AUSTIN — While 46% of Texas registered voters say they’re confident the state’s power grid is prepared to avoid blackouts this winter, 47% say they aren’t, a new Dallas Morning News-University of Texas at Tyler poll found.
By a plurality of 42%-37%, they think state officials are most accountable for successful operation of the grid, more than energy companies.
Bolstering the grid ranks as a higher priority than securing the Texas-Mexico border for 50% of respondents, the poll found, even as Gov. Greg Abbott and other GOP officials emphasize concerns about a migrant surge at the border.
The poll, conducted Jan. 18-25, surveyed 1,082 adults who are registered voters and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Those with confidence in the grid prioritize securing the border over the grid, 55%-38%. Meanwhile, those who worry about the grid prioritize improving it over providing more border security, 65%-35%.
“It is not often that public uncertainty in utilities is recognized as more important than national issues,” said UT-Tyler political scientist Mark Owens, the poll’s director. “However, regarding the preparedness of the grid in Texas, the 47% who have little to no confidence that blackouts will be avoided see this as a top issue and are looking for action.”
Avoiding a repeat of last February’s deadly storm and utility outages was a priority during the 2021 legislative session, when lawmakers passed measures to bolster the grid.
Abbott has guaranteed the lights will stay on this winter. But ahead of the storm expected to hit this week, he said Tuesday no one could guarantee that there wouldn’t be any “load shed events” – a term that means planned blackouts.
The power grid has emerged as a hot topic in the 2022 election, with Democrat Beto O’Rourke accusing Abbott of failing to fix the grid by ensuring that natural gas companies and power generators weatherize facilities.
“Right now, how voters feel about the electricity grid is still shaping the evaluation of leaders and who people plan to vote for,” Owens said.
Among those who are confident or fairly confident in the grid, 66% think Abbott does a good job responding to crises and 63% plan to vote for the incumbent.
The poll found 60% of voters who have little to no confidence that Texas will avoid blackouts evaluate the governor’s crisis response poorly, and 46% plan to vote for O’Rourke.
“When Greg Abbott let the grid fail last February, we lost a lot of good people,” O’Rourke said Monday in a statement announcing his “Keeping the Lights On” tour across Texas. “But while those in power failed us, we would not fail each other. Everyday Texans stepped up and brought us through this crisis.”
While 65% of Republicans disagreed, more than three-quarters of Democrats and 51% of independents think strengthening the grid is more important than border security.
Abbott’s mobilizing of Texas National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border has come under scrutiny amid reports that soldiers were hastily deployed without proper equipment, regular pay or a clear purpose.
Methodology
The Dallas Morning News/UT-Tyler Poll is a statewide random sample of 1,082 registered voters conducted between January 18-25. The mixed-mode sample includes 276 registered voters surveyed over the phone by the University of Texas at Tyler with support from ReconMR and 806 registered voters randomly selected from Dynata’s panel of online respondents. The margin of error for a sample of registered voters in Texas is +/- 3.0 percentage points, and the more conservative margin of sampling error that includes design effects from this poll is +/- 3.5 percentage points for a 95% confidence interval. The online and phone surveys were conducted in English and Spanish. Using information from the 2020 Current Population Survey and Office of the Texas Secretary of State. The sample’s gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, metropolitan density and vote choice were matched to the population of registered voters in Texas.
Austin bureau chief Robert T. Garrett contributed to this report.
