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Mike Landess: For UT Tyler Radio, 99.7 KVUT. I’m Mike Land. The results of the latest UT Tyler poll for February, 2023 are out and overall attitudes and priorities of the 1200 or so Texas voter surveyed haven’t changed greatly since the 2022 November election with us as UT Tyler political science professor and co-author of the UT Tyler Poll, Dr. Mark Owens. Welcome.
Mark Owens: Thank you, Mike.
Mike Landess: So Texans are not that thrilled about the way things are going.
Mark Owens: No, we’re exactly almost split, but really 10% more of the voters think that the state is going in the wrong direction right now. and one of the reasons in this case is because there’s a lot of issues that are on the table.
You saw the governor mentioned there were seven priorities he had. That’s, that’s almost double than what he had two years ago. and this is really pointing to the fact that Republicans aren’t even the most trusted party on all of the issues that we see, collectively. Voters are split on which party they trust most to move forward on the electrical grid.
They’re split on who’s gonna improve education right now, which is why we see a lot of different debates coming on with education savings accounts or school curriculums, and parent choice is really reframing this to try and win that issue. But also right now, Democrats still have an edge on who might be best on healthcare.
And this is important as we start to see some interest of in expanding Medicaid, and Medicare in the state, but not to do so for everyone.
Mike Landess: So where are the areas that Republicans are doing well?
Mark Owens: Well, one is just the idea of securing the border. That’s a top issue on the minds of most. Voters in Texas and they trust the, the way Republicans are handling this job right now, 54% to 17%.
This is the, by far, the widest margin, that you can see. Republicans are continuing to reach most voters when they talk about this. And again, it’s one of those issues where President Biden’s his own approval is starting to decline and, and stay relatively low in Texas.
Mike Landess: It certainly wasn’t that long ago that the governor was talking about school safety. This is in the wake of Uvalde and that’s now changed to school vouchers. that seems to be a much higher priority for the governor. How’s he doing with that? Trying to sell that?
Mark Owens: Right now there’s about 60% of the voters seem to support this idea now before it’s always been talked about very broadly as school choice or that’s why we’re describing so the families can choose to do something and the details are usually left to the side because it’s not on the agenda.
what we’re seeing now is even if you don’t use the phrase school choice and you say directly to, it’s going to let parents bring money from, that would go to public schools and take it to private schools, typically the public is less supportive of that. But right now that’s 57% supported it when we asked the question, not including the word “school choice.”
And that’s almost the same as when we did, in offering this. So it’s at one point right now, you still see a majority of the voters supporting this policy across urban areas, rural areas, and and small towns without having to give the initial sell of this is just for freedom.
Mike Landess: The governor is still making an effort to get around the state, to let everybody know what his plan is and why he believes in it.
Mark Owens: Yes. Cause I think this really is something that affects local communities.
Mike Landess: We talked about border security. Tell me about gun control and where that fits into the great scheme of things in this, certainly this legislature and in terms of the priorities for this administration.
Mark Owens: Yeah. One, the governor Abbott identified at one point in his speech of the State of the State that he would support a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence if you committed a crime with an illegal weapon.
Now, that’s not one of his priorities, although it is one of the Lieutenant Governor Patrick’s priorities in SB 23, and in this case 59% of the voters think this is a good idea or either great idea, a fair amount, they favor the legislation. And for us though, that’s still slightly less than the public approval just towards raising the age.
to purchase a semi-automatic assault style weapon, from 18 to 21. Now that’s an issue that’s been out there for a year. Something that was introduced just last week is almost just as favorable.
Mike Landess: Interesting. What, what is that particular bill? Oh, the, the 10 year. The 10 year? Yes.
Okay. Alright. Now let’s talk about, the budget surplus. I find out that, gee, there’s a, there’s an extra couple of million in my bank account. Yeah. What am I gonna do with it? That’s sort of what the legislators are looking at right now. What are they gonna do with it? We certainly talked about tax, relief.
Mark Owens: That’s right. They set out that half of this surplus is just gonna be going right back towards property taxes and some kind of relief to people. And this is one been talked about as increasing the homestead exemption amounts. It’s also been looked at, from that Texas House side, maybe helping businesses and potential homeowners as well.
We see that collectively though, there’s a smaller amount of individuals would support this issue, than want to see it be used for spending, You know, we have the chance with a surplus to do some things that we not have normally done. 47% wish the legislature would spend that at all of the money on improving education and healthcare.
We’re still just under that 44% would actually like to see that property tax reform.
Mike Landess: That’s interesting because the House and the Senate have different approaches to all of this, as you pointed out.
Mark Owens: I think that in this case, to help the businesses, they’re gonna talk about what they do to help the communities as well.
Mike Landess: Let’s talk about the evaluation of leaders. There are a lot of big names that are out there.
Mark Owens: This is our first survey that we’ve done with President Trump saying he’s running for president again. So we’ve tracked this before, wondering, well, how would. Endorsements of candidates who didn’t do that well nationally, right, are going to do in this election.
And so now with him being on that ticket, we’re asking this question, 43% see President Trump in Texas as having a favorable opinion of him, and 52% have an unfavorable opinion of him. The slide in this case, it used to be 46, is that 7% fewer Republicans have a very favorable opinion of President Trump, and there was an 8% decrease in that same question of among independents.
Mike Landess: In your polling this time around, did people talk about gambling at all?
Mark Owens: You know, they did. I think collectively about just over a quarter of our respondents said they’ve actually heard a lot about the opportunity for sports betting to come to Texas. You know, we know that the major sports teams in San Antonio and Dallas are behind in supportive of this idea.
gosh, even there’s the Choctaw Stadium, which is what Global Life Park used to be in Arlington. There, the real opportunities here. The other big question has been, would they bring casino gambling into Texas? And 27% of the public says they’ve heard a lot about this, but overwhelmingly, most people say they’ve heard at least a little bit or a lot towards this.
And 64% would support some kind of sports betting in Texas beyond horse racing that we have in in Dallas and else. 68% think that it might be some good idea to bring in a kind of casino, like we might expect, don’t wanna have to go to Shreveport anymore. Now we could do something here in Texas.
Mike Landess: We’re gonna have boats in Texas.
Mark Owens: Yes. Or go over to Fort Worth. You know, that’s one of the conversations that they’ve had. and so we really think this is interesting because people are showing support for yet, and there’s a lot of lobbying behind this through the, the Sands Corporation and other groups like that in Texas that it it might happen or it might advance as more of a conversation than it did two years ago.
Mike Landess: Well, the, the governor’s indicated that, he would not oppose that.
Mark Owens: Yeah. And that’s the kind of the conversation of the destination casino. And so I think that more people probably this spring will hear more about it. We see that cor already are hearing a lot about it. and that’s more than just, you know, seeing a bunch of Draft King commercials.
Mike Landess: Our guest has been UT Tyler, political science professor and co-author of the UT Tyler Poll, Dr. Mark Owens. You can hear this interview again or share it by going to KVUT.org.
I’m Mike Landis for UT Tyler Radio, 99.7 KVUT.
