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Texas voters like Biden’s COVID-19 response better than his overall performance, UT/TT Poll finds
February 26, 2021
President Joe Biden, who today is making his first visit to Texas since his January inauguration, starts his term with about the same numbers of voters giving him good and bad marks for job performance, according to the latest University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll.
Among registered Texas voters, 45% approve of the job he's doing and 44% disapprove. Those results include 30% who said they strongly approve of his performance and 39% who strongly disapprove. The partisan lines are strong: 80% of Republicans disapprove, while 89% of Democrats approve.
<p>"Election season always hardens partisan attitudes. That didn't end with the election," said James Henson, co-director of the poll and head of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. "I don't know that we ever got out of election mode."</p><p>Biden's grades for responding to COVID-19 are better, with 49% approving what he's doing and 36% saying they disapprove. That's an improvement over his predecessor: In the October 2020 UT/TT Poll, 45% of voters approved Donald Trump's coronavirus response, while 48% did not — including 43% who disapproved strongly.</p><p>"He's starting out, in a Republican state, with fairly respectable numbers," Daron Shaw, a government professor at UT-Austin and co-director of the poll, said of Biden.</p><p>The assessment of Gov. <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/directory/greg-abbott/" target="_blank">Greg Abbott</a>'s COVID-19 response has improved a bit since October. In both polls, 44% said the governor is doing a good job, and the number who giving him bad marks has fallen 5 percentage points, to 41% from 46%. Public approval for Abbott's handling of the pandemic peaked at the beginning; in the <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2020/04/25/texas-greg-abbott-coronavirus-poll/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">April 2020 UT/TT Poll</a>, 56% of Texas voters approved of his responses and 29% disapproved.</p><p>The poll was in the field Feb. 12-18, when <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/series/winter-storm-power-outage/" target="_blank">a massive winter storm</a> battered the state and caused the state's electric grid to lose control of the power supply. The poll was being completed just as the state began to thaw <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/2021/02/18/ted-cruz-cancun-power-outage/" target="_blank">and news</a> of U.S. Sen. <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/directory/ted-cruz/" target="_blank">Ted Cruz</a>'s trip to Cancún surfaced. None of that news was evident in voters' ratings of Abbott and Cruz.<br/></p><p>The governor's numbers held steady, with 46% of Texas voters giving him an approving job review and 39% giving him a disapproving one. In October, his results were 47% – 40% — virtually the same.</p><p>The same was true for Cruz: 45% positive and 43% negative in this poll, compared to 46% - 42% in October.</p><p>U.S. Sen. <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/directory/john-cornyn/" target="_blank">John Cornyn</a> got positive marks from 32% of voters, and negative marks from 42% — a more negative showing than either Cruz or Abbott. In October, right before he was reelected, Cornyn's job performance was rated positively by 39% and negatively by the same percentage.</p><p>Lt. Gov. <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/directory/dan-patrick/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Dan Patrick</a>'s job review was flat: 37% of voters say he's doing a good job and 36% saying they disapprove of his work. The state's newest legislative leader, House Speaker <a href="https://www.texastribune.org/directory/dade-phelan/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Dade Phelan</a>, a Beaumont Republican, elevated to that post by his peers just a few weeks ago, still hasn't made an impression on most Texas voters; 60% said either that they have a neutral or no assessment of how he's doing his job, while 22% gave him positive grades and 18% were negative.</p><p>About two in five Texans, 39%, don't have a favorite branch of government, mentioned first here because that answer outranked the U.S. Supreme Court and the judicial branch, 35%; the president and the executive branch, 22%; and Congress and the legislative branch, 5%.</p><p>With a Democrat in the White House, 42% of Democratic voters chose the executive branch as their favorite. Meanwhile, 50% of Republicans chose the courts. Among independents, 64% went with "don't know/no opinion" over any of the three branches. Congress fared poorly no matter who was responding. It's the favorite of 7% of Democrats, and 3% each of the independents and the Republicans.</p><p>Congress remains notably unpopular: 22% of Texas voters approve of its job performance, and 57% disapprove — 43% of them strongly.</p><p>Almost half of the voters who identified themselves as conservative — 46% — said the Republican elected officials in Texas are "conservative enough." But 32% said those officeholders are not conservative enough. Only 12% said they are too conservative.</p><p>Among voters who identify themselves as liberals, 36% said the Democrats now in office are "liberal enough," 38% said they're not liberal enough and 9% said state Democratic officeholders are too liberal.</p><p>The University of Texas/Texas Tribune internet survey of 1,200 registered voters was conducted from Feb. 12-18 and has an overall margin of error of +/- 2.83 percentage points. Numbers in charts might not add up to 100% because of rounding.</p><p><em>Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them<a href="https://www.texastribune.org/support-us/corporate-sponsors/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> here</a>.</em></p>
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READ IT: US intel report directly blames Saudi Crown Prince for approving killing of Jamal Khashoggi
February 26, 2021
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has released a report pinning direct blame on Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman for approving a plan to kill Saudi-born journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
The ODNI says its assessment of the Saudi leader's culpability rests on "the Crown Prince's control of decisionmaking in the Kingdom, the direct involvement of a key adviser and members of Muhammad bin Salman's protective detail in the operation, and the Crown Prince's support for using violent measures to silence dissidents abroad, including Khashoggi."
<p>Given that the Crown Prince has "absolute control" over security operations, the report states it "highly unlikely" that his subordinates would have carried out such an operation, which led to widespread international condemnation, on their own.</p><p>The report concludes that "the Crown Prince viewed Khashoggi as a threat to the Kingdom and broadly supported using violent measures if necessary to silence him," although it added that "we do not know how far in advance Saudi officials decided to harm him."</p><p><a href="https://www.odni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Assessment-Saudi-Gov-Role-in-JK-Death-20210226.pdf" target="_blank">Read the whole report here (PDF)</a>.</p>
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'I think we need a new face': CPAC attendees aren't sold on Trump as the 2024 presidential nominee
February 26, 2021
According to a report from Fox News on the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Florida, more than a few attendees said they feel Donald Trump has changed the focus of the Republican Party for the better but don't necessarily want him to be the GOP's presidential nominee in 2024.
Speaking with attendees at the conference that was moved to Florida this year due to avoid stringent COVID-19 restrictions in Washington D.C., the name of Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was a popular choice for those with an eye on reclaiming the White House after Trump lost to now-President Joe Biden.
Seemingly every attendee expressed support for the twice- impeached Trump, with one stating, "I think President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. He is still the leader even if he's not president -- at least of our party," but admitted it may be time to move on to a new candidate.
According to Val Biancaniello from Pennsylvania who was a Trump delegate in 2020 and claims he has a substantial amount of support among the conference attendees, "I really like Ron DeSantis in '24. I think President Trump has a huge role in our party ... fundraising and helping candidates get elected. His America First policy is still a very strong sentiment. If the theme of CPAC is 'America Uncancelled,' I think Ron DeSantis is really the face of that right now ... He's a proactive governor instead of a reactive governor."
Attendee Aaron Rosenthal from Florida agreed, adding he didn't want to see Trump "pushed out," but, "The way it stands right now, if I were to make my very own prediction, my hopes as a native Floridian is it's going to be our very own Ron DeSantis."
Carson Wolf, who admitted that he is attending CPAC with his parents, stated that Trump has "re-defined" the GOP as a populist party, but added it may be time to look forward instead of backward for the party's new standard-bearer.
"You know, we used to be so conservative and always sticking to the same rules and the same set of standards that haven't evolved. But he has pushed us forward in helping us become a more national populist side of things. I can see him as the Republican nominee, " he stated before confessing, "I personally really want to see somebody like Gov. DeSantis or somebody like Dan Crenshaw running. I think we need a new face, you know? But I love Trump and I'd be so satisfied to see him in 2024."
Attendee Aaron Timko suggested another nominee -- name-checking DeSantis and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) -- saying he wants "Somebody who is not Trump."
"Somebody in the Republican Party who can stand up to the media with a bit more regality than Trump can. Despite how wonderful he was for the country, we can't have a media focusing on him for the next four years instead of Biden," he suggested.
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