DALLAS — A majority of likely voters opposes Governor Greg Abbott’s push to let parents have tax dollars to send their children to private schools, according to a new survey from the Texas Hispanic Policy Foundation.
The TxHPF poll shows 57% of Texans surveyed oppose so-called school vouchers while 36% support them.
Looking deeper at the breakdown of the statistics, vouchers are opposed by 58% of urban voters, 58% of suburban voters and 57% of rural voters.
When broken down along political lines, 77% of Democrats, 56% of independent voters and 43% of Republicans oppose vouchers.
School vouchers, or Education Savings Accounts as they have been rebranded, provide tax money to parents to send their children to private schools, should those private institutions choose to accept the additional students.
Gov. Abbott’s last proposed giving parents $10,000 in tax money per child, per year, to attend private schools.
Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives joined Democrats to defeat vouchers last year, concerned that private schools would not be accountable for how the money is spent and worrying that public schools would lose funding.
Abbott, vowing political revenge for the legislative loss, successfully campaigned against some of the incumbent Republicans who opposed vouchers. The governor helped to defeat more than a half dozen fellow conservatives on the issue in the March primary election.
“Governor Abbott’s top education priority is universally opposed by Texans from all segments: urban or rural, Anglo or Hispanic, male and female. This issue will not win him new votes in a general election, and it could cut into his support among primary voters,” said Jason Villalba, Chief Executive Officer of the TxHPF.
But those same likely Texas voters do approve of Governor Abbott’s strict border policies, the poll showed.
Fifty-four percent surveyed approve of Abbott’s handling of the border, 61% approve of Texas spending $3.5-billion in state tax dollars annually on border security, and 58% of likely voters said they approve of the recent Texas legislation that makes illegal immigration a state crime. That law, known as SB4, is till on hold as courts consider its constitutionality.
“With respect to border security, Gov. Abbott has his hand squarely on the pulse of what Texas voters want. From busing immigrants to other states, to supporting high levels of spending on border security, these numbers show that all Texans, including Hispanics, support Governor Abbott’s muscular policies on these issues,” Villalba explained.
Separately, a majority of Texas voters said they want abortion to be legal through at least 12-weeks of pregnancy, twice as long as currently allowed by the so-called Texas Heartbeat Law which bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected, usually about six weeks into a pregnancy.
Twenty-nine percent of voters prefer abortion to be legal through 12-weeks of pregnancy, 27% surveyed said they supported abortion through 23-24 weeks of pregnancy.
Thirty-four percent of likely voters said they prefer abortion to be illegal unless the woman’s life is at risk or if the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.
The survey of 1,600 likely voters in Texas was conducted from April 5 through April 10 and has a margin of error of +/- 2.45%.
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