Texas 2036’s 10th wave of the Texas Voter Poll was released earlier this week. Here is some context about the poll and why it matters.
What Makes our Poll Unique
Voter polls — especially ones administered close to an election — tend to focus on which candidate a voter is more likely to vote for, or how voters feel about hot-button, polarizing issues that dominate the news. Texas 2036’s polls have a different focus. Our organization’s mission is to enable Texans to make policy decisions through accessible data, long-term planning and statewide engagements; as such, we’ve structured our voter polls to support just that.
For six years across 10 waves, we’ve been asking Texas voters about the issues that are foundational to the long-term economic resilience of our state and are critical for improving opportunities and experiences for all Texans. Water. Schools. Healthcare prices. The jobs worth having and whether our roads and electric grids are adequately supporting our growing population.
These issues are not sensational and tend not to dominate news cycles, but they have sweeping impacts and can set the course for future generations of Texans. In addition to our statewide waves, we field targeted polls — shorter polls on specific issues, often in tandem with a research project where we need to understand where Texas voters stand.
We also go beyond asking what people care about to ask how much it matters. Sometimes that takes the form of asking about issues in the context of real tradeoffs and costs.
How the Poll Works
Since January 2020, Texas 2036 has worked with Baselice & Associates to poll a representative sample of 1,000-plus registered Texas voters across the state. The six years spanning our polls have seen a pandemic, a winter storm that took down the electric grid, and three legislative sessions. Although many of the questions provide a snapshot of one moment, we have also included consistent questions that allow us to measure how Texas voter attitudes have changed or stayed steady across time.
What Has Changed Over the Years
While the core design of the poll has stayed consistent, the ways we reach respondents have shifted to make our poll more accessible to Texas voters. Fewer Texans talk on the phone. Increasingly, more respond online or by text. Our poll has evolved accordingly, moving from a survey conducted mostly by telephone to one that reaches a growing share of voters through web and text responses. This shift is critical to keeping our poll representative of Texas, and it also requires being deliberate in how we compare waves to each other in our analysis.
Informing Impact
At Texas 2036, our goal is not to produce research reports that sit on shelves — we want our research to inform actual change. Here are two examples of how our polls informed our work:
- Childcare: Our February 2026 polling found that Texas voters were more likely to view childcare as an investment in education than as a workforce tool, by a margin of 56% to 38%. That finding, along with a separate survey of Texas parents, informed The State of Child Care in Texas, shaped a set of recommendations centered on what parents need rather than leading with the needs of the labor market.
- Water: Polling on water infrastructure found that 84% of Texas voters supported creating a new state fund to address aging and deteriorating systems. Our Legislative Water Blueprint for Texas cited that result, alongside our recommendation to establish exactly such a fund.
While Texas 2036 engages in rigorous research to inform solutions, the poll is critical for us to understand what Texas voters believe and feel, and the framing that most resonates with them.
Looking Toward the Future
As Texas 2036’s data and research capacity is growing, we are doing more of the analysis in-house, working directly from the raw data. That allows us to expand the insights we provide, such as:
- looking at data across all 10 waves at once instead of one at a time
- exploring longitudinal trends
- segmenting the data further to understand better what different groups of Texans are saying, whether they are parents, rural voters or people in fast-growing suburbs
- identifying subsets of the electorate, such as the Unaffiliated and Undecided voter, a group of Texas voters who are not committed to a party and who have not settled on their choices for the November election
All of this is in service of one thing: a stronger understanding of what Texas voters care about, so that the solutions we pursue reflect what matters to Texans.
For more information about our polls, click here.
