<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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