Public Opinion and the Media

Chapter 4: Public Opinion and the Media

Chapter Summary

Chapter 4 brings together the critical concepts related to the development of political culture, political ideology, public opinion, and the role of the media in Texas. The chapter opens with a survey of the sources of public opinion and the various agents of socialization, like religion, family, education, demographic group membership, events, and socioeconomic status, that influence the development of beliefs and values that form political ideologies, political culture, and party identification. The chapter moves from these critical foundational concepts of the sources of public opinion to the actual process of measuring public opinion and how public officials respond to public opinion information. Chapter 4 transitions at the third learning objective to focus on the media.

The chapter delineates differences between the motivations and practices of for-profit and nonprofit media organizations as well as the impacts of media consolidation on the media landscape. To close out the chapter, students should deliberately engage with the concepts of disinformation, misinformation, and bias with a focus on identifying their own biases, preventing the development of filter bubbles, understanding how algorithms reinforce bias, and using tools for the prevention of being deceived by disinformation.

Chapter Outline

1. Public Opinion: Political information is gathered from a variety of sources, including media, friends, and family. This information influences the beliefs and attitudes people hold about the role of government. In democracy-based societies, like the United States and Texas, public officials should take into account the opinions of the public when crafting policies.

a. Sources of Public Opinion: Political socialization is the process by which individuals acquire political information and develop their political identities.

1. Family: For most people, family is the first and most impactful agent of socialization, leading to the majority of Texans identifying with the same political ideology and partisan identification as their families.

2. School: School provides critical information for continuing political socialization. Factors like geographic segregation likely reinforce the political values and beliefs of the prevailing communities. Continuing, changing, or diversifying educational experiences could cause a broadening of the political belief structures. Importantly, higher education often initiates and reinforces a sense of political efficacy in individuals, which is reflected in the fact that individuals with higher education are much more likely to be politically engaged.

3. Religion: Religious affiliation can have a strong impact on political socialization. Texas has historically had a high percentage of religiously affiliated residents. The base of the Republican party is heavily influenced by Evangelical Christians whose cultural and social values dominate the party's policy positions. Religion does not lead to the same political values for all demographic groups, with religiously adherent Latino and Black Texans still being more likely to support Democratic candidates.

4. Socioeconomic Group: Socioeconomic groups may reflect both concrete and constructed identities. People may belong to multiple of these groups (intersectionality), with some of them being given more weight than others in the individuals' perception of themselves. As an example, men and women have experiences and values that often lead to divergent positions on social, cultural, and political issues, known as the gender gap.

5. Events: Political events can cause changes in public opinion. The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health that overturned abortion protections in Roe v. Wade has led to renewed efforts to protect abortions in many states where abortion protections have been institutionalized, even in the reddest states, by popular referendum.

6. The Media: Media organizations can influence public opinion through their selection of which issues get attention and which don't (agenda setting), the presence of political commentary from pundits, and the framing of issues. The media can drive both the public and public officials to pay attention to particular issues.

7. Elected Officials: Officials can create feedback loops where they prioritize social and political issues that get public attention and build public support for action. Elected officials may also use particular “culture war” issues to mobilize their supporters and draw attention to divisive issues.

b. Political Ideology and Partisan Identification: Political ideologies, dominantly conservative and liberal in Texas and the United States, are the most important drivers of political choices. They are the cumulative outcome of lived events and historical realities of the groups to which individuals belong. Political ideology is related to but not synonymous with party identification. Libertarians are another prominent political ideological group in Texas. The state has become increasingly mixed in ideological affiliation. Partisan identity, the party with which a person identifies, is the biggest indicator of which party a person will vote for and shapes the individual's interpretation of political information, leading to large differences of opinion.

c. Political Knowledge: Maximizing the ability to impact policies and public officials through advocating for their own interests requires individuals to maintain political knowledge, especially for state and local governments, where the policy decisions have the greatest impacts on daily life. People are more familiar with national government figures and issues than those of state and local government, and that knowledge gap has grown in recent history. Limited knowledge makes individuals more dependent on informational shortcuts or heuristics to make decisions. Though an individual may have little knowledge, inaccurate knowledge, or no knowledge, they are still likely to have an opinion that has political impacts and consequences.

2. What Do I exans Think?: Public officials in representative democracies must be responsive to public opinion. The quality of public opinion measurement can be affected by the structure of polling questions, lack of political knowledge, and difficulty in reaching some communities.

a. Measuring and Analyzing Public Opinion: Public opinion polling in Texas has not been done extensively at a national level because Texas has not been a swing state in many years. There is growing public opinion polling in the state, however, often being done by institutions of higher education and in-state media organizations. Public opinion polls gathering information on large populations are most accurate when including around 1,000 randomly selected individuals, known as the random sample, normally resulting in a margin of error of around 3 percent. Reliable polls explain their methodology. Polling done by reputable news organizations, higher education institutions, and scientific polling organizations is known to be more reliable, while polling done by parties, public officials, campaigns, think tanks, and individual groups should be treated with more skepticism.

1. Can We Trust the Polls?: Trustworthy polls provide a representative sample of the population being surveyed, a sample of at least 1,000 people for large populations, and transparent information about the polling. Understanding the margin of error is critical to accurately interpreting a poll. The smaller the margin of error, the greater the poll's reliability.

2. The Challenges of Polling in Texas: Texas has a large portion of hard-to-reach population groups, primarily Black people, Latinos, rural Texans, and those in lower socioeconomic groups. Getting a sample that does not adequately weight these groups in the population can throw off the accuracy of the information.

b. Where Texans Stand on the Issues: Partisan identity is a critical distinguishing factor in the differences between Texans on issues. While majorities in Texas support same-sex marriage and have positive perceptions about immigrants, the percentages are still lower than other major population states, painting Texas as a more conservative state than other large population states but more progressive than some other southern states.

c. How Do Politicians Respond to Public Opinion?: Successful representative democracies are dependent on strong policy congruence between the public's opinion and public policy outcomes. Some issues may have widespread agreement but are not held as being critically important. Issues about which Texans care strongly are said to have strong issue saliency.

3. The Role of the Media in Texas Politics: Freedom of the press was established by the First Amendment.

a. What Are the Media, and What Roles Do They Serve in Democracy?: The media play three critical roles: 1) inform the public of current events, 2) provide forums for public debate, and 3) serve as a watchdog over government officials and institutions. Successful democracies are dependent on a population with an ability to make accurate decisions based on objective information. The media serves to link the public and the public officials and institutions of government, transferring information between the two. The media is both a watchdog restricting government by monitoring activities of public officials (including fact-checking) and a tool that can be used to expand government by promoting policy proposals from public officials and reporting on issues in the public that require government intervention. Criticisms of the media in Texas and nationally include allegations that the media exhibit partisan or ideological bias, fail to help

Texans adequately avoid incorrect information, and prioritize profits through increasing viewership through selecting stories and writing headlines that sensationalize stories and promote drama over information or policy discussions.

b. Journalism: Professional journalists are educated to provide accurate and objective stories that rely on original and verifiable sources of information and allow for multiple perspectives to be presented. Types of journalism include news journalism, investigative journalism, and opinion journalism. Investigative journalism fulfills the watchdog role of the media, and opinion journalism consists of a more subjective presentation of ideas. Opinion journalism is not the same as opinion personalities, pundits, or talk shows. Some media organizations provide a public forum through their endorsements of individuals and policy positions that have been considered by an editorial board. These endorsements can be most valuable for electoral competitions where the public knows very little about the issue, the position, or the candidates. Citizen journalism can play a critical role in bringing important issues to light but also raises questions about the extent of First Amendment protections for individuals acting independently in creating content.

c. Who Owns the Media in Texas?: An independent press (of government and media conglomerates) is critical to ensuring the watchdog function of the media is fulfilled. Content selection and structure are influenced by the ownership of the media organization and the interests of the owners. Modern trends reflect ongoing media consolidation as large media organizations, hedge funds, and private equity firms purchase media organizations and seek to maximize profits.

1. The Profit Motive: Most media organizations are owned by private individuals or large corporations, both driven by the desire to increase profits through driving up ratings that lead to increased advertising revenue. Needing to create broader appeal to drive ratings leads to the selection of more “soft news” or conflict-and drama-filled stories. The selection of these stories influences the political knowledge and engagement of the public, affecting their decisions in elections and policy choices.

2. Media Consolidation: Since deregulation policies of the 1980s and the 1996 Telecommunications Act allowed for expanded media ownership and cross-ownership of various types of media, there has been rapid media consolidation. In Texas, Hearst Communications owns the largest newspapers in the state's two largest cities and the newspapers in several other large cities, while Sinclair Media owns local television stations in all of the state's major cities. Consolidation allows companies to cut expenses, combine resources, and unify messaging, and has led to a greater nationalization of news coverage and a reduction among state and local news coverage.

3. Public and Nonprofit Media: Nonprofit media in Texas consists of organizations like National Public Radio affiliates (radio) and Public Broadcasting Stations (television) that receive a portion of funding from government grants and donors, and independent nonprofits like Pacifica Radio and The Texas Tribune that are entirely funded by donors and subscribers.

d. How Do the Media Shape the Political News That Texans Encounter?: The media can both shape and be shaped by the powerful people and institutions that are the subject of the news.

1. Determining What the News Is: Agenda-Setting: Media organizations practice agenda-setting by selecting which stories, individuals, and events are going to be given time and space that will garner public attention.

2. Shaping How People Understand the News: Framing: The choice in how to frame an issue (including word choice) determines how the public understands the issue and why it should be considered important.

e. The Media in the Texas Political System: Officials, institutions, and candidates seek positive coverage from the media by making themselves available for interviews, seeking endorsements, and appearing on programs. Support for a policymaker's issue or position may be determined by how the media chooses to portray the issue or policymaker. Many officials have elected to go around the media and directly appeal to the public through the use of social media platforms. Parties and their members will normally unite around particular agenda items and framing to create unity among members and their supporters in the public.

4. Where, and How, Texans Get Their Political News: How Texans choose to get their news can dramatically affect the quality of the information they are receiving and the level of knowledge Texans have about government and politics. In the early days of broadcast media, the “big three” of mainstream media, A.B.C, N.B.C, and C.B.S, produced national news programs that provided individuals with a common set of facts and understandings because they were the only sources for national and international news for most Americans. Transitions in the media landscape, including digital media outlets in cable news stations, podcasts, social media platforms, and more, have led to rapid media fragmentation that has given rise to partisan media and ideological media.

a. Newspapers: Newspapers have suffered with the rise of television and cable news, digital media platforms, and the immediacy of news coverage allowed by global connectivity on the internet. This competition has made newspapers less profitable even as they have tried to adapt with exclusive content, digital subscription access, and social media presence. Research shows that local papers offer more stories and a wider variety of content than local television stations offer the public. Television consolidates the number of topics and information in order to create a broader audience appeal. The collapse of local papers can lead to news deserts that undermine the ability of the public to be well-informed.

b. Radio and Podcasts: A growing number of Texans say they receive their news from podcasts. Talk radio remains a significant source of information for about a fifth of the state's population, with listeners skewing older and more conservative. Some print, radio, and television news organizations supplement their content by providing additional content through podcasts. Some public officials and institutions even seek to influence the public through the production of their own podcast programming.

c. Television: Television news consists of network or national news, cable news, and local news. Local television news stations have significantly larger numbers of viewers on a daily basis than either the national network news or cable news stations, and they are more likely to focus on issues important to local viewers while also providing better coverage of local and state public officials and politics.

d. Ethnic Media: Texas is second only to California in the number of so-called ethnic media outlets that cater to an increasingly diverse population of

Texans. The two largest Spanish-language organizations are Univision and Telemundo.

e. Social Media: Social media platforms are not news producers but facilitate a space on which individuals and organizations may produce content, blending traditional news content, citizen journalism, and opinion. Social media platforms have facilitated significant growth in the ability to report breaking news immediately to large audiences.

5. The Quality of the Texas News Media: Quality journalism is experiencing challenges from growing partisan polarization, declines in local media, popularity of social media, and less quality control through editorial gatekeeping, which threatens the quality of information available to Texans.

a. Disinformation and Misinformation: The internet and the rise of social media have severely changed the accessibility of both correct and incorrect information. Legacy media outlets governed by editorial standards historically issued corrections when presenting inaccurate or misleading information. The pressure to publish engaging stories quickly and the ability of anyone to produce content on digital platforms has caused the presence of misinformation (incorrect or misleading information) and disinformation (information created with the intention to deceive) to explode. Deepfakes have become more prevalent and harder to identify as filters, digital technology, and A.I tools have rapidly advanced. Research suggests that communities more tied to encrypted messaging apps, like Asian and Latino communities, are more vulnerable to disinformation because of the closed nature of the groups created on the apps.

b. Media Bias: Deep political polarization has accompanied an increased belief that mainstream media organizations are politically biased, but this is not supported by research. Media is biased toward profits and viewership ratings.

c. Declining Trust in Media: Americans have experienced a severe decline in trust in the media since the 2016 presidential election, with trust in social media platforms being the lowest of all formats. Local journalists are perceived as the most trustworthy. Republicans have been shown to have the steepest decline in trust in the media.

6. Public Opinion, the Media, and the Future of Texas: Informed public opinion drives healthy democracy, with public officials incentivized to follow the will of the public in order to maintain the legitimacy of their actions. The data derived from the scientific measurement of public opinion helps both leaders and Texans better understand the issues important to the public and identify divisions. How Texans receive information that feeds the beliefs that control public opinion has shifted rapidly and exists in a much more politically polarized environment that has led to media fragmentation and declining trust in the media. These changes have created a growing difficulty in selecting correct information, resulting in more Texans choosing news and information that conforms with their preexisting views and political biases.

Chapter 5: Political Parties

Chapter Summary

Chapter 4 explains the role, structures, functions, and history of political parties in Texas. The chapter begins with an overview of the role political parties play in Texas politics today with an explanation of how parties are structured. A look at each party's current platform positions on important and controversial issues can help students understand the differences in the parties' ideologies and priorities. The chapter then reviews the role of third parties in the Texas political system, with particular attention paid to the Tea Party which has recently been rolled into the populist maga faction of the Republican Party. To help students better understand the current political climate, Chapter 4 traces Texas's history as a one-party Democratic state through a period of transition to the present one-party Republican state. The chapter culminates with an explanation of the conflicts between and within the Democratic and Republican parties in Texas.

Chapter Outline

1. The Roles and Structure of Political Parties in Texas: a political party is an organization of people established to win elections and those who identify with—and vote for—that party's candidates. Each party develops a party platform, a statement of principles and political philosophy that a political party commits to enact if elected to office. The platform assists voters in making election decisions, especially in a state like Texas, which has many elected offices. Parties also engage in fund-raising, recruiting candidates for office, and get-out-the-vote drives.

a. Texas Party Politics: Tip O'Neill, former U.S. Speaker of the House, used to say that “all politics is local.” Generally, local issues are not ideological in nature; however, partisan polarization, the degree to which Republicans have become more conservative and Democrats have become more liberal, has become more pronounced in Texas politics and has led to a shift from all politics being local to the nationalization of even local issues and elections. This polarization leads to less compromise and aggressive efforts by the party in power to dominate legislative and political agendas. Because the overwhelming majority of Texans identify with one of the two major parties, voters lacking information rely on party labels as information shortcuts when taking positions on issues and deciding for whom to vote in elections. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has leaned into the polarization by refusing to allow Democratic state senators into committee chair positions and campaigning against fellow Republicans, like former Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan, who are willing to take a more bipartisan approach.

b. The Contemporary Republican Party in Texas: Texas Republicans currently hold all major statewide offices in the executive and judicial branches and a firm majority in both chambers of the legislature. Because of this dominance, major competition exists between G.O.P factions (establishment and business moderates versus populist maga conservatives) statewide, reflecting divisions within the party itself.

c. The Contemporary Democratic Party in Texas: today's Texas Democrats would mostly be classified as progressive or liberal, with the party base, elected officials, and leadership dominated by African Americans, Latinos, women, and White liberals in urban areas. While the Democrats hold no statewide offices and less than one-third of the congressional seats, limiting their influence at the statewide and national levels, the party does have deep support and significant majorities in the state's urban centers of Austin, Houston, Dallas, El Paso, and San Antonio. With more than two-thirds of Texas Latinos being American citizens by birth and a large population under the age of 18, the Democratic Party has expressed hopes for a brighter electoral future. However, shifts among Latinos in the 2024 election toward Donald Trump and Republicans make it unclear if Democrats will be able to automatically count on Latino voter support.

d. Democratic and Republican Party Organization:

1. Permanent Organization: the daily operational duties of the party organization are carried out by chairs and executive committees at the precinct (the most basic level of political organization at the local level), county, and state levels.

1. Precinct Chair: the local party official, elected in county precincts during the party's primary election, with each precinct chair being responsible for precinct conventions after polling places close on the night of the primary. The collective body of precinct chairs make up the County Executive Committee.

2. County Executive Committee: this steering committee is comprised of the county chairperson and precinct chairs. The party leadership is responsible for conducting a county's primary elections, planning county conventions, and running the business of the organization between elections and conventions.

3. County Chair: the county party official elected by the party voters in the whole county and serves as the head of the county executive committee while also conducting the daily business of the organization.

4. State Chair and Vice Chair: the top two state-level leaders in the party (one male and one female by party rules) and the leaders of the state executive committee. The chair is responsible for running the daily business of the state party. The chair and vice chair are selected by delegates to the state party convention.

5. State Executive Committee: the governing committee is made up of committees and committees women chosen by delegates to the state party convention who are responsible for governing a party's activities throughout the state.

6. The Permanent Organizations of each political party are directly impacted by the decisions made by delegates and primary voters in the primary election and convention processes every two years.

2. Temporary (Campaign) Organization

1. Precinct Convention: a meeting conducted, generally at a polling location after polls close, by precinct chairs to consider and select delegates and resolutions that will be carried forward to the county or senate district (for counties in more than one senate district) conventions. Anyone who participated in the party primary for that precinct may participate in the precinct convention.

2. County or Senate District Convention: a meeting conducted by county political party officials in the weeks following the party primaries to consider and select delegates and resolutions for the state party convention during the summer. Texas counties divided into more than one senate district will hold conventions in each district within the county.

3. State Convention: the major rally for state parties to consolidate support and build momentum behind the party's candidates for the general election, select state party officials, adopt a state party platform and choose delegates and electors in presidential election years.

e. Third Parties in Texas: restrictions on ballot access for third parties formalized by actions of the two major parties by placing extensive requirements into law paired with informal restrictions created by voter expectations, lack of information, no party labels or support, and funding and media challenges to create a hostile environment and independent candidates to bring forward their ideas to voters and engage in viable campaigns for public office. A few notable individuals and third parties have influenced the state, with most being coopted by the major parties once they began to gain traction.

1. Notable Third Parties in Texas

1. Dixiecrats: conservative southern Democrats who abandoned the national Democratic Party in the 1948 to run their own presidential candidate, Strom Thurmond, on a platform of racial segregation.

2. La Raza Unida Party: a Texas political party created in 1970 in response to the exclusion of Latinos from political life in the state. It recruited and trained candidates to run for local office and registered Latino voters to increase the numbers of Latino elected officials in the state. Most of its positions and members were absorbed into the Texas Democratic Party to replace the exodus of conservative White voters joining the Republican Party in the 1980s.

3. Libertarian Party: the state's most successful current third party, emerged as an alternative to the two major parties by promoting positions of individual liberties and limited government intervention. They have not had significant electoral success but have had the effect of encouraging the two major parties, particularly the Republican Party, to adopt their positions.

2. Why don't people vote for third parties?

1. “First Past the Post”: third parties have little success in these systems, as the winner is the candidate who receives a plurality of the votes. These systems are common in single-member district structures, where an electorate can vote for only one representative for each district. Voters often feel their vote for any candidate outside of a major party is “wasted” in this system.

a. 2006 Gubernatorial Election: the most recent significant threat to two-party dominance. Republican Governor Rick Perry, former Democratic Congressman Chris Bell, state comptroller and former Republican Carole Keeton Strayhorn, and liberal author and entertainer Richard "Kinky" Friedman faced off in the gubernatorial election, with Strayhorn and Friedman running as Republicans. In a particularly weak year for all Republicans in the state, Perry won reelection with only 39% of the popular vote.

2. Proportional Representation: third parties succeed more in this system because even parties who receive only as little as ten percent of the vote total may be given representation in the legislative body, often leading to coalitions and forcing compromise.

f. The Tea Party and Trump's Influence in Texas: the Tea Party

movement originated as a grassroots movement during Barack Obama's presidency in opposition to the passage of the Affordable Care Act A.C.A or “Obamacare”). The decentralized network of independent “Tea Party” organizations leveraged a strategy of influencing Republican primary elections to eject more moderate establishment Republican officeholders who were considered not conservative enough. The so-called Tea Party is not a political party but existed as a conservative libertarian faction of the Republican Party, which has subsequently been largely incorporated into the Trump maga populist wing of the Republican Party.

g. Parties and Digital Media: social media is increasingly used to conduct political advertising, respond to criticism, mobilize voters, and fund-raise for candidates and parties. The two parties also use their websites, txdemocrats dot org and texasgop dot org, to provide Texans with information on their platforms and how to contribute and volunteer.

2. Texas's History as a One-Party State: Democrats dominated Texas politics for over a century after the defeat of Edmund J. Davis in 1873 until Bill Clements won office in 1978. They formed an umbrella party that included both liberal and conservative Democrats. A split between these two factions over New Deal economic policies and civil rights measures started in the mid-1940s. The split culminated in the 1950s when Governor Allan Shivers led a charge of conservative Democrats, known as Shivercrats, to support Republican presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower. Shivers and his “Shivercrat” followers continued to support Democratic candidates at the state and local levels while breaking with the national Democratic leadership over accusations that the national party had become too liberal. This pattern, known as presidential Republicanism, became a consistent voting pattern in which conservatives voted Democratic for state and local offices but supported Republican presidential candidates between the 1950s and 1990s.

a. The Era of Conservative Democrats: from the end of Reconstruction through the 1950s and 60s Texas Democrats were conservative on fiscal and racial issues, as the Republican Party had been founded on an antislavery message and led military oversight of the South during Reconstruction. While most Democrats in Texas were conservative, some liberal leaders did hold office in the post-Reconstruction years. Social issues and a call for a smaller, more conservative government by Ronald Reagan in 1980 hurried the transition of conservative Texans from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party, with many Reagan supporters labeling themselves as “Reagan Democrats.”

b. The Growth of the Republican Party: as noted, few Republicans served in office in Texas for nearly a century. Voters identifying as Republican grew steadily and became more rapid toward the end of the twentieth century, with many Texans identifying as Republican today. In every election since 1998, Republicans have carried every statewide office and have controlled the state's legislature and all three branches of government since 2002.

c. The Disappearance of Conservative Democrats: Blue Dog Democrats, conservative Democrats from the South once dominated congressional leadership and Texas politics but had all but disappeared as of 2012 through retirement, switching parties, losing primary battles to more liberal challengers, or losing to Republicans in general elections in new more-G.O.P friendly districts. A year after the Republicans took the majority in the state House of Representatives along with the Texas Senate, in 2002, House Speaker Tom DeLay pushed the state legislature to redistrict for an unusual second time after the census to create new districts that would benefit Republican congressional candidates and target vulnerable conservative Democrats.

3. Texas Party Politics Today: ideological divisions and demographic changes affect Texas political parties.

a. Party Unity and Disunity: when a state becomes dominated by one party, factional battles are more likely to arise within the majority party. The current

Texas Republican Party consists of a social conservative populist faction that consolidated Evangelical conservatives, Tea Party Conservatives, and populist conservatives behind the candidacy of Donald Trump and a faction of establishment economic conservatives less focused on issues considered to be culture war issues.

b. Urban, Rural, and Suburban Influences on Partisanship: the growth of suburban areas around major cities following W.W.2 and the construction of the interstate highway system has changed the urban-rural divide between the political parties. “White flight” out of major urban areas to suburban enclaves left many metropolitan areas with smaller tax bases and poorer populations that also were more heavily populations of color. Cities like Houston, Dallas, El Paso, Austin, and San Antonio have become solid Democratic regions of support. Republicans have maintained a strong hold on rural areas while suburban communities, once another bastion of Republican voters, have become a hybrid of pockets of Democratic and Republican voters. Rural and suburban G.O.P voters, with the exception of the Rio Grande Valley, combine to give Republicans an electoral majority for the time being across the state.

c. Black People in Texas Political Parties: as with African Americans nationwide, the vast majority of African Americans in Texas cast their votes for Democrats. Combining strong Democratic Party loyalty with higher voter turnout rates than other communities of color and concentrated population groups in East Texas and urban centers has given African American voters and leaders significant influence and electoral success in the Democratic Party.

d. Latinos in Texas Political Parties: Latinos in Texas have a significantly lower voter turnout rate than other ethnic groups, at less than 27 percent in 2022 and less than 39 percent in 2020. While Latinos make up nearly 40 percent of Texas's population, a large portion, around 2 million, are not American citizens and another significant portion are under the age of 18, reducing the portion of the population eligible to participate in elections or run for public office. The full impact of Latinos voting in Texas may not be realized for another generation, and shifts in voting patterns in recent elections further cloud the future impacts of this significant group of voters.

Chapter 6: Campaigns and Elections

Chapter Summary

This chapter explores the processes of elections and campaigns in Texas. The content covers the various types of elections held in Texas, the structures that govern elections, and the difficulties independent candidates and third parties have getting ballot access and engaging in viable competition across the state. The chapter then delves into a discussion on the vote in Texas: historical restrictions, expansion of the vote, and changing requirements and restrictions today. Having students reflect on their rights and responsibilities regarding voting and political participation underscores their role in a democratic-based system.

A focus on the process and impacts of redistricting then highlights the challenges of ensuring equal representation and leads to a review of voter turnout throughout the state. The chapter concludes with a look at campaign finance and strategies employed throughout the campaign process.

1. Features of Elections in Texas: the Texas Constitution intentionally created a system where Texans are empowered to hold government officials accountable by going to vote in the selection of candidates for national, state, and local offices and by participating in special elections to fill vacant positions, pass bonds, and consider referenda. As discussed in Chapter 4, many Texans use party affiliation as an information shortcut to guide their voting behavior; however, local elections are often nonpartisan, so voters may consider other factors like race, gender, ethnicity, age, or other demographic characteristics when choosing a candidate. While the intent was for Texas voters to have popular control of government, special interests and big money have gained considerable influence that is magnified in low-turnout elections. This section follows the electoral cycle, the process in which candidates decide to run for office, beginning with party primaries and ending with the general election, usually in November.

a. Primary Elections: a ballot vote in which citizens select the nominees who will run for elected office during the general election. They are a function of the political parties but are funded by both the party and the state and are conducted in all 254 Texas counties, with the Texas secretary of state overseeing the election records and enforcement of election laws.

1. Runoff Primary: an election held within 60 days after a primary election between the two candidates who received the most votes in the first primary election if no candidate in that election received an absolute majority.

2. Texas has an open primary structure but retains one element of a closed primary—voters must declare party affiliation immediately before receiving a ballot for the primary election.

b. General Elections: the election in which voters cast ballots to select public officials, held the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November of even-numbered years; meaning election day can never fall on November 1. In Texas, major state officials are elected in “off years” or nonpresidential years, often called midterm elections. Local elections may occur at a different time of year as determined by local government officials—mainly because they are nonpartisan—and have very low turnout.

c. Special Elections: an election that is not held on a regularly scheduled basis; in Texas, a special election is called to fill a vacancy in office, to give approval for the state government to borrow money, or to ratify or reject amendments to the Texas Constitution.

2. Participation in Texas Elections

a. Who Can Vote? “The franchise,” or suffrage, refers to the act of voting or the right to vote. In Texas, the right to vote has evolved over the past few centuries.

1. Early Restrictions on the Franchise

1. The Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1919, guaranteed women the right to vote by removing sex-based restrictions from the ballot.

2. The poll tax was a state-imposed tax on voters as a prerequisite for voting that constituted a significant expense for an individual. Poll taxes were rendered unconstitutional in national elections with ratification of the Twenty-Fourth Amendment and in state elections by the Supreme Court in 1966.

3. Early registration required voters to register often more than nine months before the general election. Along with property requirements and residency requirements, early registration affected migrant workers. All were voided by the courts in the 1970s. The Voting Rights Act established a 30-day maximum, which Texas uses for registration requirements.

4. The White primary, in which only White voters were eligible to participate, was the most oppressive restriction on the franchise. Texas's position as a one-party Democratic state meant that universal participation in general elections was insignificant in choosing a winner and made the primaries the only “real” election in the state. A series of Supreme Court decisions first upheld, but then struck down, this provision.

a. Newberry v. United: upheld the White primary as having “in no real sense part of the manner of holding the [general] election.” This was subsequently struck down in 1927. b. Nixon v.: the state legislature authorized, by law, state executive committees to determine qualifications for voting in their primaries, which included only allowing White voter participation. The Supreme Court struck this down, holding that state executive committees were acting as agents of the state by facilitating candidate selection and in doing so were violating the Fourteenth Amendment.

c. Grovey v.: the Texas Democratic Party convention passed a resolution confining party membership to White citizens. The Supreme Court upheld this ruling on the grounds that the equal protection clause only covered “state action.”

d. Smith v.: the Supreme Court ruled the operation of primary elections involved state activity (facilitating the election of officeholders) and that White primaries involved unconstitutional state action.

e. Terry v.: the Supreme Court struck down the use of the Jaybird Party, an offshoot Democratic Party that preselected, or screened, candidates for the Democratic primary in some counties, generally prohibiting African Americans from participating.

2. Expanding the Franchise

1. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People N.A.A.C.P and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund M.A.L.D.E.F brought about repeated litigation in federal courts to challenge laws that restricted or disenfranchised African Americans and Latinos in Texas.

2. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed by Congress to ensure that voters of color, particularly African Americans, would be guaranteed the right to register to vote and participate in elections through enforcement by federal marshals if necessary. It has been renewed several times since 1965 and prevents the dilution of minority voting strength, but was significantly weakened by the Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder.

- 3. Contracting the Vote?: partisan legislation passed in 2011 requires a photo identification in order to vote. Republicans have claimed it prevents voter fraud while Democrats argue that such laws disproportionately affect low-income individuals, students, and historically marginalized groups (most of whom typically vote Democrat). In 2015, a federal appeals court ruled the law violated the Voting Rights Act, but subsequent revision of the law was upheld in the courts. While Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was declared unconstitutional by the U.S Supreme Court, the national prohibition on the restriction of voting rights on the basis of race or ethnicity found in Section 2 remains in effect.

- 4. 2021 Voting Restrictions: in the wake of the 2020 presidential election, the Texas state legislature passed sweeping new restrictions on voting, many motivated by the false presumption of voter fraud that year. Many of these reforms had a particular impact on practices used in Harris County and other large urban counties in the state.

- Qualifications to Vote Today: an individual must be 18 years of age, a U.S. citizen, and a resident of both Texas and the county for at least 30 days. A citizen may not vote if they are a felon who has not completed the full sentence or is judged by a court to be mentally incompetent. The National Motor Voter Law, passed in 1993, requires states to allow people to register to vote when applying for a driver's license.

b. How do People Vote?

1. Early Voting: a procedure that allows voters to cast ballots during a two-week period before the regularly scheduled election date. Early voting has been shown to correlate with only a modest increase in voter participation.

2. Straight-Ticket Voting: the practice of voters pressing one button (or marking one space) in the voting booth to register their vote for all candidates in one political party. A new law signed by Governor Abbott eliminated straight-ticket voting starting with the 2020 elections. 3. Convenience Voting After 2020: in the aftermath of the 2020 Presidential election, with President Trump's claims of voter fraud, the Texas legislature took up the issue with S.B.7, a bill aimed at restricting early voting by eliminating or limiting 24-hour voting, drive-through voting, Sunday voting, absentee ballots, drop boxes, and changing election evaluation methods; all methods used specifically in Harris County and other large urban counties. Democrats walked out of the legislative session to attempt to prevent a final vote, but the bill was brought back in a special session and passed over their objections.

c. Redistricting: Where Do People Vote?

1. Reapportionment: the process that takes place every 10 years following the completion of the census to determine how many congressional seats each state will receive, depending on population shifts.

2. Redistricting: the process of redrawing election districts and redistributing legislative representatives in the Texas House, Texas Senate, and U.S. House; it usually happens every 10 years to reflect shifts in population or in response to legal challenges to existing districts.

1. The Republican majority in the Texas legislature uses partisan gerrymandering to retain power by drawing districts friendly to the Republican Party.

2. Critics argue for nonpartisan redistricting commissions, as other states have implemented, to eliminate the partisan nature of redistricting.

3. Other critics also argue against the practice of counting all the residents in a voting district to determine its population, as the count may include college students and prison inmates, as well as the use of at-large districts in local nonpartisan elections.

3. Preclearance: further complicating voting in Texas, this was a provision under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 V.R.A, struck down by Shelby County v. Holder, that required any changes to election procedures or district lines to be approved by the U.S.

Department of Justice D.O.J or the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

4. Evenwel v.: plaintiffs sued the state of Texas, arguing that counting the total number of residents in a district violated the one-person, one-vote principle and the equal protection clause. Instead, they argued, only registered or eligible voters should be counted. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the state's practice of counting all residents.

d. Turnout: Who Votes?: Texas used to rank last in the nation in voter participation. It has moved up slightly in recent years, however, due to efforts to increase voter registration and implementation of early voting.

1. Education and income levels (socioeconomic status) are the two most important factors in determining the likelihood of political participation.

2. Other factors affecting low participation include a population that is younger and has a larger proportion of Latinos than the national average, as well as the abundance of elections, being a one-party state, and being a part of the South.

3. The number of elections in Texas can also affect voter participation with the number of election dates and the volume of issues, positions, and candidates running for office being overwhelming.

e. Racial and Ethnic Variations in Voting and Participation: despite making up less than 40 percent of the state's population, non-Hispanic Whites vote at a significantly higher rate than Latinos, giving disproportionate influence in the state electorate. In addition, even though poll taxes were banned, barriers to voting are still reported in every contested election (reduced number of polling places, misleading information, voter intimidation).

f. The Importance of the Republican Primary: with Republican dominance in statewide office and gerrymandered legislative districts, the Republican primary is viewed by many as the determinant of who will win statewide general elections and control of the legislature.

3. Campaigns: campaigns are designed for candidates to gain support to win primary and general elections. a. Candidates: Who Runs?: anyone can run for office in Texas; however, political experience or transferable experiences are helpful for higher offices, as is incumbency.

1. Running as an Independent: the process of running for statewide office as an independent in Texas is complicated, requiring signatures from registered voters who did not vote in the primary elections and a requirement that an equivalent of at least 1 percent of the voters who voted in the last gubernatorial election sign the petitions. The two major parties have designed a structure to keep competitors out of these statewide competitions.

b. Money: running a campaign is expensive, as it involves attempts to reach voters through print and electronic media. For this reason, candidates continually raise money throughout the campaign process. Candidates for federal office are limited by strict federal campaign finance laws; candidates for state office are subject to the laws established in 1991 by the Texas Ethics Commission, but only judicial candidates in Texas elections are bound by state contribution limits.

c. Interest Groups: state legislators and other statewide officials are subject to limited campaign regulations, which allow interest groups to have great influence in Texas politics.

d. Parties: candidates in Texas take the lead in planning their campaigns; however, parties assist in fund-raising, strategy, campaign support, and recruiting candidates to run for office, and provide a party label for voters.

e. Strategy: a campaign needs to be well-designed and executed. Slip-ups, like misspeaking, can cause controversy, especially when the messaging does not align with the target voter populations a candidate is trying to reach.

f. Public Opinion and Campaigns: campaigns hire pollsters to determine what policies constituents prioritize in the upcoming elections. Politicians then target voters based on demographic information and the current political climate.

g. Media: newspapers throughout Texas report on campaigns and elections, and many focus on local races. These publications may also endorse candidates for primary and general elections, a practice that matters more in local elections where the public is less familiar with candidates and positions. Television and radio stations host programs to inform the public about current races while also providing paid advertising time to candidates.

1. Social Media: candidates increasingly rely on social media, especially sites like YouTube, Facebook, and X, to communicate with voters about their accomplishments, policy proposals, and opinions. The platforms offer candidates and public officials an inexpensive way to communicate directly to voters without filtering the content.

h. Important Issues in Recent Texas Campaigns: the power grid failures in the Valentine's Day freeze across Texas, school shootings, immigration, school vouchers, and abortion access (following the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health) have all topped the list of statewide races in 2022 and 2024. Gun rights and property taxes remain perennial issues for statewide campaigns. It is interesting that in recent races, many statewide candidates have failed to emphasize statewide issues, focusing instead on discontent about candidates or policies at the national level, such as President Trump, and reflecting a further nationalization of state and local politics.

1. A political divide between urban/suburban areas and rural areas has deepened. Suburban areas are increasingly voting Democrat, creating a mixed electorate there, with rural areas continuing to vote solidly Republican. This is evidenced by seats lost by Republicans in the state House and Senate, mostly representing suburban areas.

Chapter 7: Interest Groups and Lobbying

Chapter Summary

Chapter 6 describes the role of interest groups in a democracy-based society, who interests groups do and don't represent, types of interest groups and advocacy activities in Texas, ways groups and lobbyists gain access and use influence policy makers and shape the policy process, and a look at factors that increase the influence of interest groups in Texas.

1. Interest Groups in the Political Process: interest groups are organizations established to influence policy and process decisions at the national, state, and local levels in ways that benefit the organizations and their members.

a. Interest Groups and Democracy: the United States and Texas are referred to as “pluralistic societies” because the right of individuals to associate freely and the right to petition the government are protected by both the national and state constitutions. Individuals may organize into groups to compete for influence over the programs, policy, and processes of government.

1. Overcoming the Free Rider Problem: because association with others is voluntary, this can lead to a free rider problem, whereby the incentive to benefit from the expenditure of work and resources contributed by others who chose to join an organization can lead individuals in a collective situation to continue to opt-out of making their own contributions to any efforts. To combat the free rider problem, interest groups may offer what are known as selective benefits, like material benefits, informational benefits, and purposive benefits, to incentivize more individuals to join the group. A group may also offer solidary benefits, like listing supporters as sponsors and creating a sense of shared impact.

2. Whose Interests Do Groups Represent?: not all groups are represented equally: those who lack the time, money, education, knowledge, and political power have less representation than groups that represent specific ideologies, business and labor groups, and professional associations. In Texas, business, oil, gas, and high-tech interests are especially influential.

b. Interest Group Resources and Strategies: interest groups mobilize various resources in the political game.

1. Members: groups can become influential because of who they represent and the saliency of the issue with its membership.

2. Money: the ability to raise money and distribute it through P.A.C's or other finance mechanisms is advantageous for groups to wield influence.

3. Information: information is often expensive for officeholders and government agencies to gather, making it the most important resource groups can provide. Data about members, research on the field of interest, and providing draft legislation can be critical in building relationships with policy makers.

c. Interest Groups and Policy Makers: both interest groups and policy makers benefit from their relationships. Policy makers receive information, money, and votes from interest groups; interest groups receive policies beneficial to their causes. Interest groups have advantages that individuals do not: time, money, expertise, and continuity. They also engage in bundling: the practice of combining campaign contributions from several sources into one larger contribution from the group in order to increase the group's impact on the candidate.

2. Types of Interest Groups and Lobbyists: interest groups employ lobbyists, who are tasked with influencing government policy and process decisions on behalf of that group by gaining access to policy makers and communicating the group's objectives to them and providing them with draft legislation, strategic support, information, and expert witnesses. Lobbyists can represent many types of interest groups, including corporations, labor unions, professional groups, public employee groups, single-issue groups, public interest groups, and ideological groups.

a. Getting Access to Policy Makers: lobbyists often gain access to policy makers through entertainment like expensive dinners, sports outings, or other activities. Lobbyists spend large sums of money to help offset Texas lawmakers' low salaries, which can be supplemented with campaign contributions for expenses related to holding office. Lobbyists and policy makers are held accountable by the Texas Ethics Commission. However, the lax rules regarding reporting leave many questions about what lobbyists were paid or what policy makers received.

1. Lobbyists often have long-standing personal relationships with policy makers, which make it easier for them to gain access. This can also be done by mobilizing a policy maker's constituents to become involved in the political process on behalf of the group's goals.

2. Lobbying and Government's Revolving Door: interest groups often employ former officials as lobbyists. A former legislator, especially a long-serving one, has friends in the legislature through whom they can gain access and has intimate knowledge of the lawmaking process. Legislators and aides often move back and forth between policy making and lobbying through a “revolving door.”

3. What Lobbyists Do with Access: despite gaining access through entertainment, lobbyists provide useful information on how a bill can benefit, or not benefit, a policy maker's district or the state. Lobbyists may write bills, explain bills, testify in committees debating bills, or lobby for rule changes proposed by the bureaucracy. 4. Corruption: concern over bribery is present; however, lobbyists overwhelmingly engage only provide information, campaign contributions, and political support for officials and candidates with which their organizations already agree rather than attempting to use bribes as influence. A few notable incidents occurred in past decades, including the Sharpstown scandal in the early 1970s, the “Bo” Pilgrim scandal in 1989, and some less notable but ethically questionable events that led to lawmakers creating the Texas Ethics Commission T.E.C in 1991. Swapping favors in return for campaign contributions from a major donor was one of the key components of the impeachment charges against Attorney General Ken Paxton in 2023. The commission does impose additional reporting requirements on lobbyists and policy makers, but it is not a major restriction on the practice of lobbying itself.

b. Who Represents Ordinary Texans?: business interests dominate policy making in Texas, often leaving representation for the public's interest out of the game. Some groups do lobby on opposite sides of issues. Many issues considered by Texas government pit one business interest against another, and sometimes a business or professional organization may find itself aligned with consumer interests. More recently, business interests, which have historically been more in line with Republicans, have clashed with the agenda items being promoted by social conservatives in the Republican Party.

1. Individuals as Lobbyists: individuals can sometimes successfully influence public policy. Generally, individuals will need a compelling story or argument and little or no opposition to the proposed policy. Relatively few Texans are engaged in local and state politics, however, leaving most lobbying to interest groups.

3. How Interest Groups Impact Elections: in addition to providing information, interest groups influence policy makers by promoting, or opposing, the interests of candidates.

a. Interest groups may create a political action committee (P.A.C), a private group that raises and distributes funds for use in election campaigns. The P.A.C becomes a way for interest groups to tell a candidate they will back their goals with money. Interest groups may also engage in issue advocacy, independent spending on a campaign issue that is not directly tied to an individual candidate.

b. Getting Out the Vote: both the political parties and interest groups work to get voters to the polls on election day. The parties often use databases to identify potential voters, whereas interest groups mobilize members or provide resources to candidate and party get-out-the-vote G.O.T.V campaigns.

c. Defeating Opponents: interest groups contribute overwhelmingly to incumbents; however, they often put resources directly into defeating a candidate who opposes their position. If that candidate wins, the interest group may “get on the late train” by giving contributions to candidates they originally opposed.

d. Following the Money: following the U.S. Supreme Court decision Citizens United v. Federal, interest groups may also accept dark money, political contributions whose donors are not legally required to be disclosed.

e. Interest-Group Capture: the process by which a government agency comes to serve the objectives of the interests that agency is supposed to regulate; Interest groups often donate money to the campaigns of those regulating the industries they represent, or they hire former agency officials to work for them as lobbyists. In Texas, the Texas Railroad Commission has long been under fire for expected interest-group capture.

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