The UT/Texas Tribune polling machine did a whole bunch of issue polls following the end of the legislative session. That’s a long article that gives the highlights on each question – they covered a wide range of topics, some of which the respondents knew more about than others – and I will focus on three of them.
Texans had split reactions to the state’s actions on abortion policy, with 42% disagreeing with the state’s policies and 32% agreeing. Those sentiments fell largely along party lines, with 78% of Democrats disapproving and 56% of Republicans agreeing.
Voters were sharply divided over whether to ban most abortions after six weeks except in medical emergencies. Lawmakers passed a bill to implement that policy in Texas, creating one of the strictest abortion laws in the nation.
Forty-four percent of voters supported such a policy, while 46% opposed it. The policy fell predictably along party lines, but independents broke against it with 34% supporting the ban and 46% opposing it.
A majority of Texans opposed automatically banning all abortions if the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark abortions case Roe v. Wade, an idea which lawmakers passed into law this session. Fifty-three percent of voters said they opposed the move, while 37% supported it. Again, independents broke against the policy, with 58% saying they strongly opposed the automatic ban and 20% saying they supported it.
“It’s a very small minority of voters who would ever ban abortion outright in all circumstances,” Blank said. “Generally speaking, Texans are open to some limited restrictions on abortion. You start to see pushback when you get to the point of restricting access outright.”
Voters disapproved of the Legislature’s handling of gun violence, with 43% saying they disapproved of legislative actions on the subject, while 32% said they approved.
Voters showed particular disapproval for allowing legal gun owners over the age of 21 to carry handguns in most places without a license or training, a policy conservatives call “constitutional carry.” Fifty-seven percent of voters said they disapproved of that policy, which lawmakers passed into law during the session. Thirty-six percent said they supported it.
That policy had 59% support among Republicans and a disapproval rate of 86% among Democrats.
Conversely, voters showed strong support for requiring criminal and mental health background checks for all gun purchases. Seventy-one percent of voters supported the policy, while only 21% opposed. Bills on that subject were not passed by the Legislature despite bipartisan support from 88% of Democrats and 61% of Republicans.
This is the seventh time the poll asked about background checks and it has received support from more than 70% of voters each time, Blank said.
Among Republicans there was majority support for both background checks and allowing legal gun owners over the age of 21 to carry handguns without a license or training.
“You can be a Republican who is happy with the way the Legislature addressed protecting Second Amendment rights but also think that maybe they could have done more to address gun violence, and those two things are not necessarily inconsistent,” Blank said.
Sixty-seven percent of Texans support Medicaid expansion, giving overwhelming support to an issue that’s been soundly rejected by Republican state leaders since the passage of the Affordable Care Act during Barack Obama’s presidency. Only 22% of voters opposed the policy.
Supporters included 50% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats.
“As long as it’s not directly tied to Barack Obama, generally people are more open to it than you think,” Blank said. “It just requires us to update our thinking about Republican orientations towards health care.”
Only 13% of voters think marijuana should not be legal under any circumstances. Twenty-seven percent believe it should be legal for medical purposes, 31% believe small amounts should be legal for any purpose and 29% believe any amounts should be legal for any purpose.
Support for some sort of marijuana legalization spans across party lines. Younger people between 18 and 29 are the most supportive of its legalization with only 4% saying it should not be legal under any circumstance. Fifty-one percent of those in that age group said any amount of marijuana should be legal for any reason.
Not sure why Medicaid expansion and marijuana reform were lumped together in that last section, but whatever. The point is that all of these results are consistent with other polls done in the past, though there is some range in the outcomes, as the much stronger opposition to permitless carry from that Quinnipiac poll shows. The campaign themes for 2022 couldn’t be clearer. The Republicans prioritized their own little hot-button issues over more important business like fixing the electric grid. Democrats support the things that voters actually want. The ads truly write themselves.
The poll also included questions about the voter suppression bill, and that got its own separate story.
Despite ceaseless Republican assertions that Texas’ voting rules must be tightened to prevent electoral fraud, only a small slice of the state’s registered voters believe ineligible voters often cast ballots in Texas elections, according to the University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.
In a June UT/TT poll, just 19% of voters indicated they think ineligible people frequently cast ballots. A bulk of voters — 42% — believe ineligible votes are rarely or never cast. Even among Republicans, a minority of voters — 31% — believe ineligible votes are frequently cast.
[…]
During the regular legislative session that wrapped up in May, Republican lawmakers attempted to reframe their legislative proposals by offering that even one instance of fraud undermines the voice of a legitimate voter.
“At some point, I think Republicans have run into the lack of evidence … and so they have gone to this ‘anything is a taint’,” said James Henson, co-director of the poll and head of the Texas Politics Project at UT-Austin. With 25% of voters believing ineligible people sometimes vote in elections, he said Republican leaders have “something to work with” as they adjust their messaging.
“The Republican argument has had to make adjustments as they run into, frankly, evidentiary problems and dissonance caused by a lack of evidence for some of their response, so that may be part of the explanation here,” Henson said.
[…]
Heading into that special legislative session, 35% of registered voters say they would make voting rules more strict, while 29% would leave them as is and 26% would loosen them. Among Republicans, a large majority of voters (60%) want the rules to be more strict. A majority of Democrats (54%) want less strict rules. Almost the same share of both Republicans (30%) and Democrats (29%) would maintain the status quo.
Couple things here. One is that apparently there are some limits to lying your ass off. Who knew? Doesn’t mean that will be enough to stop the bullshit legislation said lies are built on, but at least it’s a rougher road. Two, the stricter/easier/same numbers on voter restrictions are pretty close to the numbers we have seen in previous polls about abortion. There may be a slight plurality for “stricter”, but a far larger number opposes that. Again, that is an issue you can run on.
Finally, while there is a partisan divide in all of these issues, there is also a difference in intensity in many of them. For some, Republicans are far more unanimous in their position while Dems are more diffuse, and for others it is the reverse. Whether there is an overall majority for one position, and if so which one, is usually determined by this difference in intensity. Sometimes, the level of intensity is about the same each way (and that may mean that neither side is all that worked up about it), and when that happens you have an even split, with at best a small plurality for one position. I find this to be the most useful way of thinking about this sort of poll. It’s still not clear how much any of these results translate into voter persuasion or enthusiasm, but it does at least give you some idea of where you are or are not out of step, and how much resistance you may get on a particular subject. As I said, on these issues (and some of the others that I didn’t comment on), the arrow is pointing clearly in the direction Dems should want to go.