September 3rd, 2021 – Second Reading Podcast

Welcome to the 2nd 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? Yeah. 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. And uh this is a off schedule version of the podcast we’re recording on the friday before Labor Day weekend. We changed our usual schedule to accommodate the release this week of a new texas politics project poll. And so I’m joined by the best person to talk about that with josh blank. Uh the research director for the texas politics project here at ut josh. Good morning. We’re still in mourning. Yeah, Good morning. Um so the poll we just released has, you know, as always results on a ton of subjects we focused as we have been, you know, as part of a kind of growing research project that we have undertaken on the covid pandemic a lot of trend data on that. Lots of focus on the texas legislature on issues and politics, both before the legislature and kind of surrounding it in a way um which I suspect some of that will come up now, you know, when we talk about these polls that inevitably gets us into, you know, my notes say the details. I almost my head went to save the weeds. Um, but it’s hard not to read into this poll, some big features of the current moment where we are in texas politics and really where the state is. You know, we talked about that. I mean, you know, I think we always feel that way a little bit, but there’s a certain kind of zeitgeist uh sense that I get from this pool. And so I think what we ought to do today is, you know, start with a look at the big picture and the political landscape in the state. I mean, I don’t want to misrepresent you josh. I mean, I think you got that sense to that’s not to say that there aren’t good details here, but there’s a certain there’s something hanging over this. Yeah. I mean, I was sort of kind of half smirking here, you know, as you were kind of setting that up because you repeated the word focus a few times. And I was sort of, you know, I’m struck by it because I think one thing that is so difficult about writing this poll in some ways, this sort of trying to figure out where to look right. I mean, there’s so much going on, you brought up, you know, you know, the delta very resurgent covid pandemic. You think about all the things that have been going on during the special session, the special session is a topic unto itself. But you think about the relationships between, You know, the governor and the legislature, between the governor and the legislature and local governments, you know, between the chambers. And then that’s even before you get into the policy debates in some ways, you know, there is the idea of focus right now kind of where to look as hard. It’s almost why I think it is probably best to maybe take a step back and say, let’s just let’s start at 30,000 ft before we before we get into the quote unquote weeds, if you will, although I can’t promise I want, I can’t Well, I mean, you know, I mean, you know, all the, you know, as I always say, you know, all the pieces matter and you know, but I guess what I’m getting at it, you know, in some ways, you know, and this is my own cognitive template. You know, it all kind of fits together in a way this time. It just feels like a little bit more well today, again, a little bit more in focus even from 30,000 ft and looking at the big picture than than is often the case. Now, you know, maybe, you know, there’s just things that pointed in that direction. So, you know, I mean, there’s a lot of things we could look at. So, I mean, the good place to start thinking about looking at this, you know, looking at the big picture is to look at the more macro level estimations and this really, you know, I mean I guess I guess it’s you know, it’s feels you know, part of the work, this little doozy to do this, but to connect you know, our social media presence with our podcast, but you know, I was really struck by, you know, as I was trying to pick up things to begin to distribute on twitter as we were rolling to pull out just how much one of the early things that I pushed out on um the right track, Wrong direction, number, right direction, wrong track numbers for texas just really sort of seem to resonate with a lot of people at least in our twitterverse. Yeah, I mean I think the thing that really, I mean, you know, just to put the number on it there, you know, this is the first time since October 2009 so long we’ve been conducting this poll that a majority of Texans said that the state is headed on the wrong track. So 52% said wrong track, 35% said right direction. That’s a pretty sharp uptick in the share of people who said wrong track it, but you know, as you see, I mean you’re as you’re talking about the idea of things coming into focus, you know, I was thinking about a conversation I think we had on this podcast prior, you know about the idea that, you know, when you’re looking around at the number of crises that the state was, you know, seem to be facing in the last few months, whether, you know, from external circumstances or from their own, you know, approach to those circumstances and others that things were looking kind of hinky. I mean, we were kind of, I think we were asking this question hinky, That’s right. I mean, we’re not trying to be that wasn’t in the right direction. Or are they on the hanky track? Well, I think the kinky was the word when it’s like, you know, when we weren’t sure when we weren’t sure about what the public reaction would be to sort of the perpetual conflicts. I mean, you know, we sort of had this idea. I think we were, I think we said this maybe not, but I’ll say it again. Which is, you know, with all that was going on with the democrats leaving, you know, Abbott repeatedly calling the special sessions. It kind of felt it had the feel of like a government shutdown in a way. I mean, it wasn’t a government shutdown, but the idea of hey republicans are in control of the whole system here. And yet it seems like there’s a fair amount of dysfunction going on how and the question was at that time is why I say hinky and now we can say a little bit more clearly dour. How are we to link up our presence is how how are people reacting to all this? Because I think, you know, one of the things that, you know, I think we’re already starting this off with is there’s so many things you could focus on and I don’t expect everybody to focus on all things, right? I mean, we try to, you know, we try to be as informed on all these things that we possibly can, but we do that professionally for the normal voter out there. You know, they’re going to pick up bits and pieces of what’s going on. And the question is, what were they picking up and how are they interpreted it? I think that, you know, if you look across the scope of the pole at the sort of general level, in terms of the mood questions, some of the job approval numbers, uh, you know, attitudes about texas’s economy, everything went down. Some of that is certainly due to covid I don’t want to accept that I don’t want to keep that is separate. But, you know, my interpretation is, yeah. You know, people look at all this stuff going on during the summer and kind of said, you know, this doesn’t look right. Yeah. And I think that, you know, it’s interesting and you want to actually, that’s not to say that there’s a partisan direction to that person, that you kind of. Well, I mean, yeah, I mean, I think, yeah, I mean, unpacking how partisanship, I mean, I think contributes to this is a is a piece of it. I mean, it’s, You know, it’s been interesting as people, you know, in the last 24 hours since we released this, and I’ve talked to a few people about it, you know, people really, as I said, people are really seized on this number. Um, and, you know, the follow up question of like, well, why is that? And it’s, like, unpacked it? I mean, I was talking to to somebody at kicks A M this morning, and as we were kicking around the idea of, like, well, you know, as you were saying, that’s repeated, you know, there’s a bunch of things out there that could be contributing to this and probably are. And by the time you get through going through those things, I I found myself kind of going, you know, maybe I’m maybe I’m a little surprised that number, that wrong track number isn’t higher. You know, and so when you start kind of looking at looking at it that way, you know, there’s a lot out there and you do see it, you know, and you see it in other places in the poll, I mean, you’re you’re right, It is, I mean, you could say it is a little surprising, it’s not higher, but a lot of people also hide in the neither right, I don’t have an opinion. So that’s that’s the thing if you look at that right track, wrong track number. You know 50 to say right track 35 say wrong track that doesn’t equal 100%. The remainder chose not to offer an opinion. But I think an important point here. Also as we look at from the last poll, the share of Democrats who said that the state is on the wrong track Increased by eight points from 70 to 78%. Okay so Democrats much more negative but also the wrong track number among Republicans increased 10 points from 21% to 31%. So so so each party was almost was you know almost equally and actively contributing to the uptick in the in the wrong track numbers. And that’s that’s sort of the you know there’s sort of a big picture element to that which is like you know when I say it’s not solely partisanship, it’s not all in one direction, it’s a lot going on here. Yeah I mean because I think you see I mean because the direction of the U. S. Numbers are not not particularly far off. I mean they’re worse. They’re more dismal. There are 64 25 but it’s the 64 wrong track 25 right track right direction but it’s still you know in the ballpark of people just feeling like things aren’t working well now. You know it seems like jump to the national I mean you know, you can look as we look at different places. I mean, some of the candidates for this and think about what the what the broad strokes portrait is. You know, I mean, I think this I know you I mean, how do you how do you think polar partisan polarization plays into this or do you think it does? I mean, we just talked about how and I don’t mean in terms of feeding the right track wrong truck and tracking a partisan within a partisan pattern. You know, I think I’m thinking more about the kind of, you know, the experiential part of the partisan polarization that we’re seeing. Yeah. And that’s a that’s a that’s an interesting interesting question. I mean, I guess two things kind of come to mind and I’m not sure, you know, if you have an idea where again where you want me to go with this, but I’ll know I’m, you know, honestly, I put it in the notes and I and I feel like, you know, I think this is a thing, but I don’t think you and I have talked about it in this term and yeah, sure. I mean, one of the things, I think right now is I think I think Covid obviously complicates things, you know, I mean if I think back over the decade of polling that we’ve we’ve done here. You know, I think about the last time we had a democrat in the White House in Barack Obama, it was it was so clear that texas was so texas so clearly positioned itself in contrast to the federal government. You know, and so it was very clear, you know, the sort of Obama would want to do this and then sort of, you know, whoever the attorney general was, the type of the state government would say, not on our watch, we’re going to lead the fight. And in some ways, I mean, that’s where republicans in texas are kind of at their at their best, at least for republicans. Right? I mean, that sort of sets up a clear, you know, us versus them mentality, uh, which right now, I think, you know, covid kind of cuts through that a little bit because ultimately, you have somewhere between a quarter and a third of republicans who, you know, want to see Covid taken seriously, you know, at the state level. And so I think that creates a complexity. And I think the only thing that kind of keeps, you know, those numbers from getting potentially a little bit more out of hand or two things. One positive and one negative. I think the positive thing is probably what republicans in the state here are banking on, which is that they’ve done a lot of things for various constituencies within the republican party over these special sessions, which should remind them why they like republicans. The other thing about that, I think is an even bigger factor here is something that we talked about a little bit and we’re trying to talk a little bit more about, which is negative partisanship, the negative partisanship side of polarization, which is not so much about how much, you know, republicans feel warm and fuzzy about their party and democrats about their own, but about how much they dislike the other party. And so, you know, I think that’s the other piece here. That sort of keeps keeps the lid from coming off the top here, which is, you know, if if if in the state we were simply if we go back some generations and the fight, we’re really between, let’s say the center right and the far right and we’re just choosing between those things. You know, you might say, well, you know, this is a little, but that’s not the fight is between republicans and democrats and democrats are just untenable as a choice to most republicans. And so I think that kind of keeps things relatively constrained within the reactions. But I don’t know, these are just some loose thoughts. Yeah, I mean, I don’t disagree with any of that, I don’t think. But I also think that I guess what I was thinking is that as we look at these sort of general mood in numbers and we look at the assessment of efficacy of institutions in various ways that we look at that. I’m wondering if now that we’ve settled in this pattern of ideologically sorted and polarized parties, if it’s not settling in with people in a way that they makes them feel less good about politics and policy as they experience it. And part of it is, you know, the some of the, you know, the electoral considerations and I think the negative partisanship enters into this. Um, but I also think, you know, I can’t remember the guy’s name, but we’re looking at that that academic piece earlier about, you know, the fit of polarized parties with academic with american institutions and american constitutional design. That if there isn’t a kind of in kuwait kind of adjustment to that, that is making people more dour about politics. You know, part of that is a familiar story about polarization and institutional dysfunction, but there’s also something about the impact of this on governance and and you know, what in the old days, we used to call the state civil society interface that fancy that, that, you know, brings people down, you know, to put it in a knot. And what I mean is, you know, your day to day experience about. And look, the covid piece I think is part of this too. And we’ll come to that, you know, But I think this, you know, it causes a lot more anxiety and tension in your everyday social relations if, you know, as a democrat, you hate republicans so much that it kind of rankles you when you have to deal with them and vice versa. You know, because, you know, the fact of the matter is, yes, we’re very sorted and we generally see people of our own broadly speaking social milieu and, and you know, our own social networks are Yeah. Regine. Yeah, exactly. You know, we interacted in homogeneous social networks, but you know, you’re not completely sheltered from others and when you’re harboring all this, you know, angst and, and kind of, you know, yeah, hostility, you know, in some cases and and feelings of, you know, all these negative emotional and cognitive experiences that come from these kinds of politics, you know, how are you gonna not? Somebody says, hey, you think things are going in the right direction? I think you’re a little more inclined if you’re experiencing that to go, Yeah, I don’t think so. Well, right. I mean, especially when, you know, that’s all very in kuwait, but I think this is, this is a measure of something that’s in. I mean, this measure is inherently in kuwait, right? Yeah. No, I mean, like we talked about how weird it is as a measure and, you know, all these things would Yeah, sure. But I mean, but I mean, like, I mean, the general point, I think is an important one. I mean, I think, you know, if you think about it, you know, just to flush out the argument the person made a little bit more so, you know, there’s nothing wrong with having polarized parties polarized provided parties provide clear choices for people that’s actually a, you know, it’s not a bad thing, right? I mean, you definitely want the parties to be exactly the same. The issue is that, you know, our institutions, you know, were designed, you know, with the laughable expectation that this would happen, although it happened immediately and so that, you know, especially at the national level with that kind of, you know, leads to is that, you know, basically mostly in action. Right? So we could have large majorities of people wanting something to happen at the national, basically we should expect that it’s almost impossible. I think the the infrastructure bill is just such a great example. I think about how hard it was to get something that basically everybody wants better roads, better broadband, more transportation updates and upgrades and it would be in every district, you know, so on the one hand, you know, you’ve got the frustration with the national system, I think in the state system, you know, I think about another colleague of ours at ut chris lazy and his idea of like the sort of thermostat IQ models of policy where the idea is that, you know, usually the electorate makes these responses, if you go one too far one way, it’s like turning the third, it gets too hot in the room, thermostat adjust, But we don’t really see that here, we’ve seen Republicans in control for 20 plus years and that creates a lot of frustration both among Democrats, but also, I mean, I think you can see this among Republicans when they don’t get 100% of what they want in a state where they control the entirety of the government. Right? And then, as you said, and then at the local level, you have people walking around suspecting that their neighbors might be closet fascists or socialists. And it’s just like, yeah, and that’s what I’m getting at, is yeah. I mean, it’s just there’s a there’s something about how this is seeping into lived experience of eternity basis. The term you use civil society is a nice interesting kind of, I mean, I can see why that’s a good one. Yeah. Um, and so, you know, I think one of the things that’s going, you know, that that is feeding into this in political polling is, you know, we’re seeing this in, you know, the, the items where we were checking in on people’s thoughts about elections and democracy and, you know, ways of kind of sampling people’s attitudes about the political system writ large. Um, you know, and I think again, you don’t want to overestimate the degree to which, you know, people, your average person thinks about the political system a lot less than we do. Um, but nonetheless it touches them and they have some kind of attitudes about it, however, they construct it. And I think, you know, we saw that in the, you know, we’ve been seeing that for a while going back into the trump presidency in terms of though the erosion of trust in elections and voting obviously very front and center in the politics and the state right now. You know, we saw it in the in the universal drop in approval ratings in this poll. You know, I mean, the fact that Governor Abbott’s approval rating is the lowest in our time series and and has been declining, um, is one indication of that. But, you know, most everybody went down, at least some, some people went down quite a bit. The legislative assessment went down. Uh, the assessment of how and again, this is, this is plugged into conditions on the ground, but certainly, you know, the assessment of how different levels of government were responding to Covid went down. I wouldn’t want to read too much into that, given that, you know, there’s evidence that the fight against Covid is not going well. We’re in the field, which is, you know, is the delta bearings. Speaking, hopefully. But nonetheless, you know, all of these things are also suggesting that there’s a lot of unhappiness and and dissatisfaction with the political system. It’s also feeding into all of this, you know, you make a really good point there that I think is worth worth saying, you know, I mean, almost more explicitly in some ways, which is, you know, I’m hearing you what I’m thinking is it’s really easy to look at these numbers and to look at the drop in job approvals for republican elected officials. I mean, I’m saying republican elected official, I mean, statewide elected officials here in texas and we’re not picking on republicans. Yeah, it’s just, I mean, we’re implicitly picking on the delicate task Democratic statewide official. Right? Um, but, you know, it be really, I think it’d be really easy and for a lot of people satisfying to go and say, see, look, see they did this and now people don’t like it. And it’s like, well, but I think, you know, the point that you’re making a little bit here, and I think the point that I was kind of making earlier here about, you know, the fact that there are a lot of cross currents going on, but it’s a lot of cross currents in terms of policy and a lot of difficulty of, you know, the politics of attention how much people have, but it’s taking place in a discussion that’s really prizing or prioritizing this idea that there’s, you know, serious institutional problems where in some cases there aren’t. And so, you know, to some extent, it’s easy to look at, I think these results and I think I’m sure people will, uh, and write stories that say, oh, well, you see, Texans are turning on the republican leadership and as someone who studies the stuff, you know, and looking at the internals of the pool, We’re not get into the weeds here. I don’t know that that’s the case, you know, I don’t I don’t know, looking at these results that, you know, these these drops are universally in reaction to one thing or the general sense that’s kind of pushing you talked about faith in democracy. One of the things that I think is super interesting to this poll, we asked a question we’ve asked or about how accurate people think the election results are in texas. The official election results. Right overall, the share who said it was accurate in february was 78%. Either very or somewhat accurate and it dropped four points overall to 74%. Not much. I mean, it’s fine. Right on the bubble of, you know? Yeah. But what’s interesting, you know, is, Yeah. But what’s interesting is that, you know, Democrats, basically, no change, 80% February said they’re accurate in Texas, in August Republicans, again, in a state run by Republicans who have won elections in the last 20 years, it went from 76% to 67%. So almost almost a 10 point drop in the share who said that elections are accurate in the state. This is this is, you know, directly in response to the discussion that’s being had about elections in the state now, how is that supposed to give people faith in the process here. It’s clearly not, well, you know, we wrote an op ed about this back, you know, which is looking increasingly naive. Well, well, it was hopeful. Yeah, op EDS are naturally naive optimistic, I guess. Yes. Um but yeah, I mean, I think that all of that is playing out there. It’s mixed in with partisan politics, but I yeah, no, I think it’s interesting that and it’s almost like it’s part of the problem that we’re describing is that as soon as you say, hey, look, governor rabbits numbers are down and, you know, the states in a bad mood. No, um, people are like, oh, so they’re in trouble, right? If you’re if they’re democrats or if you’re a reporter looking for the story, you know, and I think that’s probably something we’ll delve into more next week, you know, because there are two sides of this, There’s the is there a larger environmental, you know, not in terms of green environment, but just in terms of macro level kind of thing going on out there that transcends this, you know, accountability, right? What we think of as, you know, accountable politics. Um, but there is also an accountability piece to it, but that also invites us to pay some close attention to what the mechanisms and possibilities for that kind of accountability are in the state right now, given the political universe, in other words, you know, I mean, just, just to put a lid on it, because we’ll come back to it, but you know, you know, in other words, the fact that, you know, if if Governor Abbott is in trouble, who’s going to hold them accountable, if the democrats don’t have a gubernatorial candidate yet, bingo. Yeah, if you can see this, you and I both throwing our hands up, throw hand emoji. Uh so, you know, I think we can talk about this general is that has come up, but without looking at a little more directly about just how the resurgence of the pandemic and what we saw in the data on that we have so much data on that well, and we’ll drill down to that more at some point and either writing or here both. Um but you know, obviously the, you know, a big driver of this is covid whether it’s directly about that or not. I mean, I think, you know, there was a, you know, there was an outburst like, you know, kind of, you know, what would you call it? A, you know, an uptick in the market for the argument sort of in the first six or eight months of the pandemic that, you know, the pandemic was bad in and of itself, you know, as a just considered on its own. But the other thing is that it brought out a lot of that, it exacerbated faults that were already happening, you know, depending on the commentator, you know, in the political system in society and you know, whatever. Um and I got a little tired of reading that, but maybe just because, you know, it was it became obvious, but I mean, I think it’s worth returning to that as we returned as we see this other uptick and as we see these other macro level members in texas that began, you know, that began to move south in ways, you know, however noisily with the start of the pandemic. Um and I think it’s, you know, I think about it in the same way that I was thinking about polarization and that there’s a there’s a very there’s a kind of analytical concrete piece to this that we can see pretty clearly in the data. You know, the criticism of government response. Um you know, the polarization that we see among between the parties and almost all measures. Now, that’s complicated because uh democrats are responding for the most part, in a in a more homogenous way than republicans are. All the republicans are clearly leaning in a particular direction that we’ve talked about this, you know, less concerned, less cautious pursuit, less likely to be pursuing certain kinds of behavior. But, you know, there’s another thing that that I think you were mentioning a conversation with the other day that’s coming out of Covid that is also feeding this, which is, you know, it’s fueling a lot of bad feelings and negative emotions among people that are coming from their day to day experience. Yeah, I mean, this is actually a pretty good book end on this discussion in some ways, right? I mean, it’s one thing, I mean, as you pointed out, you know, this whole idea of like, you know, your social experience, right? And you know what it’s like in your social circles, and when you extend out beyond your social circles and dealing with other people and the and the thoughts that people now, I mean, the thing is, I mean, this is kind of almost the key kind of wraps it perfectly, which is, you know, it’s one thing when you’re sort of, you know, if you’re a liberal and, you know, you’re meeting a new person for whatever, and you’re thinking, you know, for whatever reason, you might be thinking about their politics, it’s kind of abstract, right? But Covid is not, and that’s the thing. And so, you know, you have this situation where, you know, you’re like, oh, you’re going to go, you’re gonna meet some people, so are they going to wear masks or not? Depends on what your political orientation is. You know, you’re going to feel a certain way about it. But then the other thing is, and I think this is big and, you know, I’ll say, I’m a parent, right? And then you start bringing this argument into the schools, and now, you know, you’re turning the you’re turning the temperature up on something that’s already pretty, you know, pretty hot already boiling for a lot of people and you’ve got, you know, and again it’s sort of you’ve got people on one side say it’s crazy that these kids aren’t masks and you’ve got other people on the other side going up to the school and ripping the masks off of teachers for some reason, you know, and so we’re feeling like they should show up in schools and just you know sort of heretical fight. Is there going in or try to pick a fight or an argument or make people well you know make people feel uncomfortable. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, not to I mean you know you can think that this happens in more acute in less acute ways. I mean you think about, I mean one of the big stories we’re not talking about obviously is the decision by the Supreme Court to allow texas to move forward with this six weeks band. But one of the things that a lot of people honed in on, You know at least nationally, you know at this point we’ve been talking about here for a while is the you know, the private enforcement of that. And the idea that you know Texans are going to go around spying on other Texans for a potential $10,000 bounty to enforce the law. You know that how does that not create suspicion amongst people. Now that’s a very limited pool of people both who wanted to anti abortion groups, You know, use or setting up websites where you can go report your neighbors. Yeah, I’m not trying to minimize this, but I mean the number of women seeking to obtain abortions in texas is a small share of the overall population. We’re talking about groups of people and the other people that affects around that. But we’re talking about a smaller share of people. But when you’re talking about Covid and you’re talking about mass requirements, that social distance and you’re talking about, you’re really talking about people’s day to day interactions their day to day lives. It happens all over the place where, you know, we ask this in the poll and if you haven’t, you should go take a look at this. We ask about, you know, I think a range of like 14 different activities and whether or not people think they’re safe or not. And you can look and see, you know, again, the large shares of republicans who think all of these activities are now safe, including, you know, going to the gym, whatever. And again, it’s not everyone, but it’s it’s a lot more and among democrats, significantly less. And so you just have, you know, you’re creating, I mean or not what has been created at this point, I’ll say that in a passive way is an environment in which, you know, these politics that, you know, we could generally think of as abstract and sort of personal and you know, maybe not even really affecting, you know, me directly or my relationship with another person all of a sudden it does and it does, it does, and it can in a, in a myriad ways, in a myriad of ways across a range of activities and that how is that not going to make people feel just tired? It just increase, I mean, it increases the the personal friction on a daily basis in a way that I think accumulates. I mean, you know, it was funny and probably subconsciously when I seized on that right track, wrong track number was one of the first things I pushed out. It was I would say, I honestly felt a little like, well, you know, I’m glad it’s not just my household that feels just kind of crappy about like what’s going on out there, you know, in the general sense of things, and I think, you know, and I’m going back to where I started, I mean, that’s why I think, you know, there is something to the fact that the pandemic has brought those frictions, you know, into our daily lives in a much more pronounced way, because of the way that that attitudes that partisan attitudes map onto behaviours and attitudes towards the virus and attitudes towards, you know, other people’s attitudes about it, right? I mean, it’s just it’s just seeped into so many things and it’s just, you know, it’s just activated a lot of a lot, I think, well, there’s this thing that they do, you know, that when we talk about negative partisanship where the last people, you know, they do these surveys, where they asked people to sort of uh, survives the attitudes of people in the other party. And the, the endpoint is basically democrats think republicans are much more extreme and kind of worse people the republicans are, and republicans like the same thing of democrats most of the time. But the problem is, is that just the acknowledgement that one democrats, republicans think these things, they have these sort of archetypal images of members of the other party who are much worse than the average member of the other party in their eyes. But now, all of a sudden you can tell that because people either are wearing a mask and you get to extrapolate that on all kinds of people incorrectly in all kinds of daily interactions. And I mean, that’s, you know, I mean, that’s a, that’s a bum situation. It’s not, and I think it’s aggravated by the fact that there is a real risk calculation going on in there. Yes, it’s personal. And so what’s, you know, and, you know, it’s something that just kind of now coming to, I think, you know, in the moment, is that, you know, in this case, this is where that partisanship is really doing a lot of damage because it distorts your risk calculation, you know, in a way that has a direct public health consequence. And you know, we’ve seen that in some of the data and we’re seeing it in in the epidemiological, we’ve seen in our public opinion data and we’re seeing it in the epidemiological data about, you know, how and where and why the virus is spreading. I think with that on that happy note, I’ll thank josh. And I think our crew and josh flagged the website. If you’re if you’re hearing this on on on Spotify or stitcher or apple podcasts or one of the the outlets, you know, drop by our website and have a look. Well uh this is another one of the podcast and we’ll do a blog post that includes some of the data we’ve talked about here particularly that trend data. Um And while you’re there at texas politics dot utexas dot e D U. You know, have a look at the latest poll data. Have a look at the blog. We have lots and lots of results uh from this result that uh paint an interesting portrait of what’s going on in texas. So thanks for listening. And we’ll be back probably on regular track earlier next week. And we’ll look at more detail in more detail with some of these things. So thanks a lot. And we’ll be back the second reading podcast is a production of the texas politics project at the University of texas at Austin