The Texan Podcast - Dr. Lindsey Hendren on Texas Pulse Polling, U.S. Senate Race, Leading Issues

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

The Texan's Reporter Isaiah Mitchell sat down with Dr. Lindsey Hendren, Senior Research Analyst for ReconMR, to discuss the August 7 Texas Pulse poll on statewide races in Texas, including for U.S. Senate, governor, and attorney general. Hendren breaks down the data, from how respondents feel about the candidates' strengths and weaknesses to their overall opinion on the state of the country.

All right. Good morning, everybody. Good afternoon. I'm Isaiah Mitchell with the Texan. I am joined today by Dr. Lindsay Hendren, who helped complete the Texas Pulse poll by a Texas A&M Bush School and RECONMR. And on August 7th, Texas Pulse issued the latest poll on statewide races in Texas with a particular interest in movement towards Democratic candidates since June. And so I guess the first thing I would ask you is, which of these races has shown the most mobility, has moved the most. And then after that, we can talk a little bit about which has been the most static. And I'd love to hear from you about why you think that might be the case for each of these.

Well, I think overall, the Senate race is the interesting race. This is the race that has the entire nation really looking at it because it's an open seat. I would say, though, that it's not the only race that we've seen movement, though, because we saw movement in the governor's race as well. So I think if we're thinking long-term and kind of what's really driving the focus of everything, it is the Senate race. And we're seeing movement really primarily from independent voters, which, you know, we hear about them every election, every close election. it's always who's going to win the independent voter. So that's not a new topic. However, it is the case here.

We saw a good bit of movement among independent voters in both races, both the Senate race and the governor's race. So we fielded at the end of July for our August release. And independents favored Tala Rico by, 23 points. And that was up from 14 in the previous poll in June. So that's a bit of a jump, I would say. So there's definitely movement happening. You know, however, looking at the governor's race, it's a little more competitive than we would have initially thought. We had, you know, Abbot up six points in June.

Yes, six flights in June. And right now we only have, we're only seeing a one point lead. And Abbott has a huge advantage as an incumbent. So there's some mobility there as well that I think, you know, it's worth looking into seeing how the independents are really thinking about things and how they,

they view, you know, so on, on different topics. because right now they're favoring, you know, so. Yeah, I'd love to hear more about why if the data suggested anything in terms of particular issues. Are you able to speak to that at all? I can speak to that on the Senate race.

We don't have the data to really talk about it for the governor's race yet. Stay tuned for our next release. But, you know, we asked Texans in June what the most important issue faces. them was affordability. That's number one. It's very extensive to live right now. And people are feeling that. And that's what they're telling us. But that's not the only concern. Water supply was also mentioned. So people are thinking about data centers. So we took that opportunity for our late July poll to ask who we thought would do better on these issues. You know, do you think Paxon or Tala Rico would, you know, do better on handling affordability, keeping Texans safe?

Across the board, Tala RICO gained, he went on all items except for border security. And that was still pretty slight. It wasn't a huge gap between the two. So the issues that people are saying, yes, this affects me most. This is top of mind. This is what I'm thinking about. They're indicating that they think that Tala Rico would do better at handling these issues. That's interesting.

And below affordability and water supply, I'd love to hear more about which other issues respondents were pulled about and where, for example, border security ranks among them. Border security was third when we looked at most important issues. So it was important. However, you're looking at, I think, 61% said cost of living and it was like 30, I think, for border security. But there's definitely, that's different. Yeah, 61% said cost of living, 33% water supply, 27% border security. So if you're just looking at, at it as what's really important. While board security may be third, it's kind of a distant third. Well, I'd love to give you a chance to talk about Texas Pulse's methodology. And if it's applicable, how it might differ from the methodology of some of the other widely cited polls of these races that we've been hearing about. So there are, it's election cycle. So there are so many polls out. And I imagine it's very difficult for people to know what's what. You know, we use telephone as our main component for our survey,

so we are using live interviewers. However, we also had an option for text to web. And this just gives people an opportunity to respond in a way that works for them. The big thing with this is we are a probability-based sample. and a lot of what you're seeing out there is a non-probability, non-random, and those are opt-in panels. We are not using any panels. This is, you know, really a random draw from a voter database. And that's really what sets us apart.

We also like to try to give respondents a chance to participate. So we may call up to seven times over the span of a week. just to ensure that we've looked at different times that could work for you. We like to set pretty rigorous demographic quotas, and that just helps us balance a sample to make sure we're not having to weight heavily and alter the nature of sample. We want it to be representative of Texans to the best of our ability. One of the other things we do is we use a likely voter weight.

So it not only combines the likelihood, but also historical vote patterns when we're looking at these people's intentions to vote. So we're looking at likely voters and not just registered voters. Well, I'd also love to hear a little bit more about issue polling. I'm especially interested in this paragraph in the Texas Post Report about immigration and customs enforcement. And it notes some regional differences in how likely voters feel about ICE and and how ICE has been enforcing the law.

So maybe you could talk a little bit about that response in general and how it breaks down across the state and maybe between other demographics as well, if you have that breakdown. Yeah. So I think we're seeing the result of the fatal shooting in Houston has really created some tension with the agency. And, you know, we asked voters how they felt about the tactic.

I are using, and we had a majority say tactics have gone too far. Now, we saw majorities in every region except for the rural parts of Texas in which it was only a plurality. So what's likely making that difference from a majority to just a plurality is that the rural areas of Texas are much more Republican in nature, that's intertwined in their response. So that's also informing views. I'm wondering if you saw any other similar regional differences, regional breakdown about other issues. Like I would expect that water supply, for example, would be more of a concern to some areas of the state than others. Did that come up in the data? I mean, consistently we do see that,

I mean, rural Texas is just more Republican conservative than nature. So, So, you know, when we're asking about the water supply, we're asking if it's Tal Rico or Paxton, rural Texans say Paxton. Right. So we are seeing a little bit of geographic differences in the rural areas. I'm curious. I see in the odds and ends paragraph a lot of interesting information. I encourage listeners, viewers to go check it out. And one that I'm particularly curious about, it says that nearly two-thirds, 65% of likely voters support the state of Texas passing legislation to regulate the impact of new data centers on the state's infrastructure.

I'd love to hear more about if respondents were asked about any particular ideas for safeguards, for bans, for moratoriums, or if respondents suggested particular ideas that they had. We didn't have any suggestions on bands. Now, this was before the ban was announced, right? We didn't have the one-year announcement when the survey went into field. So it's definitely, you know, a new development in this issue. And I think that this makes an issue that's going to be even more interesting as we continue to look at how people feel about data centers. it's an issue that it's worth exploring more, and we plan on exploring more in our next poll.

Because right now we're really looking at the support for it, there's definitely going to be a bit more to unpack since the announced, since a recent announcement. Well, something else that's interesting in the lieutenant governor's race, as you point out, it's not the most attention-grabbing race on the ballot for this cycle, but we saw a huge swing from the incumbent. Dan Patrick had led by five points in June. Now his Democratic opponent, Vicki Goodwin, has a narrow two-point lead.

Maybe you can talk a little bit about that. I'd love to hear about regional breakdown if you'll have that information. And also your theories on why that might be the case. We definitely see, again, this is driven by independence. And I think that we can say, say that people are likely picking answers based off party cues. And that's also what happens when we go to vote. But when someone's being asked about this and if they're frustrated with one party, it may just be a quick response of like, no, I'm not voting for the Republican. I'm the Democrat.

The Democrat's the one I'm going to vote for. So we saw a shift among independence where I think Goodwin doubled her lead supportive among independence. And that's a difference, right? That's where we're seeing the most movement are among these self-identified independent voters. And that's going to keep the group to really look out for. Because they seem to be quite mobile right now. Yeah, I saw a previous poll. I'd have to look up which one it was,

but there was some marginal share of likely voters who said that, I think it was 4%, that they would vote for Greg Abbott for governor, but Tala Rico for Senate. And I don't think that the same margins surfaced on the flip side. And so, yeah, that's an interesting

and significant margin of the likely voter base. Are you able to speak to you how many voters in the responded pool identified themselves as independents compared to Democrats and Republicans? We had 33% say that they were an independent. You know, Texas doesn't require you to register with the party to vote like some states do. So this makes things a little different. We are relying on people to tell us what party versus using a data point. in a database.

That's how a lot of states can, like, we're able to look at a lot of states. So it's quite different. We had 36% self-identify as Republicans, and 29% self-identify as Democrats. So we have a healthy share of people self-identifying as independence. And it looks like some share of that subgroup still favors Republicans over Democrats for Congress. I'd love to hear a little bit more about that point in your odds and ends paragraph.

Yeah. So I think we're still seeing that Texas is a red state. And when you're not given necessarily a name, it's a very generic question to ask, you know, who would you like to see in Congress? People are okay with their current options, right? There's no actual race that they're looking to when they're answering this question. think that makes a difference. Well, we're bearing the lead a little bit here because, again, this is the race that everybody's watching, but I'd love to know if the data showed any particular reasons why

Paxton is just a weak candidate at this point in time. And so maybe we can just discuss that a little bit. It's only a four percentage point difference, right? So he's got plenty of time and plenty of room to change people's mind. I think that what we are seeing, though, is some issues on character. You know, we asked people about a variety of character traits, and he came out on top for being corrupt, and he came out on top for being tough. And that's an interesting, you know, description for someone, corrupt and tough. So I think that that could be driving some of how voters are deciding who they want to vote for because they looked at Tala Rico and they told us he was honest.

They told us he was in touch with Texans' values. That's a big difference. You know, where Tala Rico didn't do so well on is they didn't think he was tough. But they also didn't think he was corrupt. So it could be that character traits are going to play a role in this election. And that's going to be something that we truly won't know until election day. Are people going to show up and vote based on party? Or are people going to vote on character? And I think if we see a difference in the Senate and the gubernatorial election, then that'll likely tell us how people voted. So we have a few interesting months ahead of us to figure out how that shakes out

and how, you know, Pakistan gets around people having those perceptions, right? I think those are the things that are really, at this point, probably driving some dissatisfaction among independent voters. Yeah, I'd love to know if we've got. that self-identified affiliation breakdown for that part of the poll, your character categories. And if so, which categories Tala RICO leads on among self-identified Republicans? Among self-identified Republicans, Tala RICO does not lead.

That's interesting. Does he have, I'd like to know which one of his qualities that, that were old here, generally has like the strongest showing among self-identified Republicans. They're they're pretty even across the board. So I'm looking between 10 to 15% among Republicans where I think honest is probably where he does best. So 15% of self-identified Republicans think he's honest. It's not a bad, not a bad number for him. But the overall numbers are largely driven by self-identified independence and self-identified Democrats.

I see. And so I guess that reflects that for self-identified members of each of these parties, they're generally hunkering down in this race, at least right now. It seems that way, right? We're only seeing movement among independence. Democrats are voting for Democrats, Republicans are voting for Republicans. are voting for Republicans. And, you know, we don't expect people to make, to break their party ties.

It's more unusual than usual in that sense. So we do expect independence to have the most mobility and most influence. Well, I know that we've been sticking to these hard, cold results. But if you have any speculation about the next poll that Texas polls plans to produce, I'd love to get a sneak peek on your theories for what's going to come in the next few months. More than anything, we've seen that these races are competitive. Things are getting more interesting. We all expect the Senate race to be competitive.

And I think the rest of the races weren't necessarily, not everyone's even pulling on them, right? People have just been focused on, all right, as a Tala Rico or Paxon. So I think right now we're seeing an opportunity to look more into the gubernatorial race. And that's going to be exciting for our next release, is being able to look into maybe where those candidates stand on issues.

Because we have a read on where they stand for the Senate, but we don't know how they do for the governor's race. So looking towards the future for us, it's gaining more insight into that election because it's proved to be more competitive than we thought. Well, to go back to the issue polling for a little while, as you said, voter motive, voter behavior, it's the mystery that everybody wants to solve, you know, what people people are thinking when they check the box. But I'm curious whether the data shows that voters consider different issues for these

different races. For example, you know, I see that affordability was a big consideration in terms of weighing Tyler Rico versus Paxton and their capacity in the Senate. You know, what they, what they can do as senators to affect the cost of living. So I'd like to know if voters showed any discrimination about assigning. certain issues to certain races, or if this poll generally shows that we've got certain dominant issues that are probably going to govern or influence voting choices just down the ballot. I mean, I think that's what our next poll will be able to look into. We don't have the data

right now to say how people are looking at the other races, because we really, we looked at that Senate race. That was the one that that has been the most competitive up until recently, you know, the next one will have an opportunity to kind of gauge that because that's that's what we need to see and we need to kind of be able to bridge that gap and know like is it going to be a split ticket like are we going to see people go in instead of hitting that button that says straight party um are they actually going to go through and look at the choices and decide like I think this candidate's going to do better on my wife wallet and they're with this party. And then on this race, I think this candidate's going to do better. I mean, that is definitely the next thing for us. And something we're excited about, too. Because it could make a difference.

Well, I see that towards the bottom, there's a really interesting question that respondents answered on the overall direction of the country. And it's interesting because it's so broad. And I see that there's, to me, it looks like a big difference between their responses for the country and their responses for Texas. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that. And if you have the data, how that breaks down among party affiliation. I mean, Texans love Texas. So I think that that makes a difference when we're looking at how we're seeing the country versus the direction of Texas.

I don't think it's too surprising to say that we're saying that the country is headed in the wrong direction at 58%. Now, the direction of Texas, it's a little smaller of a difference. I think we're seeing, what, 49, 44? No, that's our own. So 49, 44 for Texas, so it's a smaller margin than that 58. 37. So there's some concern, I guess. People aren't completely happy with the direction, but it's not a majority, right? It did hit the 50% threshold. So I think overall, there's room for Texas to grow and for people to become more optimistic. But we also

could be seen a trickle down effect of how people feel about. the overall country and that affecting how they view the state. Well, last thing I'm curious about is just what you're curious about. You know, is there anything in the course of this poll that surprised you or particularly interested you? The governor's race really surprised me a good bit. You know, if I was a betting person, probably would have made predictions months ago about different things I would have expected.

But, you know, when you take a step back and you look, it makes sense, right? This is, we're a few months out. We have time. We have time for people to make up their mind. So this is probably where we're going to see the most movement is between, you know, now and September, as people are trying to figure out where they stand on issues. I think it just gives us an exciting time to look at different races instead of just focusing on that one national. race, right? The national race took the headlines. It's taken the headlines for a year now.

And no one was really thinking about Abbott and you know, so I think that the opportunity to kind of explore why we may be seeing a little more of a competitive race is a great opportunity. just to get some insight on how Texans are feeling. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time, Dr. Hendren and your insight. We really appreciate it. And, yeah, thanks for all this info. Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you.