80. Dr. Bryan Gervais and UTSA’s New Center for Policy Studies

Bob Rivard [00:00:03]:
Welcome to Big City Small Town, the weekly podcast all about San Antonio and the people who make it go and grow. I'm your host, Bob Brevard. This week's guest is UTSA's doctor Brian Gervais. He's an associate professor in the department of political science and geography. And the reason he is with us today, he's the inaugural director of the UTSA Center For Public Opinion Research. The new poll launched in advance of the national elections. His areas of specialization are political communication and political psychology. I'm feeling the need for a lot of both right now this week after the November election, doctor Gervais, And I hope I can call you Brian here at Big City Smart Town.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:00:45]:
Of course. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. It's a pleasure.

Bob Rivard [00:00:49]:
Well, I admire your French Canadian name like Rivard. I know we both share similar roots, north of the border. Right.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:00:57]:
Right.

Bob Rivard [00:00:57]:
And, like you to just start, Brian, by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself both personally and professionally and how you came to be where you are.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:01:05]:
Well, you're right. I I'm I originally grew up in New England, and, my my grandparents were were were French Canadian, Quebecois, and spoke a little French. I understand just like yours. I do not speak very good French at all, unfortunately. It's it's it's, it hasn't, moved on to the the subsequent generations. But I grew up in New England. I grew up in Connecticut, which is where, my grandparents settled, after moving down from Quebec in an in an old mill town. I didn't grow up in the mill town, but my father did.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:01:35]:
And I grew up right outside of, New Haven, Connecticut, a little town called Hamden, which is home to Quinnipiac University, which folks might recognize as being home to the Quinnipiac poll, which is a very popular national poll.

Bob Rivard [00:01:49]:
So And respected.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:01:51]:
And respected. So maybe some of my interest in polling stems from stem from that. It's a little bit of hometown pride. I attended University of Massachusetts for my undergraduate, and I went on to University of Maryland, to get my my PhD in in government and politics, and had a chance to live within the Beltway a little bit and live in Washington DC and and experience the the culture of, you know, the federal government and and DC politics a little bit. And so that was that was really rewarding.

Bob Rivard [00:02:20]:
When did you come to San Antonio and UTSA?

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:02:23]:
2013. I I took the job at at UTSA in 2013, and, I was very excited about it. You know? You know, my wife and I, we're newly married at the time, and we are thinking about where we wanted to be. We're very much attracted to San Antonio and UTSA. San Antonio, growing vibrant city, that had a lot to offer, and UTSA was a growing, university that seemed to be expanding on the up and up. And someone who you know, I'm very interested in building things and and seeing things, develop over time. I think the the, opportunity to be a part of UTSA and its growth and contribute in any way I could was was very attractive.

Bob Rivard [00:03:06]:
Well, your story is actually a very familiar one here because people don't necessarily appreciate that we're one of the fastest growing universities, not just in the state, but the country. And many universities aren't growing. In fact, they're shrinking, and so there's been a tremendous influx of talent to San Antonio over the recent years. And I can say it myself as a political science major at UTSA long before you arrived. I can see the caliber of faculty has vastly improved over the last decade or so.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:03:35]:
It's certainly an exciting time at the university, with the upcoming merger and expansion, all the development of downtown, with, the new buildings. And so, yeah, I I think the university has a bright future and and excited to be a part of

Bob Rivard [00:03:49]:
it. We're not gonna delve into this very deeply today, but you just mentioned, quote, the merger, which ought to be capital m because UTSA and UT Health San Antonio are going to merge under the UTSA president Taylor Amie

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:04:01]:
Yeah.

Bob Rivard [00:04:02]:
In 2025. I don't think anybody really understands or has a grasp of how that's going to occur and and and what it'll look like when it's finished, but it's something we here on the on the podcast, we're gonna devote a lot of attention to in the future as as we get into the new year.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:04:18]:
Yeah. You know, I wish I had insight into what to expect there. You know, I imagine there will be some reorganization, and, yeah, have have faith in president Amy and his team in in seeing it through.

Bob Rivard [00:04:30]:
Well, tell us a little bit more about the Center For, Public Opinion Research and how that came about. You've had some very high profile work Right. In the last year leading up to the election, and I expect that will continue into our mayor's race in 2025. But, it must have been a a quite a long time in the in the planning before you actually were able to launch that center.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:04:53]:
It was a multiyear effort. It it it took a long time. I I think we probably started having conversations in 2020, 2021, and it really did take 2 years, to get established. We got established formally, in the fall of 2023, and we finally had a little bit of funding to operate at the start of this year. It's really January or February where we really had some funding to work. So we jumped into it right away. Once once we are formally established and once we had a little bit of funding, you know, our first goal was to get a pilot pole in, before Super Tuesday ahead of Super Tuesday, and we did. We got a poll in in in late February, early March, which was our first pilot, and that was a great opportunity for us to really test out some of our sampling methodology, some of our approaches.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:05:40]:
It worked well. And then we had 3 more polls throughout 2024, 1 in June, 1 in September, and then one in October. And we just finished a 4th poll actually in, that occurred during early voting and closed right before election day, and we're just starting to look over those results. And we provide a we have a little bit of analysis done, but I I think I hope we'll have a full report out, soon that shows the the full results there. And and and they're really fascinating. They're very interesting. I think they give us a lot of insight into what happened, in in Bexar County and San Antonio during the election.

Bob Rivard [00:06:15]:
And soon would mean, later this month or maybe early December?

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:06:18]:
Later this month. So we're we're taking our our time a little bit more than we have with our other survey reports. We we want this to be sort of a a longer report that goes in a little bit more in-depth, has a little bit more analysis in some of the survey briefs we've released, because this one's a little bit different than what we've previously done.

Bob Rivard [00:06:35]:
Well, as you look back at the work that you published in 2024, from the 4, surveys in the market, do you feel good or not so good about what the results showed at that moment in time versus what the ultimate results were?

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:06:49]:
I'm very happy with especially our our October poll results, which we've released. You know, we just look at our predictions for the outcomes of some of the various races, and they they they're pretty spot on. You know, one thing that, you know, we caught was a change between September October with the support for Kamala Harris among, local voters. We saw it tightening up, I think, in our September poll among San Antonio voters. It was about 80 she had a 18, 19 point lead, which is similar to what Joe Biden had, in 2020. Ultimately, that's he, you know, he won Bexar County by 20 points or 18 points or so. And then, in our October poll, among San Antonio voters, we saw that tighten up a lot. We saw her only leading by about 13 points.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:07:39]:
And I think there's some skepticism that it's gonna be that close locally, but we see the final results, in Bexar County, and and Harris, you know you know, didn't even win by 10. It was, like, 9 and a half points. Now our October polls are just San Antonio voters. Harris, is weaker among non San Antonio voters, who live in Bexar County, and so that there's a little bit of a difference there. It's, comparing apples and oranges a little bit, but we definitely saw it tightening up there. You know, that that was something, you know, our data picked up on that this was go not going to be a replay of 2020, not even 2016. I mean, this is the closest we've seen presidential results in Bexar County since 2012 when Barack Obama won by, I think, 5 points over Mitt Romney that year. The other thing, that we picked up on, was that, Colin Allred was surging among local voters, between September October, and our October poll suggested that he would he might run ahead, of Harris or at least win, by by a greater greater extent, which he did.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:08:41]:
I mean, our poll, suggested he would win by about 17 points locally, and and in and in Bexar County, he won by about 16a half. So we really nailed, I think, the support for Allred versus Cruz, in our October poll. And in some of the November results, which we'll release soon, we're also spot on on a on a few things.

Bob Rivard [00:09:02]:
Yeah. I would expect, Brian, that the November results are gonna show a continuation of that decline in support for Harris that you picked up from September to October, and, of course, October, was the advent mid October, late October 21st, I think, of early voting.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:09:18]:
Yeah.

Bob Rivard [00:09:19]:
And I think that just continued, and that was reflected in her 9 point, margin over Trump, which is not much of a margin and nowhere near enough to overcome everything happening in the the suburbs and rural counties.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:09:30]:
Yeah. And so, you know, we we see a trend between our June, September, and October polls where, it's very close when Joe Biden is still on the ballot in June. We see a surge in support for Harris in our September poll coming after the Democratic National Convention, and then it tightened up as we got closer and closer to election day. And so, you know, I think those polling results make a lot of sense.

Bob Rivard [00:09:52]:
Well, there's 2 issues. Both are getting a lot of attention in terms of the post election analysis and that I really think we wanna take a deep dive into here in Bexar County and really all of South Texas. The first one is how Hispanic votes Mhmm. Changed dramatically from voting for, Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump, but you started to see a trend

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:10:13]:
Yeah.

Bob Rivard [00:10:14]:
And then, Joe Biden over Yeah. Donald Trump, and the trend increased. And then there was just an astonishing change in the Hispanic vote overall

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:10:23]:
Yeah.

Bob Rivard [00:10:24]:
In how many how many went for Trump over Harris. And and the, the other trend that I that I think I saw is most people thought the election was about inflation in the economy Yep. Yep. Immigration, and Roe versus Wade. Yeah. And, what I heard one commentator say yesterday, body autonomy, excuse me, for women turned out not to be a decisive measure of, of how women voted in this election or turned out, in fact.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:10:52]:
Yeah. So, you know, regarding that latter point, in our November poll, which we haven't released yet, we we asked folks about what they thought was the most important issue, at least locally, in in Bexar County. And this is something, you know, we aim to do over time to sort of track this. And, you know, abortion, bodily autonomy was not one of the most important issues that we see. It was things like, immigration, crime, and and economic concerns, at least among local voters. So I think, you know, it's probably some truth to that point. You know, regarding the the broader trends here, and I'll I'll put my political science hat on for a second. You know, I we hear the r word realignment thrown a lot around a lot.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:11:36]:
And, you know, we have seen trends, among groups, sort of shifting, during the so called Trump era. I think we have to be careful before we, you know, conclude that a realignment has occurred.

Bob Rivard [00:11:49]:
Talking about whether working class voters are now gone from Democrat to Republican or whether that's temporary.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:11:56]:
In this sort of larger education, urban rural divide, you know, I wonder how much of this depends on Trump and Trump being around and on the ballot and a part of the Republican party. And what happens when he's off the scene? Do we see those shifts continue? Right? Or are they sort of temporary? Do we see suburban voters, educated voters continue? I mean, I mean, you know, they they were less supportive of Harris than they were of Biden in 2020, but, you know, this part of this broader realignment or supposed realignment, do we see that sort of continue, once Trump is off the scene? And I'm not sure. So I think we have to wait before we conclude that a realignment, has has really occurred. I do think there's probably truth to the fact that, economic concerns and concerns about inflation really explain a lot of the differences between 2020 and 2024 just because we see broadly across the country, various counties, various types of communities, very various types of economic conditions, just a shift right words, towards Trump, compared to 2020. And you have to think about, you know, what do all these different areas, geographic units, different subgroups, have in common, and, you know, it's probably their experience with with prices or or perception of of the cost of, you know, groceries, etcetera. And I so I think that's the simplest explanation, and it's one that makes a lot of sense to me. Not that other factors don't matter as well and can explain some differences in turnout and differences in outcome in various races, but, you know, I think economic concerns explains a lot of the shifts we saw between 2020 and 2024. And our data suggests that at least to some extent when we ask people about what their major concerns were.

Bob Rivard [00:13:36]:
Do you think voters are angrier now than than they've been in the past, Brian? And, incumbency is is, locked down in the state of Texas, but but nationally, not so. And, I think everybody agrees that president Biden would have lost by as much as president Harris or more

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:13:53]:
Yeah.

Bob Rivard [00:13:54]:
Had he decided to run. But we've seen nationally, not just incumbency, not add up to anything here for vice president Harris. We've seen in Great Britain. We've seen in France. We've seen in Germany. We've just seen, ruling coalitions everywhere, evaporate as people throw out, people in power and vote in, sometimes people that, it seems where they're making less a statement about who they wanna govern than who they don't wanna govern.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:14:24]:
I think that's absolutely right. It's it's non ideological. It's not sort of perspective voting here. It's not folks, thinking about looking at the proposals, that are put forth by candidates and suggesting this is who I wanna vote for. It's all retrospective. It's and, again, we're seeing that globally. Looking at the party in power, the incumbent party, folks, that, you know, had been in power while, in the post COVID era when we've seen lots of inflation, some economic stagnation, and and throwing the bums out. And, you know, since 2, 2021, 2022, we've seen that, you know, across the world.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:15:02]:
And not just in western world. I mean, we've seen this in Japan and elsewhere too. And so, yeah, I think there's a lot of credence to that theory. This is just an anti incumbent moment. It's hangover from COVID, and the economic repercussions of COVID, which is really high inflation, and, you know, that explains a lot of it. And it's not that there aren't other things happening more locally that explain particular outcomes as well, but, when we want when we look across the world and we see incumbents being thrown out, not necessarily replaced by, you know, rightward parties or leftward parties, it's just whoever happens to be in power gets booted out. Then, yeah, I think the economic explanation is is really the best one.

Bob Rivard [00:15:44]:
Do you think promises made on the campaign trail really resonate with people and cause them to shift their votes and actually take as hard fact, Trump promising to end the war in Ukraine even before he takes the oath of office, people like myself, seniors on Social Security being told that we're no longer gonna pay taxes Yeah. Yeah. People in the service industry who rely on tips and gratuities being told those won't be taxed anymore. And I I wonder how many of those people blindly went to the polls thinking that's the world I want, and I'm going to vote for my my own pocketbook. And and, and after he gets elected, I'll see the fruits of that of that vote.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:16:22]:
I think campaigns and campaign messaging matters on the margins. And we can kinda see a difference in just the outcome of of of some of the different races or at least some of the different state outcomes across country in the presidential race where some states, Georgia, some of the Midwestern states where Harris campaigned hard, the shift towards Trump wasn't as, distinct and large as it was elsewhere, which suggests that, you know, maybe some of the ground game, maybe some of the messaging, that her campaign used, you know, was sort of effective. But it doesn't really change, you know, the general trend here, which was that, you know, voters largely were, you know, upset with incumbent party, the party that controlled the the White House and voted them out. So it's not that I I don't think that messaging or even some of the messaging that Trump did necessarily, you know, had no impact or turned people off or or worked and and and brought people into the camp. Those effects are are are pretty small, and, I think that's consistent with a lot of what we've seen in political science research over the years, campaign messaging, campaign effects. You know, they can affect a small close election, but they can't overcome, you know, broad, you know, shifts away from the incoming party, like like what we've seen, you know, in, this past November.

Bob Rivard [00:17:43]:
I wonder how effective your survey will be going forward, your center, Brian, in measuring inequality. Yeah. And I think by any measure, the macroeconomy is thriving, particularly having come out of the depths of the pandemic. People no longer appreciate how bad things were here. And when you compare us to other western democracies, particularly in Europe, our economy is thriving at a much, more robust rate. Yep. However, that falls on deaf ears for many people. The working class has seen wages fall far behind, consumer prices.

Bob Rivard [00:18:19]:
Our own children, millennials and Gen z's, can't afford to buy a house, can't afford to save, face crushing, university and college tuition debt. Right. And, for them, it's not a strong economy. Yeah. If anyone who's watched the stock market in the days since the election can see that the rich do get richer Right. And, it's been very beneficial for those with money in their pockets, but, hard to see where that prosperity trickles down to a a broader electorate. And I and I think that that's an issue that bit the Biden administration and by turn Harris very hard, and it's one that we need to pay a lot more attention to, particularly in a city like ours where the poverty rate is so high.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:19:05]:
Yeah. I would say that understanding and measuring those sentiments is our primary goal. You know, one thing we've been focused on is developing what we're calling our our Bexar County panel, which we aim to be a representative group of folks, you know, representative of Bexar County who do surveys for us over time. And we're working with researchers other researchers at UTSA right now, to partner to do a number of different longitudinal studies, on this group as we build up this panel. So we're measuring different, attitudes and opinions and and issues over time. That includes things, lots of sociological factors, including, you know, people's sense of how they are doing, financially. But it's gonna be things also like health issues. We're we're also going to be addressing, we're partnering with a group of researchers looking at housing affordability and in trying to measure that, and and that project's in its early stages.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:20:10]:
But another one we've we've already started working on is measuring, educational attitudes and how well we think, different, you know, schools are performing here and people's perspectives on on local schools. We want to measure things like emergency preparedness, how prepared people are for different types of, you know, emergencies, whether it's weather related, etcetera. And so, you know, certainly, you know, people's sense of of their economic well-being will will be part of this. But I'm really, excited, to develop this panel and expand these projects because I think it's gonna be a wealth of information about our populace that can inform organizations, can inform policymakers about the main concerns of voters, their perspectives, their insights. And tracking this over time really lets us know whether or not things are getting better or worse or people's perspectives are changing on these things. Developing the panel's a lot of work. It's it's something that we're gonna be, increasing our our our attention to and our focus on. Not you know, we have a little bit of break before we jump back into election polling again ahead of the municipal elections.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:21:18]:
And so we're we're right now, we're working on, recruiting people into our panel through, multiple modes. We it's a multimoral process. And it's expanding, and, you know, we're we're, increasing 2 thou almost to 2,000 people in this panel. We wanna get to about 5,000 who enroll in the panel, and, you know, I think I think we'll get there. It it will be some work, but, you know, I'm really looking forward to this. And I think that is going to be the main contribution of of our centers developing this panel and and in giving researchers access, to the views and opinions of local residents. And this is something that San Antonio and Bear County, really deserves. We look at other major cities, other major metropolitan areas, and there are centers and institutes that do this sort of stuff.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:22:02]:
I mean, one of our models was the Kinder Institute, which is housed at Rice University in in Houston, and they do a number of studies on Harris County and the city of Houston, not just election polling, but looking into health concerns, looking into educational attitudes, looking into, a variety of things to really understand what Harris County residents and Houstonians, the issues that they're dealing with, their opinions and perspectives. And it and it leads to actionable policy, you know, by by local government there. And and we hope to try to replicate that here.

Bob Rivard [00:22:37]:
One of the things I've always admired about the Kinder Institute at Rice, Brian, is their abilities to shape, trends into narrative, storytelling and not just statistical reports. Yeah. Actually, in the early days of the Rivard Report, I used to publish quite a bit of content that they created at the Kinder Institute on a on all kinds of urban topics of interest to our city as we were trying to Yeah. You know, enhance our own urban core and our own, attraction to young professionals. Yeah. And I wonder whether or not the center has that same, ambition here at UTSA to become a source, not just of polls and trends, but to be able to produce content that policymakers and citizens and others can absorb and, be better informed as they make their own decisions about the direction of the city. Yeah. Absolutely.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:23:29]:
In fact, Yeah. Absolutely. In fact, one of the reasons we're taking a bit longer, to release our results from our latest November poll, is that we we want to sort of structure in that sort of way, more of a longer report narrative sort of thing, not these brief survey reports. And so, you know, we aren't there yet. We are certainly not the Kinder Institute by means.

Bob Rivard [00:23:51]:
They're very well funded.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:23:53]:
Very well funded. Lots of staff, lots of resources. That's what we aspire to be, something like that. Or, you know, if not on that on that scale, at least larger than we, what we are now, and to be able to provide, you know, those sort of services and those that sort of reporting and that sort of insight into what's happening in within Bexar County. So it it truly is a model. We we've got a long way to go before we become something like that, but that's the goal. Absolutely.

Bob Rivard [00:24:22]:
I wanna ask you about, whether or not the university leaders, the system leaders, completely share your enthusiasm for a center like this or whether, the trend in questioning the efficacy of polls that we've seen in the last 20 years in the United States, causes some nervousness about whether or not the center will be able to establish its credibility. And we can just look at the polls, which were conducted for the 2024 presidential election where there was an awful lot of attention paid to, how do we get this right? Where do we go wrong in 2020? What did we miss? And, you know, to the very end, every reputable pollster that I'm familiar with said it was too close to call. It was just a real nail biter. Yeah. Now we're looking at the results. It wasn't a landslide, but Trump, you know, garnered more than 300 electoral votes. It was a a a significant win, and I heard one report that said in 90% of all US counties, more people voted for Trump than ever before. Yeah.

Bob Rivard [00:25:25]:
That that's significant. Pollsters I've talked to have told me about how difficult it became in their business with the elimination of landlines by and large and the advent of cell phones and the ability of people to block spammers to to type in stop to political, surveys, and also people just feeling that as politics got more and more toxic and partisan, they're not gonna talk candidly to a stranger on a phone about why they're voting for Trump or voting against Harris.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:26:00]:
Yeah. I'd say in general, I think the 2024 polling results were probably some of the most accurate we've had, at least in a couple decades, probably since 2008. You know, I think the the polling miss, you look at the national average, was probably something about 2.8 points, which actually, you know, is within yeah. I mean, that's that's not unusual. That's what we've seen. You know, it's actually smaller than what we've seen historically. Within swing states, it was they were even more accurate. It was about 2.2.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:26:31]:
Miss.

Bob Rivard [00:26:31]:
There were no swing states. Yeah. Well The blue wall is

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:26:35]:
Well, I is not there. You looked at those 7 swing states, though, I mean, all the averages suggested, you know, Trump was there or leading in almost all of them at the end by a point or 2. And, you know, it more or less that that turned out to be the case there. And so I I I think the polling results were pretty accurate. I mean, you're always going to there's gonna be some natural error. You're gonna miss by a point or 2. To become that precise is really, really tough. But I think the polls overall performed pretty well, and it has to do with some methodological changing that a lot of pollsters did, and we don't have to get into weeds there.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:27:10]:
But, you know, one thing they did is they waited on recalled vote, which is, they they weigh the sample more based on how people reported they voted in 2020 just to ensure they weren't undercounting Trump's support there. And that looks like it's really early on, but that looks like it probably made a difference in having the polls really not underestimating Trump support all that much in 2024 compared to what we saw in 2020 and and and and and even 2016. And, you know, and we can make some distinctions here between different types of polls. Right? Election polling, it's a lot different, than doing a a broader, broader survey research on a population. There's distinct problems. So the issue with election polling is that you're trying to sample, from or develop a sample that's representative of a population that does not yet exist. We don't know what's going to look like. We don't know exactly what the electorate is going to be, ahead of time, and so we have to make some assumptions, and we poll accordingly.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:28:10]:
I'm actually very happy with some of our with our sampling model, in in, you you know, in who we pulled in. I think we had a a a the correct mix of voters here to really get a a pretty good insight into what local voters were thinking during the election, but it's a tough thing to do. With broader survey research, which is what we're talking about sampling, you know, or or doing survey research on, let's say, Bexar County as part of our Bexar County panel. It's a different sort of problem where we know what the population looks like. Right? We've got census information there. We know if we're missing certain groups, if we want to, if there's certain peep types of people that are missing from our samples who are not part are participating. The problem there is reaching those people. You know? We have no problem getting voters to partake in our election polls.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:29:00]:
It's much harder to get people who are less engaged, maybe, a a little bit less trusting of institutions to join our panel and want to participate. So I think it's 2 different problems and require sort of different solutions and different approaches. But I guess the broader point here is that even if you, you know, you know, aren't completely sure about the accuracy or precision of election polling, and and, you know, and I have arguments to why, you know, I think the polls actually did pretty well in in recent elections. But even if you're not convinced of that, that's different from some of the other polling we're talking about that the Kinder Institute's doing and what we wanna do with our Bexar County pull up panel as well, which is we know what the population is. We're just trying to pull those people in, and that's a tough thing. Right? And it's why we rely on so many different modes to recruit people in and reach out to them, and it's why we also offer incentives. Right? You know, we compensate people for their time, for joining our panel, and for, participating in our polling too.

Bob Rivard [00:29:56]:
Well, people just sat up when they heard that. Yeah. And and I will say you make some very fair points about the polling, and I don't disagree with you in terms of its accuracy in in that regard. But talk about, the panel. It's 5,000 people. It almost seems unmanageable to me. But if somebody's listening and they're interested in participating in that, and they'd like to know more about the incentives, Brian, thank you. Yeah.

Bob Rivard [00:30:19]:
How do they proceed?

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:30:20]:
Well, we'll reach out to you. Right? So the the way it works with our panel is that, you know, we do, select people randomly. Right? That's a scientific process. Behind it is that we randomly select people and addresses and phone numbers that we reach out with. And so there's 3 modes in which we recruit people through the panel. One way is through our voter polls. At the end of it, we ask voters, right, to if they would like to join our panel, and we we get lots of people, through those means. We have a phone banking lab, which, you know, random digit dialing RDD polling where we've got interviewers who call up people and recruit them that way, and, you know, we do get people who pick up and, you know, complete our polls and and agree to join.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:31:04]:
And the last, element, that we're we're just starting to do, we probably won't really pick up until the spring, is address based sampling where we randomly select addresses in San Antonio. We send people mailers. They'll have QR codes on it. They can scan it with their phone, and they can join our panel that way. And through those three different means or or modes, we hope to recruit a pretty representative sample of Bexar County folks, so that we can develop this panel and really do a lot of cool things.

Bob Rivard [00:31:31]:
And what what are the incentives?

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:31:34]:
We offer they're called Tango gift cards. Right? So if you've ever gotten a Tango gift card be before, you know that you can redeem them at tons of retailers. Right? Amazon, Starbucks, Walmart, whatever. You can turn it in, and, you know, wherever you want, you know, steak houses, whatever. And so that's the incentive. We send you a digital gift card, in in exchange for completing our, our our polls for us.

Bob Rivard [00:31:58]:
Well, I wanna give you and UTSA credit, the center credit for picking up on a trend I watched very carefully, which is early in your surveying, there was widespread voter, I would say, confusion about the charter reform amendments. Most people didn't understand them, didn't didn't have a position. The beginners were a little bit stronger than those that supported them, but we saw a significant shift the other way as the the campaigns by both the firefighters union and the much more better funded, campaign by, the pro charter Yeah. Reform groups, business leaders and others, settled in, and more and more people got behind those. And in fact, what we saw at the polls was overwhelming support, for the for the, various charter reform amendments, many of them passing in the 70th, 60th percentile, even the one, the most critical one about the future of the city manager's compensation and term limits, passed in the 50%. So low fifties. Pretty pretty comfortable.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:33:00]:
Yeah. You know, those results are some of the things I think I'm I'm I'm the most proud of and interested in. And the thing we're actually, we're gonna ex we explored a lot more in our November poll, and we'll have a lot more to say about that. But we so in our September poll, we wanted to gauge more public opinion about these changes. And so we use descriptions of each of the 6, ballot propositions, city charter amendments, and we adopted this from local media coverage, how they're being described. And, that included describing the city manager amendment as one that would remove the caps on the tenure and compensation of city manager that were established by another proposition in in 2018. And we also described, you know, prop e, which would, you know, raise the salaries, for the mayor and the, and and and the city council. I think it's 70 k for, the city council, 872, for the mayor.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:34:02]:
And we scribe it in that sort of way. Right? It it would raise the salary issue, support this, and, you know, of course, it's indexed and and all of that. And we saw lows really low support for prop c when we when we used the description, right, of of removing the caps and the city manager and pretty low support for, increasing the salaries, when we described it as increasing the salaries for the city council and the mayor. In October, we used the actual ballot language, and we saw big changes for 3 of the amendments. Right? For 3 of the propositions, it really made no difference whether or not we used a description or the actual wording. But 3 of the amendments have made a big difference, and that included prop c and prop e. And the reason was because the actual ballot language for prop c doesn't say we're gonna remove the caps on the city manager. It says, should the city council be able to set the terms of compensation and length of office or something along those lines, for the city manager? Right? It was a lot different.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:34:57]:
It's it sounds like something very different. It's very it's a lot more ambiguous. It doesn't sound like we're removing the caps on them per se. And even with the city, council and mayor salary, proposition, the actual ballot language says, you know, should, you know, we amend it so that, we set and limit the the, salaries for of the city council and mayor to 70 k and 87.2 or whatever it was. And set and limit sounds a lot different than, you know, raising, increasing. And what we what we've learned is that lots of people didn't recognize that set and limit actually meant an increase. I I don't think many folks knew that, you know, how how little, you know, people on the city council and even the mayor compensated. Right? This is a relatively new thing.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:35:42]:
They've been we're paying them, you know, 40 or whatever. $20. Yeah. Right? I mean, I mean, that was that was a recent change. And so people didn't pick up on that or understand that, and we saw that this actual wording seemed to make a difference between our September October polls. So in our November poll, we actually did a really neat thing where we randomly assigned people, to either see the actual wording or the descriptions. So we really wanted to see, okay, was this just a trend towards increased support for these things, or did was it really just the the difference in question wording and how we describe them? And we saw the same sort of thing, same differences we saw in support between the September October poll. We saw between our the actual wording, versus the descriptions where, prop c had a lot more support, when we use the actual wording, have really low support when we use the descriptions.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:36:35]:
Same thing with prop e, the salary, city council mayor salary, more support when we use the actual wording versus the descriptions. And, ultimately, I think both our November poll and the October poll was just used the actual wording. When we look at the actual wording, the, the margins by which each of the each of the amendments passed, we were very, very close to predicting the margins by which all these would pass when we use the actual wording there. So I'm really I think we were really, good at getting a very representative sample, and we were only off by a little bit for each of them. You know, I've I got a chart here I wanna show you, but, I mean, the these these are the the margins, the actual versus our polling results. We are very close

Bob Rivard [00:37:19]:
I will attest to our to our audience that you guys got this right.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:37:22]:
Yeah. We're we're very close to predicting the actual margins when we use the actual wording. So the broader issue here, and this is, you know, a a small d democratic theory issues. You know, what does it mean when people pass ballot propositions, but don't seem to quite understand what the ballot propositions would do when there's a disconnect there. Is is that democracy in action? Does it reflect the will of the people? And I think these are the sort of questions to some of our polling we we aim to raise, and and and I think that's distinct from saying whether or not these are good or bad things. You know, whether or not these policies are good things or bad things, that's a distinct question to say, okay. Well, is this what the public wanted, and and what does it mean when they pass things, but don't quite understand or didn't understand the implications of those propositions. So those are the sort I think those are important questions to raise.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:38:16]:
You know, I don't think we we have great answers for this type of things we wanna explore. And and that's the sort of thing we'll be talking about in in the eventual report that comes out in our in our, from our November results. And the other thing that will be interesting, that that we wanna showcase is, the people in our November poll were people from our Bexar County panel. They're people we've recruited in. And so we already know how they previously, supported each of these propositions. And so we can see, okay, people who previously saw the descriptions, but now see the actual wording. Do we see changes in their level of support? So there's a lot of interesting things we'll we'll we'll include in that report that show that how much the the the different wording actually mattered here.

Bob Rivard [00:39:00]:
How much, how much, weight do you put to the fact that, that voters here and almost everywhere, sent a very strong message of no confidence to national leaders in office. And yet, locally, I would say that the, you know, the significantly strong passage of all the charter amendments suggest, quite a bit of faith in city hall.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:39:25]:
I think this is a a an area where we shall all be optimistic and should be a point of city pride. It's not just the passage, of the ballot measures. I mean, in our polling, we have consistently seen higher trust for local officials and local government relative to state leaders and national government. We've seen people more optimistic about the direction of, oh, look the local city and the county versus the state and the country. We've seen higher approval ratings for local officials relative to state officials and national leaders. I mean, mayor Nuremberg, had the highest approval, of any official we've asked about, and and judge Shakai at, you know, very low disapproval. He doesn't have the name recognition that mayor Nuremberg does, but not many people disapprove of the job he's doing. And it's a lot different than what we saw for, you know, governor Abbott and president Biden, right, where people, you know, not very happy locally with the job they're doing.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:40:22]:
And I think that is something, that's that's really important, to focus on because it tells us that our politics haven't been completely nationalized. You know, some of the some of the polarization and distrust people have towards national politics hasn't necessarily seeped down locally, that people do make a distinction between different levels of government, and do recognize that what's happening locally isn't the same thing as what's happening at state level or the national level. And I think that's something worth protecting and building upon. I mean, look, trust in local government could even be better. And when I point to the disconnect that our polling suggests between people's understanding of the different propositions, is that sort of trust is a sort of thing we that we want to ensure gets protected too. Right? We wanna make sure people understand ballot propositions, and that, you know, they don't believe they're being tricked by sort of ambiguous or abstract language here. This is something that's worth protecting and growing as people sense that, you know, people locally or local officials aren't trying to trick them or aren't trying to

Bob Rivard [00:41:28]:
Do you really think though that local officials were trying to trick voters? No. Because I I would suggest that, you know, the ballot language has to be. It's a the charter is a legal document and legal legalese is a necessary element in all of those charter reforms to make sure there aren't unintended consequences down the road for

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:41:45]:
I I, you know, I I I don't I don't think so, and I don't wanna imply that. But what I do think is important to ensure that people understand what they're voting on, I think that's essential to maintaining that sort of trust and approval, and local officials and local government that people don't get a sense, oh, wait a minute. I had no idea that's what I was voting for. I didn't know what that meant. Right? We need to ensure that people understand what they're voting for, if we want to protect that sort of trust in in approval of what's going on at the local level.

Bob Rivard [00:42:16]:
I I would argue people have a certain personal responsibility to educate themselves as citizens, but that people will probably call me an old fuddy duddy for saying that. We're running out of time, Brian. I have one quick question to ask you about going forward, and that's the mayor's race. The the surveys clearly show that people were not focusing on that at a time they were looking at national and state politics and elections. I don't think anybody had 10% approval. Yeah. How many surveys will you do, say, between January first, the New Year, and the May vote, for for the mayor and and, city council? Or will you, will you be checking that regularly, or can we expect 1 or 2?

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:42:58]:
We're thinking about 2 to 3. I think we would do at least 2. And, you know, the results are gonna look a lot different. Right? Because our sample, was a very you know, we're trying to sample a very different electorate. Right? In in our in our fold

Bob Rivard [00:43:13]:
poll smaller one.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:43:14]:
Right. It's gonna be a lot different. So, you know, our our model, how we sample changes because we're focused on, you know, very different types of voters. You know, these are high propensity voters, not just super high propensity voters, right, who turn out in municipal elections. I mean, to share the percentage of registered voters, we're lucky if we get to 10%, right, turnout in municipal elections. And so it's gonna be a very different approach. So lots of the folks that say don't know or never heard of the the candidates, that that's gonna that's gonna shrink, right, once we, change up our sampling methodology just to focus on the municipal polling. We want a little bit of a benchmark and and and, and just sort of understand, you know, you know, where the public felt about the municipal elections ahead of time.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:43:57]:
But, yeah, it's it's gonna be a very different sampling approach, different methodology. I shouldn't say it's a different methodology, but the people will bring in, you know, it's it's obviously gonna be a a different set of people than the people we bring in for the presidential elections.

Bob Rivard [00:44:12]:
Well, we must have you back before May, and we'll look at those survey results and what they're predicting or telling us. And I just wanna thank you, doctor Brian Gervais, for director of, UTSA Center For Public Opinion Research, for coming on to Big City Small Town today.

Dr. Bryan Gervais [00:44:26]:
Oh, thank you so much. It's been a lot of fun.

Bob Rivard [00:44:32]:
Welcome to The Last Word, my weekly commentary on life and work in San Antonio and Texas. You might call today's last word the first in a series focusing on buyer's remorse in the wake of the November 5th reelection of president Donald Trump. For Texans, that will be most evident in 2025 if Trump succeeds in keeping 2 of his most significant and oft repeated campaign promises, 1, to orchestrate the forced mass deportation of non US citizens living and working in the country, and 2, imposing punishing tariffs on the importation of goods from Mexico and other exporters. Trade between the United States and Mexico, our neighbor and number one trading partner, is climbing toward the 1,000,000,000,000 mark. It was $807,000,000,000 in 2023 and is expected to top that figure this year. What state is home to more of that trade than any other border state? Texas. So what happens if Trump imposes high tariffs on automobiles manufactured or assembled in Mexico for export to the United States? Consumers will either have to pay higher prices, which is to say, accept a return to an inflationary economy, or manufacturers will reduce production because they can't sell as many vehicles at elevated prices. Guess what happens in Mexico when the job market softens? Workers look north to opportunities on our side of the border.

Bob Rivard [00:45:59]:
That creates increased illegal immigration or undocumented workers. San Antonio's advanced manufacturing economy dates to the arrival of Toyota from Japan to here in 2003. Every Tundra and Sequoia manufactured at the San Antonio plant relies on suppliers shipping parts coming by rail and truck from Mexico. Imposing tariffs on such cross border manufacturing interdependence will lead to higher prices for consumers, reduced sales, and thus less production, not good for the San Antonio economy or the consumer. I drive one of the last model year Toyota Tacoma pickup trucks manufactured in San Antonio. The vehicle is now manufactured in Mexico and exported here, popular among consumers because of its affordability relative to the trucks manufactured by Ford, GM, and others. There are a lot of Tacomas on San Antonio's roadways. That likely could change.

Bob Rivard [00:47:00]:
In fact, an increase in the cost of automobiles likely will lead many of us to stick with what we've got and simply forego any new purchases in the near term. Trump has repeatedly told his MAGA followers that foreign governments, not US consumers, will bear the cost of tariffs. He will have a tough time finding credible economists willing to publicly agree with them. Mexico is not going to subsidize Toyota's manufacturing there to appease US consumers. Toyota will simply have to navigate the next 4 years and hope Trump doesn't make good on his threats. Remember the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was initialed here in San Antonio in 1992 by the heads of state in North America? Trump forced a negotiation or renegotiation of that treaty in his first term of office. The tariffs he now intends to impose would violate the terms of that negotiated treaty. Do legal norms even matter anymore when a convicted felon can serve as president and erase all of his own criminal and civil liabilities? Economists believe the strength of the US economy, and it is strong even if prosperity continues to be enjoyed by too few Americans, is based in part on the strong flow of cheap immigrant labor into our country.

Bob Rivard [00:48:16]:
While most of us agree it should be much more regulated and controlled, immigrants fill the jobs that US citizens do not want. They roof houses. They clean homes. They wash dishes in restaurants. They work under the hot sun in agricultural fields, and they do it all for wages below what US workers demand. Many of the service industry jobs abandoned by US workers in the pandemic are now filled by asylum workers here on temporary permits who work legally and pay taxes. European economies, in contrast, are languishing. There's a lack of young workers and available migrants able and willing to fill the same jobs over there and other western democracies.

Bob Rivard [00:48:57]:
The bipartisan immigration reform bill put forth by the Biden administration should be brought back for a vote now that Trump will be in office. It would provide the enforcement and judicial resources necessary to fix a system that is both overwhelmed and broken. Once that is accomplished, lawmakers in both parties can work together to set more realistic terms for allowing the orderly influx of immigrants that our economy demands. I'll look at some other Trump promises that surely netted him significant votes, including the many promises to eliminate income taxes for multiple interest groups. If you're a senior like me and collect Social Security every month, let me make a prediction. If you voted for Trump because he said he would eliminate all taxes on your retirement income, get ready to be disappointed. I'd say the same to the many people waiting tables, tending bar, and depending on gratuities for their income. Trump promised to eliminate all of your taxes on your tips.

Bob Rivard [00:49:56]:
Don't count on it ever happening. That's my last word for this week. Thank you for listening, and please share this episode with friends and colleagues at work. And please check out our new YouTube channel where we are starting to post videos of some of our events and episodes. A special thanks to our sponsors, Western Urban, Building the City, Our Children Want to Call Home, and Geekdom, where startups are born and nurtured into new businesses. Shouldn't You Be a Member? Special thanks to our production team, producers Ashley Bird and Maura Bobbitt with looming with Bertie, and Erica Rempel, videographer and content creator. And finally, Alfie de la Garza of Sound Crane Audio. We'll see you next week.