Poll Finds Texas Republicans Still in Love
with Trump and More Think Tariffs Will Help
Capitol Inside
May 7, 2025
A poll that was released on Wednesday found the love affair between Donald Trump and Texas Republicans to be alive and well in a state where a majority of the voters support the legalization of marijuana, private education vouchers, a ban on cell phone use during school hours and property tax cuts for homeowners exclusively.
The new University of Texas survey showed the voters divided almost evenly on Trump's performance in his second term - with thumbs up from 47 percent while 46 percent disapproved of his work so far this year. But the president's approval mark on the economy were underwater in the Lone Star State with 40 percent approval compared to a disapproval mark of 46 percent.
But Republicans here remain enamored with the billionaire who's running the country again - with 89 percent giving Trump a positive grade compared to a mere 6 percent who expressed their disapproval for his efforts in the return trip to the White House up to now.
Twenty-nine percent of the independents in the Texas Politics Project poll approved of Trump's performance while 48 percent did not. The poll found Trump with 5 percent support for his work from Democrats in the sample compared to an 89 percent disapproval rating from that particular group.
Trump carried Texas in November with 56 percent of the vote - a vault of four points from the share he received here when Democrat Joe Biden ousted him from the White House in 2020. But most of the support that Trump lost in Texas since the 2024 election could be attributed to independents and Democrats who broke ranks last year turning against him now.
The UT survey confirmed that Trump's honeymoon with Texas Republicans is still under way despite falling approval ratings among voters from both parties on a national level. The poll emerged on the same day that the Houston Chronicle published a report about the feelings that Texas business leaders have about the tariffs that Trump has imposed on major foreign trading partners. Business executives here slammed the tariffs as terrible policy that would do long-term harm to the economy in the nation's second largest state.
Karl Rove - one of the key architects of the GOP rise to majority power in Texas - warned in a television interview on Sunday about the dangers that the tariffs posed. Trump fired back by calling Rove a "total loser" who should be fired as a guest commentator for Fox News. Rove responded in a column that the Wall Street Journal published today.
Fifty-three percent of Texans who participated in the UT poll said they think the Trump tariffs will have a negative impact on their families compared to 22 percent who believe they would help. But 40 percent of the GOP voters in the survey told pollsters that they think their families will be better off as a consequence of the tariffs while 24 percent disagreed.
Fifty-one percent of the voters favored the legalization of marijuana for recreational or medical use or both. Fifteen percent of the Texans who weighed in supported an outright marijuana ban including 21 percent of the Republicans in the survey.
Two-thirds of the voters in the new UT poll support a prohibition on the use of cell phones during school hours while 55 percent endorsed the school choice proposal that Governor Greg Abbott signed into law late last week.
The Republican-controlled Legislature voted to spend $1 billion on private school subsidies that could have been used to improve public education. But 43 percent of the voters in the UT poll said they believed that the vouchers plan will have a positive impact on public schools in Texas.
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