AUSTIN, Texas — As the 89th legislative session gets underway at the Texas State Capitol, a new poll is revealing what Texans want lawmakers to focus on the most.
Here’s a look at the results of the December poll commissioned by the Texas Politics Project and published on Jan. 15, 2025.
The issues
The poll shows that when Texas voters were asked what they thought the Legislature’s top priority would be, immigration or border security-related issues were the most frequently mentioned responses. Those issue were followed by the economy or concerns related to high prices, then education and crime.
The full responses to the question were:
- Immigration/border security: 22%
- The economy/prices: 16%
- Public education: 8%
- Crime: 4%
- Property taxes: 4%
- Health care: 4%:
- Abortion law: 3%
- Energy/the power grid: 3%
- Don’t know: 14%
One thing lawmakers are tasked with this session is assessing how to spend the $194.6 billion in available funds identified by Comptroller Glenn Hegar. When asked about the state’s spending habits, the poll found majorities of voters said Texas was spending “too little” on mental health services (58%), health care (55%) and electrical infrastructure (50%). Roughly 49% also said the state was spending too little on K-12 public education and on children in the state’s care.
The poll also asked voters about the strictness of state laws in six policy areas that have been active subjects in recent sessions: voting, abortion, guns, marijuana/cannabis, gambling and access to online pornography.
The poll found that for rules for voting, 35% of respondents want more strict laws, 22% want less strict and 36% want the laws left as they are. For guns, 50% want stricter gun laws, 18% want less strict laws and 26% want the laws left as they are. When it comes to abortion, 43% of respondents want the laws to be less strict, 27% want them to be more strict and 21% want them left as they are.
For marijuana, 41% want less strict laws, 32% want more strict and 18% want the laws left alone. For gambling, 30% favored both more strict and less strict laws, while 26% want the laws kept the same. And for access to online pornography, 58% said they want stricter laws, 18% want less strict laws and 19% want the laws left as they are.
Mood of the state
The poll found that 47% of respondents said Texas is headed in the right direction, with 38% saying the state is on the wrong track.
Meanwhile, opinions on the direction of the country as a whole remained more negative. Only 31% of respondents said the U.S. is headed in the right direction, with 56% saying the nation is on the wrong track. The Texas Politics Project did note that this was a slight improvement from October 2024, when 26% responded right direction and 63% responded wrong track.
Job approval ratings
The poll found that most Texas elected officials ended the year with their job approval ratings on the upswing, though the Texas Politics Project noted that previous December polls also found slight upticks in job approvals, “suggesting that there may well be a general tendency for at least some voters to be in a more positive mindset in December.”
Here’s a look at the approval ratings for the major elected officials for the Lone Star State:
- Gov. Greg Abbott: 55% approve, 34% disapprove
- Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick: 41% approve, 27% disapprove
- Attorney General Ken Paxton: 40% approve, 30% disapprove
- U.S. Sen. John Cornyn: 34% approve, 33% disapprove
- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz: 49% approve, 37% disapprove