know, a pretty far to the right, but it’s obviously become much more combative to some degree, you know, now that he’s under siege, you.

[00:31:57] When I look at our poll numbers on [00:32:00] these races, I always feel like it’s really hard to get much out of them. I mean, you can get a little bit here and there and I’m just wondering. You know, there’s, there’s been a lot of fizz in both of those races, you know, among insiders. Um, you know, there was a kind of discarded rumor that was circulating a few days ago about the fact that, you know, people were interpreting some actions attributed to the Lieutenant governor as a sign that he thought he was in trouble.

[00:32:28] They pushed back on that, you know, I mean, this is just at the rumor level, but just the fact that those things are being discussed. I mean, for a long time, Lieutenant governor, Patrick, You know, wouldn’t even mention caller’s name and he did sort of call him out by name. I think fairly recently. I I’m wondering what you make of that, what you guys make of that race.

[00:32:45] And even if you’ve heard anything,

[00:32:47] Daron Shaw: Darren, I don’t know, but no nobody’s focused on it. I mean, we, you know, we as pollsters, we like to have it both ways, which is we, we understand that, uh, you know, the trial ballots are the. The ice cream for the media [00:33:00] and, and political practitioners and pundits. So it’s already missed this discussion.

[00:33:05] This is how we draw you in. Um, and it’s not that the numbers are, you know, phony up or, you know, that we don’t have confidence in them. It’s just that we always take them with a, with a large degree of, um, you know, Be careful here. Uh, and be careful here don’t hurt yourself or us, right? That, that you are talking about between one out five, or probably closer to one out of four people don’t have an opinion.

[00:33:28] They haven’t thought about it. They don’t know very much. We know about Paxton. We know about, um, you know, Patrick and all of the issues associated with them. And so do a few people. Um, but for the most part, you know, when you’re talking about electric where you’re gonna get 9 million or so Texan’s voting on this, the, you know, if a million of them really have an opinion about Paxton or, you know, Patrick I’d be surprised.

[00:33:53] Right. So that’s interesting. So what we’re, what we’re talking about here is, uh, you know, essentially a party vote. As you see it right [00:34:00] now with a lot of people saying, like, I don’t really know what the party dynamic is here. Um, I, I do think that the small thing that I would point on is both Patrick and Paxton, as you’ve alluded to Jim, have taken on some damage over the course of their incumbencies.

[00:34:12] Right. And so, um, you know, the, the question for them, and this is what the Patrick campaign I’m sure is dealing with right now, is are people gonna focus enough on this. So that I want to name my opponent and brand my opponent in a negative way. Um, or do I want to ignore him and simply kind of assume people are gonna go down ballot and vote, Republican, Republican, Republican.

[00:34:35] I’m gonna be okay. And this is, this is a classic. Lower ballot. I know light go and ag are not, you know, they’re consequential racists, but they’re still down ballot. Yeah. We’re all adults here. Yeah, exactly. so what do you do? What’s the smart play. Do you assume that that Collier and Garza are going to spend sufficient money to develop a brand?

[00:34:56] and therefore you want to get in there and influence that branding, [00:35:00] or do you assume that so much oxygen is gonna be consumed by the gubernatorial race and national politics that, uh, I’m just gonna glide along? I don’t wanna bring any attention

[00:35:07] Jim Henson: to them. Yeah. And there’s a lot of real inside baseball going on here.

[00:35:10] I mean, in the last week we had kind of a flare up in the Fort worth Tarrant county area where. You know, a few prominent, local elected officials, current and former kind of made a point of going out and saying, Hey, look, I’m not mentioning anybody by name, but I’m not voting for all the Republican. I’m not voting straight Republican ticket.

[00:35:32] And I think that did probably rattle some of the down ballot people. I don’t think they’re talking about the governor yeah. Right. And I, and I think the signal was, they’re not talking about

[00:35:45] Josh Blank: the governor. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I agree with everything that Darren said and, and I think, you know, there’s some stuff in the poll that really illustrates this dynamic explicitly and very, very particularly.

[00:35:54] So, I mean, the first thing I’ll just point out, we’ve pointed this out a couple times is, you know, Patrick and Paxton. I mean, despite [00:36:00] the fact that Paxton has all the legal baggage associated with. You know, they look pretty similar. I mean, just in terms of evaluations, job approvals, I mean, among Republicans, uh, favorability ratings, 68% have a favorable view of Dan Patrick, 11% unfavorable view for Paxton at 66, 12.

[00:36:14] I mean, that’s the same thing as far as we’re concerned as pollsters. What’s interesting what I did notice, and this is something that I think is one benefit of us doing more polling. We see these little changes, but I would also say this strikes me as different than prior elections I’ve seen is the extent to which the democratic candidates were.

[00:36:29] Increase their name ID and do so positively among their voters. And this is the thing is that they’ve been mostly ignored by the Republican case and the, the data also reflects that. So for example, Mike Collier in April polling, uh, 25% of Democrats had a favorable view of him. 11% had an unfavorable view, uh, in this poll, it was 48, 7.

[00:36:47] uh, among Hispanics, he went from 11, 11 favorable unfaves to 28, 9, uh, Rochelle Garza, the democratic ag candidate a little bit, even, even more impressive. In some ways she went from 25, 8 unfaves among Democrats to 52, 2 [00:37:00] among Hispanics. She went from eight, nine to 32 13 and. This was not matched in any way by a, a comparable or even small increase in negative ratings among Republicans because ultimately they’re being ignored.

[00:37:11] Right? I mean, this is, this is the election point here. So on the one hand, I think, you know, when I say glass half full glass, half empty for down ballot, democratic candidates, this kind of increase in name ID, even among Democrats. I think. Is impressive. I mean, just having gone back and done these elections, I mean, you could, you could run the entire campaign and no one, and we could still be at the end and not have half of Democrats with a view of who the democratic ag candidate is.

[00:37:32] Right. Like that’s a possibility. So on the one hand, there’s that on the other hand, when you look at the top of the ticket and you’d say, well, ROIP plus five and Paxton’s at plus five and. Abbots of plus five. Yeah. Abbots at plus five and PS at plus five. And Patrick’s a plus seven, you know, I mean, if I’m sitting there thinking, look, well, you know, if Abbott thinks he’s gonna win to Darren’s point, I’m probably gonna win too.

[00:37:55] And there’s not a lot in these numbers that makes you think there’s any reason not to believe that to be the case, even though I [00:38:00] think, you know, the Democrats in these races are actually doing a, a relatively remarkable job, getting their name out there. Yeah. In such a big state. It’s probably not enough.

[00:38:08] Right. And I wanna

[00:38:08] Jim Henson: be, you know, I’ll be a little touchy feely about this. I think you can’t underestimate in terms of the internal dynamics in these campaigns right now, the experience that Paxton Patrick had in 2018, where they won by much narrower margins yeah. Than they expected. I mean, you know, was it a little less than five?

[00:38:29] Yeah. In the, in the, in the Collier, uh, um, Patrick race. You know, and I, as you were talking about 2018, Darren, I was remembering the story that I heard shortly, you know, like right around that time, as it was, you know, shortly after it happened and then showed up in some news coverage. So I feel free to talk about it, but that, you know, when the, when the early voting numbers came in, there was kind of an emergency call at the top of the ticket.

[00:38:55] And I, you know, I won’t ask you if you were on it, but you know, in which, you [00:39:00] know, everybody said, Hey, we know you have money left. democratic turnout is very high. Go out and spend your damn money, you know, on election day turnout for Republicans, you know, I, I, it’s probably a little extreme to say that saved cruise, but I be, it helped a lot.

[00:39:20] And so I think that dynamic is going on out there and it’s, and it’s coloring this a little bit and I think it does make people a little

[00:39:26] Daron Shaw: touchy. Yeah. I mean, that’s that’s right. I, I remember talking to some Republicans and I probably told this story, so I apologize if people have heard it before, but, uh, they were saying that once turnout creeped above 8 million in 2018, they felt good.

[00:39:41] They felt good if it was 7 75, 7 80 it 7.8, 7.9 million. They were concerned because they thought the variable in that election was Republican. And to your point, Jim Republican election day turnout. Yeah. I don’t know if the same dynamic exists here. I mean, I do think there’s a little bit of this election.

[00:39:59] The context [00:40:00] is different this time. Yeah. But, but, um, but the question about, you know, are we gonna get our people out? Are they gonna get their people out? Is, is still the question. And, you know, I think right now we’ll probably talk about this, you know, a little bit. Attitudinally Republicans do look a little more fired up about if, if we were to at this point and we don’t run a likely voter screen right now, we don’t because our belief is that, you know, it’s largely based on attitudes and attitudes in late August are, are not kind of sufficiently predictive.

[00:40:32] Yeah.

[00:40:33] Jim Henson: And traditionally, what we’ve done is we’ve we. Switch to a likely voter screen in October, because then we’re getting up to where people are actually thinking about thinking about voting, right?

[00:40:43] Daron Shaw: Cause what’ll happen is, you know, there’s usually a skew to who’s interested and who’s engaged. And the other side comes to a, you know, comes to be more concerned, more interested, more involved late.

[00:40:52] And if you’re running a likely voter screen in may or June, it, it looks like, wow, look at all this movement. When in fact it’s, it’s just one side coming to the [00:41:00] party a little late. And so we just don’t think. Those screens are very pretty

[00:41:04] Josh Blank: conversation for another day, but I mean, I don’t know about you, but like, so how certain are you about what turnout’s gonna be?

[00:41:09] Yeah, I’m not exactly.

[00:41:10] Daron Shaw: Yeah, exactly. So, but, um, but all those caveats and, and hopeful. You know, and reasonable people

[00:41:17] Jim Henson: disagree about

[00:41:17] Daron Shaw: this. Yeah. I mean, we’re not, it’s not exactly. Um, but, uh, but I, I would say that if you look at Josh’s chick another, no. Yeah. But if you look at unreasonable, people can disagree, right?

[00:41:27] if you look at some of our, our measures upfront about how fired up you are, how likely are to vote that. And if you look at the, the ballots amongst those voters, The Republican advantage increases. Yeah. Um, and people are free to take a look at that. Um, you know, in the

[00:41:40] Josh Blank: survey. Yeah. And that’s, and this is the whole thing though, but I mean, I think, you know, this reflects what we know, which is that Republicans have a, you know, a reliable majority in the voting electorate because they have for the last 20 years.

[00:41:50] And so, you know, we’re looking, because we’re interested in this to see, are there indications of the change? Are there indications that the environment has shifted in such a way so that we would suspect that this might be different [00:42:00] and ultimately what we tend to find, what we’re tending to find here?

[00:42:02] You know, a reinforcement, you know, data that reinforces the patterns that we’ve witnessed, but those patterns also include it increasingly competitive though. Overly competitive environment, right? Yeah. And that’s what we’re seeing here, you know, so it’s a closer race. It’s more interesting, you know, unless something changes dramatically in terms of the issue set, I think, you know, before election day, or,

[00:42:22] Jim Henson: or as you said in this is for you Ross Ramsey or an exo or an exogenous

[00:42:26] Josh Blank: shock.

[00:42:26] Yeah. That’s what I mean by, I mean, that’s what I would almost expect to have happen. I mean, that’s almost what would have to happen.

[00:42:30] Daron Shaw: So that was Ross’s nickname in high school. . Ooh, I hope he’s listening. I actually that’d be a great

[00:42:36] Jim Henson: nickname as long as we’re, as long as we’re ranging. I, I don’t think I’ve told you this, Darren.

[00:42:40] I think, uh, uh, Josh knows this, but, um, when U of H released their poll report for one of their recent reports, they used the term exogenous shock in the report, and I sent it to Ross and I, and I sent it to Ross in an email. It was shortly after Ross had retired going, see, it’s not just us. And his only [00:43:00] response was what’s wrong with you.

[00:43:01] People .

[00:43:03] Daron Shaw: Well, that’s a

[00:43:03] Jim Henson: broader, relevant question talking about a different podcast, right? No, I think that’s, I think that’s right. So to, to wind it up guys, but let’s, uh, you know, uh, you know, I’m pretty satisfied with the degree to which we’ve kind of really unpacked the environment a bit here, but I, you know, I wanna do what we always do, which is, you know, ask you guys.

[00:43:23] You know, something interesting that stuck out to you that we might not have touched on yet, or if we did, and you want to expand a little more the got expand on the mind because somebody used it on me on Twitter today. how about

[00:43:34] Daron Shaw: it? I’ll go. Uh, I’ll go first. You know the right direction, wrong track question, which is a staple polling.

[00:43:41] It has been since, uh, I wanna say Bob Teeter came up with this question back in the late sixties and early seventies. Um, if, if you look at, um, the disjuncture between the national and the state numbers, it’s, it’s another reason. I’m not sure if I were a Republican, I’d be thrilled with this in Texas, but it’s notable 69% of people say that the [00:44:00] country is moving in the wrong direct.

[00:44:02] 52% say the state of Texas is moving in the wrong direction. And you might look at that and say like, well, 50 that’s a majority who think Texas is moving in the wrong direction. Well, there’s, there’s kind of a traditional bias in response to that question. The, the negative response, even when things are just flying everybody, you know, there’s a tendency for people to say, well, I’m not, I still think we’re moving in the wrong direction because it invokes some sort of morality kind of evaluation or something, but that’s a 17 point difference.

[00:44:29] Um, you know, so you’ve got this and, and I think it’s relevant to the conversation we’re having, which is people think the country’s got some real problems and, and they’re not happy with sort of the performance of either party. Um, in Texas it’s it’s ambivalent. It’s not quite as positive and Rosey as it was maybe 10 years ago.

[00:44:49] Um, but there’s still a notable disjuncture and I think that’s yeah, probably good for incumbents, right.

[00:44:55] Jim Henson: I’m not devil’s advocate, but, but that number I suspect Josh is gonna wait and now I’ve [00:45:00] jump. But, but that number is high. I mean, it’s only, you know, it’s only what the fourth time it’s been over 50, 50% in the history of the poll and three

[00:45:08] Josh Blank: and three polls in a row this year.

[00:45:10] Right. So, you know, there’s, there’s something there, even if, even if,

[00:45:13] Jim Henson: but I stands though, Darren. there’s still the presence of the contrast in the national environment is pretty, are

[00:45:20] Josh Blank: you saying it could be so much worse?

[00:45:23] Daron Shaw: something like that. Well, as I said, there’s something for everybody in the, in the polling numbers and there is there as well.

[00:45:28] Jim Henson: How about

[00:45:28] Josh Blank: you Josh? Oh, there’s a lot of things, you know, we could talk about, but I guess, you know, I pick one, I’m gonna pick one, I’ll try lightning round you know, I think, you know, looking ahead, I guess I’ll look ahead. I mean, there’s two, two directions. I could have gone as I could look back or look ahead.

[00:45:42] I’ll look ahead. You know, one of the things we asked about was. You know, future abortion laws here in Texas. Ultimately, you know, we’re gonna have this election, most likely Republicans are going to be, you know, holding all. You know, statewide offices Al more certain than that, they’ll have a majority of seats in the legislature.

[00:45:58] Yeah. Both the, the house and the Senate. [00:46:00] And so the question becomes, you know, we have one of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. Now what, and we ask basically, you know, would you approve or disapprove of Texas, you know, enact acting policies. And we say, design two, we

[00:46:10] Jim Henson: have, it’s a good way to sneak a bunch of different things is one Uhhuh

[00:46:14] Josh Blank: And so, you know, so. Have expanded legal access, which got a majority support, 50%, 31% were opposed. This would be thinking about like cases of rape incest, things like that. But all of the other sort of, you know, further enforcement mechanisms, you know, had majority, uh, oppositions. So, you know, just incre you know, basically increasing resources to the state’s enforcement was opposed by 51% only supported by 26, trying to prevent the travel of, uh, you know, women to get abortions and states where it’s legal was opposed by 60%.

[00:46:43] Of voters only supported by 18, you know, trying to further prevent, you know, the shipping of, of abortion pills to the mail, 54% opposition, penalizing companies that pay for travel 52% opposition, 29% support. I imagine, as we talk about these issues, more, the support is gonna tick up among Republicans once they’re sort of, if there’s a [00:47:00] focus on one or the other, but as of right now, I mean, this is something that we’ve been talking about.

[00:47:03] And this may, I don’t know, this is probably not gonna play out in this election is what it looks like, but this is kind of. The next kind of big thing around this space is gonna be okay. We’ve we’ve banned, but what does that really mean now? Yeah, and

[00:47:14] Jim Henson: I, I think to pick up on that from the, you know, and I’m glad you kind of brought something that brings the legislature into it, what’s gonna be interesting is going to be what I would anticipate, being a contrast between how this set this configuration of public opinion is viewed differently by the leadership in the Senate and the leadership in the house.

[00:47:35] Yeah.

[00:47:35] Josh Blank: I’ll tell you what, I’ll tell you what. No one wants to talk about any of this stuff right now. Well, you know, I don’t

[00:47:39] Jim Henson: know. No, not right now. No, not right now. Not right. Not right now, but I, you know, I think the Lieutenant governor may, well want to talk about it some more. Yeah. Come January. Oh yeah. If he wins, you know, which again, what about you more likely than not?

[00:47:52] What about you? Well, you know, I’m gonna do something that I think is both backwards and forwards. Right. Cause that’s how I am. That is that that’s on brand. Yes. Um, [00:48:00] and that is, um, you know, we did a battery of questions where we asked people about. You know, whether they thought, you know, three different things should be legal in Texas.

[00:48:11] And we asked about, so a

[00:48:12] Josh Blank: battery is

[00:48:13] Jim Henson: multiple questions. Yeah. Three, well, yes, exactly. But I’m only gonna focus on one. Oh, okay. um, I’m gonna mention what the three R just to provide context, um, is the marriage, whatever interracial marriage. And access the contraception. The outlier in that group was same sex marriage.

[00:48:32] And several years now after the, uh, the, the Supreme. Uh, uh, struck down state bans on gay marriage. Those numbers had not moved very much. Um, and I think that’s why I’m saying it’s both backwards and forwards on one hand. I think there were, I mean, I have friends that are, you know, probably, you know, either on the progressive or libertarian side of things that kind of felt like this was settled.

[00:48:58] Yeah. Right. [00:49:00] And as we’ve been looking. This kind of, Revant sort of cultural politics arising again in the country, but particularly in Texas, it’s very interesting to see that this is not settled among Republicans in particular. Yeah. Right. A lot, you know, this is, this is something that. And, and this came up in the aftermath of the Dobs decision and the, some of the underlying logic related to Griswold.

[00:49:24] And so I think this is a very, this is a very interesting, well, it’s also result in terms of moving forward in, you know, what we see opened up in, in the state. It has

[00:49:34] Josh Blank: a little bit of a right now piece to it too, because I mean, to the extent that, uh, you know, the house. To bill co codifying, same sex marriage.

[00:49:40] Uh, a couple of Texas Republicans actually voted for it. Yeah. Which was, which has been problematic. Right. Which they’ve heard about, they’ve heard about, uh, and some of the Democrats who voted for it in some of the board areas, those guys probably heard about

[00:49:52] Jim Henson: it. So these Republicans probably wish that we had done this polling.

[00:49:54] We’d asked this question a little sooner,

[00:49:56] Josh Blank: maybe. So, so you know, so this is, this is so, I mean, it’s interesting that, you know, [00:50:00] to the extent that like, you know, the house took this up. The idea was, you know, to the end of that people thought like, oh, maybe, you know, this is uncontroversial. Well, the aftermath has shown that it was not, not uncon controversial and the polling reinforces

[00:50:11] Jim Henson: why.

[00:50:12] Yeah. Yeah. So I, I, I just, I thought that was really interesting and, you know, I, I. It’s one of those things where you go, well, I’m not surprised in retrospect, but when I first saw it, I was a little surprised. Yeah. So guys, thanks a lot. This has been, you know, more fun than people should have at work. thank you.

[00:50:31] Appreciate it. Oh, so thanks Darren shot. Thanks Josh blank. Thanks to all of you for listening as always, um, particularly we’ve run long today. Thanks a lot to our excellent production team in the audio studio in the liberal arts development studio at UT Austin. Um, again, thanks to you for listening.

[00:50:46] Remember, uh, new polling data out. Today, you can find it out at Texas politics dot U, texas.edu. If you go to the website, click on the polling tag, go to the blog and you’ll find it. Um, but really, you know, [00:51:00] we do a pretty good job on Google. If you, you can also just hit the latest poll link, um, and they you’ll find the product again of a ton of work by Josh and that there are several hundred.

[00:51:12] Free downloadable graphics and multiple formats that you can use for teaching. Just he, he I’m I’m sorry. He always wants to it’s

[00:51:19] Josh Blank: thousands. Right? Well, there’s several hundred sets of graphics and there are about, no, I meant for, for one. Yeah. For one pole, there are several hundred sets of graphics.

[00:51:27] There’re actually a thousand or more individual. I know why you ever

[00:51:30] Daron Shaw: do a shout out for him? He can’t just take, he can’t just take it. Drop

[00:51:33] Jim Henson: the mic. Hey, thanks man. yeah, it’s great. Anyway, thanks to Josh for all the work. Go find the zillions of graphics there. There you go. Thank you. Josh built by hand by hand.

[00:51:44] Yep. Three them working 24 hours a day. uh, for all of us, for the good of the people of Texas in America, I don’t even build a

[00:51:51] Daron Shaw: state for, at

[00:51:51] Jim Henson: all. Well, fighting. Well fighting crime. So thank you very much for listening. We’ll be back next week with another second reading podcast. [00:52:00] The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas politics project at the university of Texas at Austin.