Texas Standard

Barely half of Texas voting age population turned out for the 2020 presidential election. And the story is worse for young voters. We wondered, what can we do about that? So the Texas Standard joined forces with our home music station, KUTX, and the UT Austin student station, KVRX, for what we called a poll party. The focus was issues important to young voters. But we think there’s something here you might find interesting no matter your age.

The full transcript of this episode of Texas Standard is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.

Laura Rice [00:00:00] Hey, Texas standard fans, it’s Laura Rice breaking in with a Texas extra bonus content for our favorite podcast listeners. Often these are extended interviews, but this one is extra special. Barely half of Texas voting age population turned out for the 2020 presidential election. And the story is worse for young voters. We wondered, what can we do about that? So the Texas Standard joined forces with our home music station, KUTX, and the UT Austin student station, KVRX, for what we called a poll party. The Standard’s Wells Dunbar moderated the panel with Texas Monthly’s Alex Samuels and the Texas NEWSROOM’s Lauren McGaughey. The focus was issues important to young voters. But we think there’s something here you might find interesting no matter your age. Take a listen.

Wells Dunbar [00:00:55] Hi, I’m Wells Dunbar, and welcome to the Polo party. What up, y’all? Y’all ready? Of course. I’ve got to get out here. Give a huge shout out. First things first to Kotex and Taylor Wallace, who was tearing it up over there on the inside stage. And of course, and our friends at KBR, Stewart Media. I’m so glad to see see the synergy from the airwaves shift in around here. You know, I’m looking out there and I see a lot of familiar faces. So I have a feeling some of y’all may know what we’re doing. But in case you do not are. My name is Wells, and I’m with the Texas Standard, where an hour long daily news program produced at County News in Austin, just right across the street. And we look at news and politics, business, arts and culture. And we air live on Kut 90.5 FM at 10 a.m. every weekday, Monday through Friday, again at 8 p.m.. And we also make the show available as a podcast wherever you do that sort of thing. So Amazon, Apple, Google, Spotify, all that good stuff. So check it out if you haven’t. And as we tout ourselves as The Daily News Show of Texas, it’s only natural that we seek to collaborate with storytellers and reporters from across the entire state. So to that end, we’re part of the Texas Newsroom, which is a collection of NPR member stations around the state, primarily Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and El Paso, but also smaller stations in Marfa and Lubbock. So we have some incredible editors and reporters. And you’re about to meet one of them here in a minute. But let’s get down to it. Who’s hyped? Who is hype to vote this fall? Yeah, come on. I’ve seen your Instagram posts with the little stickers. I know how it works. You know, it’s almost like a badge of honor. You show off your I voted sticker, you go, you post the selfie, maybe you get one of those little finger condoms for tapping the screens with. And it’s all part of the experience. But that’s assuming, of course, that you actually can vote. And the reality is, across much of Texas or across Texas and the country, it isn’t that easy for everyone. And it’s not just about lines or outdated machines either, although that is part of it. But as we speak, people are working to make it more difficult for some folks to vote or undermine faith in the results that could come around on Election Day. And let’s be honest, young people can bear the brunt of this. There’s this narrative out there that young people don’t vote maybe because they think the system is making it harder or because they feel like their voices don’t matter. I feel like we’re here in part tonight to argue that your vote does matter and it matters more than ever, especially for the younger generations who were inheriting this future that we’re shaping today. So we’re going to dive into all of that stuff tonight, not just the barriers to voting, but also the issues that are foremost on a lot of young voters minds, because we all know there is plenty to talk about out there. So let’s talk about it. How do we overcome these obstacles? How do we make sure our voices are heard? Well, I’m going to ask our very special guests those questions. Firstly, we got Lauren McGaughey, an investigative editor and reporter for the Texas Newsroom. Yes, working journalist since 2009, having previously reported for the Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, New Orleans Times Picayune now reports primarily on criminal justice, legislative ethics, state politics and LGBTQ issues, and is a self-described FOIA Freedom of Information Act nerd. I got that from your X profile. And you are? Yes, you are a FOIA wizard. So shout out to Lauren and Alex Samuels, senior editor. Yeah, senior editor on the news and politics team at Texas Monthly magazine, earned her bachelors degree right across the street at UT as well in journalism. She’s been writing about Texas since 2016 and has been featured in the Tribune, Texas Tribune, ProPublica, The New York Times, The Washington Post. The list goes on and on and, of course, the polling site FiveThirtyEight. She reports on lots of stuff, I would say, including the intersection between race and politics and culture. And she had a real humdinger of a recent article about the political scene on the dating app Hinge. So maybe we’ll get to that in a little bit. But yeah, let’s start off talking about this this here election that is coming up. Got sooner than we know. So let’s start with the news you can use here the last day to register to vote. And of course, the big shout out to to the folks in the back that are signing people up for voter registration. If you if you need to do anything, if you need to go update your registration, they’re there to help and you have until October 7th to do that. Early voting begins like less than six weeks from now, October 21st, and runs all the way through November 1st. And Election Day is November 5th. So for many folks, I would say, Lauren, that may be all they need to know. But seeing as how we’re practically on the UT campus, what if a college student is registered back home? Can they vote while they’re at school here in Austin?

Lauren McGaughey [00:06:19] Yeah. Thanks for that question, Wells. As someone that is not in college anymore, if you can’t tell, I actually had to make some calls to answer this question. So I realized I did not know what the answer was. And when I was in college, I voted absentee. So, like, I went to college out of state and sent in an absentee ballot back home. And that is an option for college students here in Texas. We technically don’t have absentee ballots. We just don’t call them that if you’re voting in-state. But if you’re from another state and you’re here for four years, three years, however, ever long you can send most states do mail in voting and you can just figure that out. The caution I got from the voting election, from the elections administrators I talked to was maybe this seems silly, but the deadlines for registration in Texas are not the deadlines for the state that you might be voting in if you’re voting out of state. So it might be sooner than October 7th, you know, so check on that. Like the rules are going to be different if you’re voting in New York or California or Florida or wherever. Now, if you’re from another state and you want to vote in Texas, you can do that. You can even do it if you don’t have a Texas driver’s license. But you’re going to have to show up to the polls with some proof that you actually live here. That’s going to be like a utility bill or some something that has an address on it. And your name. What’s really important is the name on your voter registration and the name on that document have to match. And in that case, you’re going to have to file like a provisional ballot and sign an attestation that you’re not lying. There are extra steps, but you can do that. And then one more thing. If you are going to college outside of the county that you grew up in, you’re going to actually also have to take similar steps. So you might want to change your address, your living address to your current college address. So if you’re from Collin County or Harris, change it to Travis County so it actually matches on your registration form. When you go to the polls, you don’t have to deal with any of those problems. But there’s lots of ways to do it. You just have to kind of preplan so that you don’t run into like issues and then you’re all flustered.

Wells Dunbar [00:08:39] That’s good to know for sure.

Lauren McGaughey [00:08:41] Sorry. That was a lot of information.

Wells Dunbar [00:08:42] No, I mean, it’s entirely welcome because it is these things can be deceptively complicated sometimes. And as I was alluding to a few moments ago, there is somewhat of a push right now to to sort of crack down on voter registration. I was talking to Alex about this earlier, about how Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has taken things a few steps further and actually sued Travis County and Beaver County, I believe, as well, for registering voters, for sending out these voter registration mails sort of on a on a blanket fashion. So I’m curious about the motivation behind what’s motivating these lawsuits. Is it just trying to undermine faith in the results or is it what do you think? What do you think it’s all adding up to?

Lauren McGaughey [00:09:35] Tell us about what Ken Paxton is thinking.

Wells Dunbar [00:09:37] Yes, the Paxton Whisperer.

Alex Samuels [00:09:41] As someone who has not spoken to him directly, you know, we can certainly speculate. Like you said, while he is trying to stop Beaver County and Travis County, which are historically blue and more diverse counties, from sending out these voter registration forms to voters. Who live there. There is some irony in the sense that he’s doing that. The first thing that I find ironic is that, you know, in odd numbered years when Republicans meet in the state legislature and of course, all Texas, all of Texas, the state government is run by Republicans. You know, in 2019 and 2021 in particular, Republicans touted how they really cracked down on like this idea of voter fraud. And there was really no substantial evidence showing that voter fraud in Texas is widespread, nor has it affected individual races. But every year there seems to be this new push to, you know, make it harder to vote, whether it’s mail in voting or where you can vote or how you can vote or how many early voting locations there are in certain locations. You know, Texas Republicans will crack down on it. But then an even numbered year when there is an election, suddenly there’s this new problem with, you know, quote unquote, voter fraud. So I think what Paxton’s fear is and, you know, I’m sort of guessing here, but my thinking is that in more diverse blue counties like Travis and Bear, which tend to lean Democratic, he wants to limit how many people are registered to vote there. The second thing that’s a little bit weird to me is that just because you’re emailed a registration form obviously does not mean you’re going to fill it out and register to vote. Just because you register to vote and fill out this form doesn’t mean that you’re actually going to cast a ballot. So it’s not like the people who are getting these forms are like unilaterally added to the voter rolls. What happens is that their data is, you know, sent to the state, the the Republican secretary of state’s office, and it is checked against, you know, state data and federal data. And then if that all adds up, then you are added to the voter rolls. And that’s how you can check your status online on whether you are registered to vote. So I think Paxton’s expressing a fear of something that he doesn’t quite need to be afraid of. One thing I looked at, too, is that more people, more Texans casting a ballot is not necessarily bad news for Republicans. And I think 2020 was a really great example of that. So 2020 in Texas set a pretty high watermark for how many people actually voted. I think Texas had it was like 60 something percent of Texans like actually cast a ballot in 2020, which was, you know, some might say that’s low. But for Texas, that was a pretty high watermark. And in that year, Republicans won every state office like pretty by pretty considerable margins. Yeah.

Wells Dunbar [00:12:39] Yeah. We haven’t had an elected statewide elected Democratic official. Not in the time I’ve been voting.

Alex Samuels [00:12:45] Yeah. 30 years. 30 years, Exactly. So a long.

Wells Dunbar [00:12:48] Time.

Alex Samuels [00:12:48] More people Voting is not a bad thing for Republicans, nor is it a good thing for Democrats necessarily. I think what Paxton’s fear is, is that registering, registering more voters in these blue and purple counties will could be bad, especially when you have Trump at the top of the ticket. And Senator Cruz, who lost by, you know, three percentage points in 2018 as like the first two names. So I think that’s more so where his fear is.

Wells Dunbar [00:13:15] And it’s going to.

Lauren McGaughey [00:13:16] Yeah. So what’s what? Because I actually hadn’t educated myself on these lawsuits before getting these questions from you. So thank you. But when you actually read the lawsuits and you read the press releases that Paxton puts out, they’re completely different. So the press Paxton’s press releases focus on alleging that this this contractor that the counties are using to send out the voter registration forms as a partizan. And which is true. In the past, this contractor has actually openly stated partizan views, and they help Democrat candidates get more votes. That is true. But in the lawsuits, that’s not what what he’s not that’s not what he’s suing over. He’s suing alleging that the county commissioners that cut the contracts don’t have the authority to dole out the money that they did. So it’s kind of this political argument publicly. But then when you read the lawsuit, it’s like this really wonky numbers and what’s the authority of a county commissioner? So it’s just interesting to see that if he if he just told them why he was suing, they’d probably be like, I don’t understand. So he had to find another, more palatable, maybe political reason.

Wells Dunbar [00:14:26] Yeah, very interesting. And of course, it’s not just Paxton. It seems like it’s sort of coursing through the state leadership all the way down from the top. You know, recently Governor Greg Abbott issued this press release trumpeting the removal of over 1 million Texans from the voter rolls. And it’s largely routine maintenance. Is my understanding sort of a similar almost bait and switch, if you will, where it’s we’re Ty, you get this headline on this press release. We’ve taken 1 million ineligible voters off of the rolls. And he called it an example of a crackdown on illegal voting. But a lot of this is federally required or there’s federal rules on when you can remove voters from the rolls. And and this is where we kind of get into the weeds here, because there can be all sorts of different sort of boxes that you could fit into. Your registration could be inactive or it could be suspended and end up on the suspense list. I love that term, the suspense list. So could you tell us what the suspense list is? And if you are if you have been tagged by by the by the state, then what can you do to make yourself whole, I guess?

Lauren McGaughey [00:15:42] Sure. Yeah. I think I heard someone in the newsroom today say it sounded like a Jim Clancy novel or something like that. Suspense list or it’s a good, bad name. Right. Just throwing it out there. So just top line, if you’ve seen headlines about the people being put on the suspense list, if you are on the suspense list, that doesn’t mean you can’t vote this election cycle. In fact, if you’re on it right now, you can vote as long as your voter registration is still active. So you have to go online. You know, just Google. Am I registered Texas? And you can put in your name and information. And if it says active, you’re fine, even if you’ve gotten a notice in the in the mail that says you’re on the suspense list, you can end up on that list in a lot of different ways. There are people actually challenging individual people’s right to vote, like going like here in Travis County, that one person has challenged 12,000 different people’s voter registrations, claiming that they’re not eligible to vote. So it’s it’s something that’s becoming a political thing. Or if you’ve moved either within a county or out of a county or out of state and you haven’t actively updated your address, you can end up on the suspense list. So it’s like it’s kind of on you when you make a change to make that update. If you’re on the suspense lists for two federal election cycles, you’re you’re not allowed to vote anymore. You’d have to reregister. You can still reregister. It’s okay. But this suspense list, which is a routine thing that they used to clean up, literally people who die, people that move out of state. A lot of college students are on the suspense list because they move around a lot. If you end up on that, you can fix it either by actively replying to the card you get in the mail if you actually got one, or go online and call, you know, see whether you’re on the suspense list, call, update that information, ask for a new card, or if you’re on and you’ve been removed, you just have to reregister. But right now, everyone who’s on the suspense list is safe. It’s 90 days out from the election. No one can be removed from now until the election. So you don’t have to worry about it right now. But you can fix it now if you want to.

Wells Dunbar [00:17:57] I was yeah, I want to back up a little bit and sort of underline something you said here, because we were talking about this announcement from the governor that all these people, primarily folks that were on the suspense list, had been removed from the rolls. So that’s the government in action, cleaning up the voter rolls to how they see fit. But you just mentioned that one person has challenged the votes of, what, over 10,000 people? And this isn’t an isolated incident. There’s there’s one group I know that was challenging voters in North Texas through the vote who’s affiliated with this lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen has also challenged tens of thousands of votes. So so just Joe Schmo, some member of the public can actually do this, correct?

Lauren McGaughey [00:18:45] Yeah, you have to live in the county. So any one of us, technically, if you really had a grudge against your neighbor, I mean, if you lived next to someone you don’t like, anyone in a county can challenge the voter registration of someone else in that county. And it is becoming a tool. And it is primarily by true the vote. This group are Houston based. They’re doing it all over the state. They’ve challenged tens of thousands of voter registrations. But if you end up on that suspense list again, you can fix it. If you’re eligible to vote, you just have to take the steps to make sure you do that. And if they’ve challenged your vote and you first off, if you don’t respond at all, they just put you on the suspense list. They’re not going to take you off the voter rolls. But if you do respond, you can actually have a hearing with your voter registrar and the person that challenges your voter registration as part of the process. You can actually like go in-person and face to face, give your side. Or you could just go online and be like, Yeah, no, I, I moved and that’s why my address is different.

Wells Dunbar [00:19:49] And I’d imagine, you know, obviously, you.

Alex Samuels [00:19:52] Know, it didn’t happen. My understanding was that like if you’re on the suspense list, like it’s that’s why it’s good to check your voter registration before casting. A ballad, especially if you plan on casting one on Election Day. If you cast if you’re voting during the early voting period, you can resolve that issue and then cast a ballot later. Like it’s a pretty quick process. Yes, I write.

Lauren McGaughey [00:20:12] Yes. And don’t assume I mean, don’t assume that your address is correct. Right. Like. Maybe you moved a couple of years ago and you haven’t voted since then and you forgot to update it.

Wells Dunbar [00:20:23] Yeah, I mean, yeah, we’re talking about pieces of paper and ink and stamps are involved unless you unless you have gotten a driver’s license.

Lauren McGaughey [00:20:30] There’s no online voter registration in Texas. Also, sorry. One more thing. If you’re a student, you can’t use your ID, your student ID as a form of ID to vote. That is not a valid ID in the state of Texas. So.

Wells Dunbar [00:20:40] But your gun license will work.

Lauren McGaughey [00:20:42] Your gun license will work. You have a gun license? Yes.

Wells Dunbar [00:20:47] Well, I was going to say, I mean, it sounds like a headache for the individual voters, but I’m also just thinking about the impact on those poor voter registrars. You know, it’s not like they’re swimming in, you know, money in the first place. And just to have this deluge of challenges coming in must be really difficult. You know, it’s weird. There’s some reporting from the Katy newsroom today that just like the West campus area, West campus area, seven, eight, 705 12, 12, 12,000 folks on the suspension list. So and of course, most of those could be, you know, obviously students who have moved. But of course, it’s very important to check your address on all that information. So getting down to the political side of things. Texas is a staunchly Republican state, so it’d be truly remarkable to see Kamala Harris win. But more than likely, Donald Trump will take it’s 40 Electoral College votes. But I’m I’m interested in the possibility of any sort of post Election Day shenanigans, say a super tight race between Colin Allred and Ted Cruz, for instance. Who knows? Who knows? I guess there’s the the political dimension there, which is, you know, will the Democratic base really, you know, rally this election? And, Alex, this is something you were writing about, I think for The Monthly just today. I was checking your byline. And, you know, I think the headline was something along the lines of, you know, is the polling there, will Texas could Texas ever flip? Basically?

Alex Samuels [00:22:25] Yeah. So our story didn’t look specifically at the presidential race. It looked more at the Senate race since polls have shown, you know, more tight race there at the time that we were envisioning writing that story, there was a poll from the University of Houston and Texas Southern University that essentially said the race between call an all red and Ted Cruz was tied or within the margin of error. But since that poll has come out, I think there have been five more surveys that we cited in our piece that all show all red losing by larger margins. Whether that’s four points. And I think the highest one was him losing by ten points. I don’t think to your point, I don’t think anyone is expecting Kamala Harris to win Texas. I would say that is very unlikely. The Senate race, I think, actually will be more competitive. There is a number of polls showing that. All right. Is running ahead of Harris. And to be clear, he will need to run ahead of Harris in order to flip the state of Texas. But most polls actually show Cruz with a pretty comfortable margin. So Cruz is probably ahead by about six points, according to an average of surveys that have been taken since May until now. And so, you know, it could be a close race. But I think one thing I’m thinking about as a political reporter is will this be closer to the better Cruz race in 2018 when Cruz when better, was behind by just three percentage points? Or will this be more reminiscent of the John Hager or the John Cornyn sorry, M.J. Hager race in 2020, where Cornyn won by eight percentage points. And right now the data that we have points that it will be closer to that 2020 margin. That’s not to say that already is, you know, doesn’t stand a chance. Texas is very much a lean Republican state. And there’s a lot of Democratic enthusiasm with Harris at the top of the ticket that could help already. But there are still a lot of voters who don’t know who he is, who don’t really, you know, who are still learning about him and his campaign message. And I think that’s probably going to be the race that a lot of national reporters and political prognosticators are watching in Texas is probably going to be the race that people are watching.

Wells Dunbar [00:24:43] Yeah, and there’s been a lot of discussion already about his campaign strategy. You know, you bring up that O’Rourke and this whole barn burning to 54 counties strategy versus I’ll read his decidedly lead a little bit lower. So that will be a fascinating race to watch come in on Election Day. Well, that kind of gets to this broader question of turnout in Texas and this whole question of whether or not it could flip in a race like our Cruz. You know, it’s been said that Texas isn’t a red state, but a non-voting state and a lot of that. Sort of is is oftentimes put on the shoulders of younger voters who don’t represent a terribly high percentage of the turnout. So I’m curious, Alex, where does Texas fall in line of like youth voter turnout versus what we see nationally? Is it an outlier? Is it a little bit better?

Alex Samuels [00:25:40] Yeah. So Texas is not an outlier when it comes to youth turnout. And by youth, I mean 18 year olds to 29 year olds. So in 2022, which is where I found the most recent data, the most recent election, I think youth turnout in Texas was about 22%, which doesn’t sound high, but you compare that to, say, like Mississippi and West Virginia, that had youth turnout at 13%. And I think the highest percentage of youth turnout I’m forgetting the exact states, I want to say Michigan, but they were at like 33. So, you know, Texas being at 22 isn’t, you know, we’re somewhere in the middle of a kind of towards the higher end, which is actually kind of shocking to me. But I think there’s, you know, 22 we can obviously improve on that as a state. And I think we should want to. But there’s a number of reasons why younger voters don’t turn out. You know, for one, I think what Lauren mentioned is you can’t use your student ID to cast a ballot. You have to have another form of I.D. handy. I also think that voter apathy, and that’s not just within Texas, but I think nationally youth voters tend to think, you know, my vote won’t matter. Things might not be the issues that I care about might not change significantly under a Trump administration versus a Harris or, you know, Biden administration before he dropped before he announced he wouldn’t seek a second term. And then there are not a lot of early voting locations on college campuses. And if you’re a freshman without a car and the nearest polling location is 20, 30 minutes away from you, election Day is on a Tuesday and you have classes. It can be hard to get out there. And, you know, Republicans in the Texas legislature have intentionally passed laws to make it harder for a lot of people to vote. And I think that has a huge effect on youth voter turnout.

Wells Dunbar [00:27:31] Yeah, we saw a real I mean, we were trying some interesting things during the whole Covid era is what I keep going back to, you know, the prevalence of mail in ballots, the some places doing the drive in voting. But as soon as you know, that was deemed over, more or less, you know, we saw a real pull back and real distrust or just a real push on the state leaders parts to to sort of curtail those. So Texas has made it harder to vote with additional ID requirements and an end to those practices, but it still seems. D Has turnout really changed, though? I mean, it seems like it’s the youth turnout in Texas is still sort of hovered around like that 1,620% figure. So it’s funny to think that maybe we saw some things that could have boosted it. Those are pulled back, but we didn’t see a boost in tandem with it.

Lauren McGaughey [00:28:28] I think it goes up and down. So there was a pretty big spike in 2016 between 2016 and 22, like a big spike in 2016 leading up to 2020. But since then, there’s been a big nosedive. And so maybe it looks flat across the board, but it’s doing this, you know, it’s people come out for the the races they care about. Right. And if they don’t know who Collin already is or they forgot that they don’t like Ted Cruz or whatever it might be, it doesn’t drive that. There was also some and I, I looked at this number like five times to make sure I was reading it correctly. So the U.T. Texas Tribune poll pollsters can correct me if I’m wrong, but in their most recent polling that did account for age, there was the smallest gap in terms of who said they would vote for Trump, but who said they were vote for Kamala Harris in that low in that youth group like it was 43 to 44. So I think sometimes there’s an assumption that young people are going to vote Democrat when they may not. And that was just really surprising to me because I think I had an assumption that there would be a way bigger gap there where it was actually the gap was smallest in that group and then got bigger and bigger when you got older and older.

Alex Samuels [00:29:49] So that though it kind of, I guess, aligns with one of the things I said in my first answer, which is that increased turnout does not necessarily help Democrats and it does not hurt Republicans. So seeing actions like, you know, the ones that Paxton is taking, trying to limit who can have these registration forms, particularly in Bear in Travis County, it’s like I get that these counties are more are bluer and more diverse than maybe some others in the state. But when you have more people voting, that doesn’t. Not necessarily bad for Republicans. And to your point about youth voters, like, that’s interesting that they’re pretty split on who they will support.

Lauren McGaughey [00:30:27] Yeah.

Wells Dunbar [00:30:27] Now, it’s reminiscent of another sort of piece of rhetoric that you hear a whole lot around voting in Texas. And that’s the power of the Latino vote. And it’s, you know, been referred to as the sort of sleeping giant, if you will. But what we’ve seen, again, it kind of cuts both ways because we’ve been seeing Republicans really aggressively target races like in traditionally Hispanic areas like the Rio Grande Valley.

Alex Samuels [00:30:59] Yeah, I mean, they are. And I would say Democrats are targeting that area, too. But the way that they’re targeting it is so different than it was six years ago. And bet O’Rourke was, you know, running against Cruz. What we’re seeing now from Colin Reid and also some Democrats who are running in races like I’m thinking of Michelle Viejo, who’s running in Texas’s 15th Congressional District, is like they’re taking a more like strong on the border, like we need to secure the border. Type of rhetoric. And I’ve noticed that Democrats who across the nation who have seats and who have seats that I guess are adjacent to the border are seeing similar messages. And I wonder if that will appeal to more Republican youth voters, because I would think or my assumption going into it is that Democratic youth voters would want a more compassionate approach to how we approach the border and immigration.

Wells Dunbar [00:31:58] Yeah, but we saw I can’t remember the challenger that was going up against Henry Cuellar, but definitely challenging him from the left in the Democratic primary and didn’t get enough traction with it for that.

Lauren McGaughey [00:32:09] One we saw on in 2020. You know that there again, there’s an assumption about how Latino voters are going to vote. And you can’t just assume that someone is going to vote a certain way because the bloc historically has you know, there’s geographic differences in the on the ground reporting on the US-Mexico border in Texas, there were a lot of even new migrants to Texas who were espousing this kind of quote unquote, closed borders viewpoint. And so, again, I think it’s like, is it are there are there groups that are taking think, though, that they don’t need to do the amount of work they need to do in a community because they’re going to get those voters no matter what? And an assumption about how people are going to go depending on historical voting patterns or whatever. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Alex Samuels [00:33:00] I was just going to say, you see that with black voters too. We did a story for FiveThirtyEight where we basically said black voters for Democrats are in this like captured status because they vote so overwhelmingly Democratic that Democrats often don’t think that they need to really do anything to court the black vote. It’s just like, these people are going to vote for us anyway. And it’s like, no, that’s why you see, you know, Trump having larger margins with black voters every election and going into 2024, I’ve seen estimates saying that like up to like 20% of the black vote could go to Trump. And this is, I think this what these polls were mainly fielded before Kamala became the Democratic presidential nominee. But it’s like this is what happens when you take certain voter blocks for granted. And so I’m curious to see what the Democrats Party approach will be, both with Latino voters, black voters, younger voters, because I think there’s this assumption that what is it like? Demographics is destiny. And that is not being true right now.

Wells Dunbar [00:34:00] I mean, arguably, maybe even saw some of that play out when the whole question of, you know, whether or not Joe Biden should stay on the ticket or Kamala Harris should step up. You saw some some black voices strongly in support of Biden questioning the change. So but Kamala is the nominee now. And we’ve seen a lot of reporting on that enthusiasm, I believe. What’s this, a Texas a I believe it’s from the How the Texas Politics Project showed a large double digit spike in enthusiasm amongst Texas Democratic voters, going from 61% to 81%. So I guess the question here is how dramatically has that change changed the math for Democrats in Texas? What effect will it have? I mean, again, they got a tough road to kind of tough road here in Texas.

Alex Samuels [00:34:54] Yeah. So I think even so, when Biden was the nominee, I think and I’m pretty sure I’m right here that a lot of Democrats are kind of resigned to the idea of like, we might lose this election or we’re probably going to lose this election. But then when Kamala became the nominee, it was like, there’s this excitement now. And so what we’re seeing now is that Kamala is doing well with the same groups that Biden was, and predominantly that is women, people of color and younger voters. And again, when I say younger, I mean voters who are 18 to 29 years old. But the difference is that more voters support of those three blocks support Kamala than they did President Biden. And they’re also more excited to go to the polls in Texas specifically. Does that mean Texas is going to flip on the presidential scale? No. What I will say, obviously, is that since 2000, presidential races in Texas have gotten a lot closer. Trump only won the state in 2020 by about five percentage points. And so I would expect the margin in 2024 to be the same. Same, if not a little bit smaller, because that’s just how the trend is going. And I don’t see a reason why it wouldn’t continue that way. I don’t think she’s going to flip the state. I think where we could see potentially a C movement and I see potentially is in the Senate race because we have seen polls that show Collin already running ahead of Harris. But the difference is, you know, how how well can he do right in terms of Harris.

Wells Dunbar [00:36:26] Have we seen any more information about anything further down ballot, the effect that Harris might have like on House races or anything along those lines?

Lauren McGaughey [00:36:34] There’s so few races left. I mean, so many of those races were were are were closed and done with in the primaries. So and don’t and we can’t discount that. The Taylor effect. Right. I mean, again, it will it will it make Texas blue? You heard it. You hear it. I’ll let Alex sink that the the predictions But yeah I mean 300,000 people visited the link to register that she shared on Tuesday after the debate. So I do think there’s what I’m interested to see I know what we’re both interested to see is how much all of these. I’m not going to say the word unprecedented because it’s thrown around too much. But how much of these kind of unique factors this election cycle are going to actually move things in different directions, like the addition of a new presidential candidate and Kamala Harris so late in the game, the fact that she’s, you know, the the first serious woman candidate we’ve had since the last one, you know, the fact that, you know, the Taylor effect, the the, you know, whatever, all of these things like isn’t going to be enough to bring that margin. Like you said, very a lot smaller than we’ve seen in the past. Or is it going to just come out in the wash? I think that’s we’ve seen that’s what we’ve seen in recent elections. We’ve seen it come out in the wash or the the margins for Republicans actually get bigger in their favor. And so I think that’ll be really interesting. All of these.

Alex Samuels [00:38:06] Factors. Sari was up 300,000 like across.

Lauren McGaughey [00:38:10] Across the country. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you’re not in Texas, that would be crazy. Yeah. I wonder if they have that broken down by state.

Alex Samuels [00:38:18] That’d be interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

Wells Dunbar [00:38:20] Well, yeah, it is interesting that Instagram post talking about the issues that matter to her and taking the, you know, endorsing Harris but taken pains to say just go out there and get registered and make up your own mind. But I think one of the issues she she cited was abortion and reproductive health care, which has been a huge topic, you know, in Texas, obviously, but nationwide, ever since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. And we’ve seen Texas politicians really not hesitate at all to to really hone in on this issue. Here it comes up again. Attorney General Ken Paxton, he recently sued the Health and Human Services Department for the right to access medical records of women that potentially could seek an out-of-state abortion. So the question of how the state government’s efforts to target reproductive health care, how that’s impacted the landscape for Democrats and Republicans, is that, yeah, it’s difficult to say, obviously, but is it another one of those issues where it could cut both ways, or do you think there is more enthusiasm on like the Democratic side or the Republican side with with this one?

Alex Samuels [00:39:37] So maybe I have a more cynical take.

Lauren McGaughey [00:39:41] But know honest tell us. Yes.

Alex Samuels [00:39:44] But I think back to 20 was it 2014 when Wendy Davis was challenging Greg Abbott?

Wells Dunbar [00:39:50] Yes, the governor.

Alex Samuels [00:39:52] And she ran. You know, Republicans called her like the abortion Barbie or something like that, but she lost by like 20 points. And I think when it comes to the issue of abortion, Republicans tend to prioritize it more in the sense that Republicans are more pro-life and that tends to drive their vote, their voting and, you know, their attitudes in terms of what candidates they support. And for Democrats, something that Wendy Davis told a reporter of ours is that abortion tends to be like one of several issues that Democrats prioritize. And she also pointed out that if you are not affected by an abortion ban, like if you have the money to go to Colorado or California or one of these other states and get an abortion, you might not prioritize as much that as much as you do other issues. And so in other states, you know, they have referendums on the ballot specifically asking about abortion. And in states where that has been on the ballot, voters have said they do not want these very stringent. You know, you don’t want these restrictions in terms of whether they can have an abortion. We don’t have that here in Texas. So I think the default is that most voters go their partizan ways. And so I don’t know if abortion will have that much of an impact on, you know, motivating Democrats to vote in this state, particularly because it hasn’t in the past. It didn’t in 2022 could in 2024. Maybe. But I also don’t think that’s the top issue on a lot of Democrats minds. Polls have shown repeatedly that, you know, what they call kitchen table issues. So inflation, you know, the economy like those things, housing, those tend to be more important for Democratic voters in particular.

Wells Dunbar [00:41:42] And that’s fascinating to think about it. And yeah, it’s like a one on one in a part of a constellation of issues versus a real, you know, singular thing for Republicans. Another button they’ve been pushing a whole lot is the issues impacting LGBTQ Texans. The state really making a concentrated effort to pass policies targeting that community. I believe we saw 141 pieces of legislation in 2023. That would impact LGBTQ Texans. So many of those bills are still in legal turmoil, but we’ve also seen similar. We’ve also seen plenty of successes. You know, the state essentially outlawing DIY diversity, equity inclusion initiatives on state campuses. And Lauren, you’ve been doing some reporting. Kind of goes back to what we were talking about, IDs and stuff recently. I think you broke the story that the Texas Department of Public Safety no longer allowing transgender Texans to change their changed the sex on their ID or driver’s license. So with there being 1.8 million Texans in the here in the state that identify as LGBTQ plus maybe more. How is this the same sort of thing you see unfolding here, an issue that kind of cuts both ways? Or is is do you have a sense that there may be a really concerted effort on LGBTQ Texans parts to hit the polls in November?

Lauren McGaughey [00:43:16] I mean, I haven’t seen any like. Queer centric voter drives, but I might just be missing them. But I think it kind of goes back similar to what Alex said about abortion, where, you know, if you’re if you’re a member of the community and you went to the Capitol, there was a huge public. I mean, the public showed up in droves. LGBTQ people. The last legislative session when all these bills were on the table, if you’re if you’re one of those people, sure, you’ll probably be driven to to vote. But you know that the openly queer community in Texas is still small. And if we’re talking about trans Texans specifically, I mean, it’s a fraction of that even. And so I do think that it’s not a big.

Wells Dunbar [00:44:08] It’s not like a big voting.

Lauren McGaughey [00:44:10] Bloc. Yeah, it’s not a big it’s not a massive voting bloc that you go after over, even though a specific issue like abortion. But I will say that the voting bloc is growing and especially in that group, 18 to 29. I mean, Gen Z identifies 1 in 5 Gen Z people to identify as LGBTQ now. That’s pretty massive. Whether that drives their vote and actually pushes them above that 22% or whatever. We’ll have to see because obviously here in the state of Texas, state policy affects queer people very, very intimately, especially recently. And so it would be interesting to see whether, again, another kind of X factor, whether the 2023 session drives youth turnout, especially among the 1 in 5 people who say that they’re lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans. And something I just wanted to mention as something that is in the data, some of which Alex touched on about like why people in that age group don’t vote is like it’s habit forming. So if you don’t vote in like county, county, local, hyper local elections, you’re less likely to vote in big elections, even if they’re ones you care about. And so we’re seeing, you know, every time we have a big election like this year, there’s a new group of people who have never voted before because they weren’t of age. And we’ll have to see whether, you know, they hit the ground running the first time and then sustain that habit, because it really is once you vote, once you keep voting, if you don’t, you tend to kind of fall off. And we’ll start to think of it as something that is important for you.

Wells Dunbar [00:45:58] You know, another issue that we saw, really just a huge flash point we saw earlier in the spring on college campuses was Israel and campus protest and a huge situation at UT Austin, I believe, what, over 130 pro-Palestinian protesters arrested many of their many of the students. Academic futures in question still. Do you think that there is any that those protests have the potential to impact the election in any form or it almost seems to me because school is back in session, we haven’t seen this at UT or really across much else of the country. The longer that that war has sort of ground on for its sort of potency as an issue has diminished.

Lauren McGaughey [00:46:48] I mean, if you look nationwide, it’s actually not in the top priority voting issues of most people. It’s again, a very small group of people that consider it their top issue. If you look at certain states like Michigan, where there’s a higher percentage of Muslim voters, then it will be floated more at the top. But I also think it’s important to to remember that, like how much state policy drove that and how much the differences between the two candidates will affect that. Will A can will a voter look not vote one way or the other because of the way the presidential candidates are are coming out on this issue? So, again, I don’t think it’s in the top three for a lot of people and a kitchen table issue election. And we have I mean, we all know this. We have such a short attention span. And I mean, there are some people that like this. This is still their top issue. It’s still like if you I know everyone has friends and like on social media, this is still the only thing they’re sharing about every day. They’re sharing news about It’s very important to them to get out information about the need to find a resolution to this. But do those people look at Kamala Harris and see her as as the solution? Maybe they maybe it’s a clothespin vote. I don’t know. We’ll have to see. Alex, what do you think?

Alex Samuels [00:48:06] Yeah, I can only piggyback off what you said, which is that that issue tends, you know, younger voters tend to prioritize that issue more than older voters do. But even the younger voters who prioritize it, they still put it below things like the economy, the jobs. They want to make sure they can get a job at a college. You know, those same kind of like economic issues that are affecting everybody else are affecting younger voters, too. And to your point about like, is this going to, you know, is a Kamala Harris administration going to be vastly different than a Trump administration? I’ve seen a lot of voter apathy on this issue in terms are reporting. And just what I’m seeing and hearing is that some younger voters are considering either not voting or voting third party because they don’t think a Harris administration versus the Trump administration would do anything different on this issue.

Wells Dunbar [00:49:03] Well, I hate to sound like a broken record, but talking about issues that are very important to this subset of voters, but maybe not the entirety of the voting population, But this question of student debt relief is really interesting. I was really interested in the presidential debate on Tuesday where Trump really sounded kind of like conciliatory to like the other students that didn’t get it, you know, and blamed, you know, the Biden administration for botching the rollout on that. But this question of student debt relief, again, it seems like a very sort of narrowly tailored one. But is that enough maybe for, you know, like the college voter who’s kind of on the fence and don’t I don’t know if I’m going to vote.

Lauren McGaughey [00:49:46] I don’t know.

Wells Dunbar [00:49:47] We haven’t even really heard anything from Harris about that question.

Lauren McGaughey [00:49:51] Yeah. I’m not sure if it was me. Maybe it would mean something to me. But I also don’t think that the the debate brought much clarity to how either of them came down on the issue. You know, if you actually do the research, you know that Trump, he’s been very he’s been highly critical. And, you know, his his cohorts have tried to block and have successfully blocked some of Biden’s student debt relief policies. But Trump himself during his own administration did forgive interest student debt interest. And so it was a little confusing, actually, when I was watching the debate, I was like, wait a minute, as if it’s Trump versus I believe, What are you saying or not? Or is he just being critical of. Harris Right. And so, you know, I feel like I’m only speaking of if it was me, but if it was me, I only finished paying off my student loans two years ago and I’m 40. And so if it was me and I was 18 and I had the chance to to really back someone that was going to take. A real step. That would be a big deal to me. But I don’t think that that at least that debate and provide a lot of clarity as to what they would actually do on day one to fix something.

Alex Samuels [00:51:09] Yeah, I don’t think Trump made that remark to show, you know, empathy for the people.

Wells Dunbar [00:51:14] I was thinking maybe like, they thought they were going to get a check. And then they did.

Alex Samuels [00:51:18] Some like a dig on. Like you guys said, you would do this, but you did it. But a real they didn’t because like a lot of Republicans in Congress.

Wells Dunbar [00:51:26] Stopped.

Alex Samuels [00:51:27] Doing that. Yeah. So it’s interesting. But when you look at the polling actually on student debt relief, like Republicans are way more opposed to it than Democrats are. And it’s not even like there’s some overwhelming support from Democrats, because I think there’s this feeling of like, well, I had to pay my student loans and I didn’t get any help from the federal government. So you guys should have to do the same thing. And that cuts across both parties. So even when Biden first announced the plan, it wasn’t like 90% of Democrats were on board with it. I think the numbers are actually close to like 30 to 40% said they were strongly in favor of this.

Wells Dunbar [00:52:08] Well, I don’t know how we’re doing on time, but I’m just going to throw up a little jump ball wild card right now. What are you all going to be watching for on election night?

Lauren McGaughey [00:52:19] Ooh, you go first.

Alex Samuels [00:52:22] I have spent way too much daylight in moonlight covering the U.S. Senate race. So of course, that will be the top race. That will be the big race that I’m watching. And I think nationally that race is important. There are so many. What’s been interesting to me is that national Democrats seem so well, just they just they really want to protect existing incumbents in the Senate. But there are so many incumbents who are like underwater in polling and it’s like you’re probably going to lose. And so it’s interesting to me that they haven’t invested more research resources in states like Texas and Florida where like, it could be a really close race with calling. All right. I don’t think it will. I nobody hate me. I don’t think it will be Beto numbers, but I think it will be within single digits. And it’s like, why not invest more in the state of Texas? So I’ll be watching that race. And then there are specific counties that I’ll be looking at. I think, you know, Tarrant County is always interesting to look at, to look at the trends of like where Texas Republicans or, you know, suburban Republicans are going. I’ll be looking at the border. I saw that the 15th Congressional District was just listed as a lean Republican district. It’s currently held by a Democrat. So that seat might flip. So, you know, my prediction going into Election Day was that Republicans would flip the Senate and Democrats would flip the House. So I’m interested to see whether that pans out. But otherwise, you know, turnout, of course, and just, you know, the big bellwether races in the state.

Wells Dunbar [00:53:59] Yeah, I think we heard that at the Texas Tribune Festival as well. Tony Gonzalez, the House representative, was saying, Republican, was saying that he was thinking the House might flip. What do you think, Lauren? What are you going to be where are you going to be keeping an eye on.

Lauren McGaughey [00:54:13] The youth vote? The you know, I mean, this all the research I did for this event has made me really curious to see whether there’s going to be any movement or if any of these other X factors are going to change or skew or, you know, we’ll start seeing patterns. Geographic diversity is always really interesting to me. You mentioned Tarrant County, you know the Valley, what happens down there. This is a it’s not necessarily like a. Outcome of this specific election. But I’m also really interested to see what happens with ballot secrecy in this state. You know, there’s been if this is kind of more of an insider issue, but if he does while. Yeah, but if you if you don’t know our ballots aren’t secret in Texas I mean many of them aren’t you know they’re activists have figured out how to use our system that we’ve set up in this state to match up numbers that are generated when you cast a ballot electronically with your actual name, especially in small counties where turnout is low. And there have been some particularly far right websites that actually published someone’s actual voting that the chairman of the Texas GOP, they allege did not vote for Trump and voted for Ron DeSantis. And so this is part of an ongoing case right now about ballot secrecy. The secretary of state is kind of just at this point like wagging her finger and being like, don’t give people that information, please. But it runs contrary to. Thanks for that laugh, Becky. I can tell I was Becky without even realizing. But like the rules run, contrary to what the Texas Public Information Act Act actually requires us to release per law. And so, you know, the fact that this is like the most basic thing of voting, right? I get to vote and no one knows who I’m voting for. Maybe that’s not so true here. And I want to see how that the fallout comes down with like, who’s going to figure out who voted for whom and how are they going to publish?

Wells Dunbar [00:56:21] Yes. Yeah, there’ll be lots more ammo, I guess, after the November election. And that’s something that the legislature. Have they made any hints that they’re going to address that when they come back in January? Because as soon as the election’s over, we got the Texas legislature to look forward to that. So, yeah. Do you.

Lauren McGaughey [00:56:39] Have.

Wells Dunbar [00:56:40] Well, I let’s just hear a round of applause for these incredible journalists that we’ve had with us. Alex Samuels and Lauren McGahee. And I know we have a microphone out in the audience here. Jackie is in possession of in case anybody has any questions. I know I’ve been putting you through your paces, but we’ll just see if we got anything else. But if not, that’s cool too. You can always come up and ask you.

Lauren McGaughey [00:57:05] And you can.

Alex Samuels [00:57:06] Yeah. We’ll be around.

Lauren McGaughey [00:57:07] We’ll be at the bar.

Wells Dunbar [00:57:12] Well, awesome. I guess that’s a wrap, then. Well, thank you so much for attending our poll party. Thank you. To the hole in the wall. Thank you. To Cape York’s Q.T. And of course, our guests. The Texas NEWSROOM’s Lauren McGahee and Texas Monthly’s Alex Samuels, two of the sharpest journalists Texas has. So thank you. And we’ll see you at the polls. All right.

This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.