This article was updated on October 6, 2026 to add additional information provided by Bob Moore last night.
El Paso voters depend on local journalism to help them understand the candidates, issues and forces shaping this year’s elections. That makes the quality, context and accuracy of election reporting particularly important.
As the 2026 election campaign season draws to a close, selected examples of El Paso Matters’ election coverage will be examined, not simply to determine whether its conclusions are agreeable, but to assess whether those conclusions are supported by the underlying evidence, whether important context is provided, and whether readers are given enough information to independently evaluate the claims being made.
This is not a predetermined indictment of El Paso Matters, nor an attempt to catalog every story the organization publishes. Where its reporting is well-supported and informative, that should be recognized. Where questions arise about sourcing, methodology, context, proportionality or presentation, those questions deserve scrutiny as well.
The following analysis examines the first example.
What Does the Poll Actually Tell Us About El Paso Republicans?
Today’s El Paso Matters article by Bob Moore uses an ACLU of Texas poll on immigration enforcement to suggest that El Paso Republicans face “steep challenges” in the November election. [see poll below]
There is a reasonable political argument behind his conclusion. The poll found that 65% of El Paso respondents believe ICE tactics have gone too far, while 65% say preventing and solving violent crime should be the top priority for local and state police. Those findings could certainly present challenges for Republican candidates who make aggressive immigration enforcement a central campaign issue.
But that is not quite what the poll revealed.
The survey questioned 1,031 adults in El Paso County and four Rio Grande Valley counties about immigration enforcement. It was conducted by Change Research for the ACLU of Texas and weighted using demographic and 2024 presidential-vote data. It was not a poll of Republican versus Democratic candidates, candidate preferences, likely voters or the electoral prospects of either political party.
That distinction matters. Moore’s statement that the results “suggest that El Paso Republicans face steep challenges” is an interpretation of the poll and not the poll’s finding.
The poll contains evidence that makes the political picture more complicated. It explicitly describes highly partisan views of Donald Trump and his immigration policies, while also including Trump voters who expressed concerns about aggressive immigration enforcement. Opposition to a particular immigration-enforcement policy does not necessarily establish how a respondent will vote for a particular Republican candidate.
There is also the second issue of transparency. The poll is not linked or properly identified in Moore’s article in a way that allows readers to readily examine the underlying research. That is significant because the survey was commissioned by the ACLU of Texas, an advocacy organization with an explicit position on immigration policy. The poll itself identifies the ACLU as its sponsor and Change Research as the pollster.
Readers should not have to rely solely on the news organization’s characterization of a politically significant poll. They should be able to examine the questions, methodology, sample and results for themselves and determine whether the conclusions being drawn from the research are justified.
None of this means the poll is invalid, nor does it establish that Moore’s broader conclusion about Republican prospects is necessarily wrong. The historical record cited in the article may independently support the observation that Republicans have faced extraordinary difficulty winning countywide elections in El Paso.
Dear reader, I hope you appreciate this article. Before reading more, I ask that you consider my work and make a small donation to help keep this publication open for everyone. El Paso lacks news diversity. I offer 20+ years of historical knowledge about El Paso’s politics and public policy. Media diversity matters. Make a small donation today to help keep my work going for another 20+ years. Thank you.
The problem, however, is one of context that a voter can use to make the important decision about voting on November 3rd, and for which candidate. Moore’s article moves from a poll measuring attitudes about immigration enforcement to a conclusion about the electoral prospects of an entire political party without clearly distinguishing the poll’s findings from Moore’s personal inference.
That distinction is particularly important in election coverage. Voters should be able to tell the difference between what the underlying evidence demonstrates and what Moore believes that evidence means.
Moreover, the headline also raises a separate question about the potential for election coverage to discourage or demobilize voters. Describing El Paso Republicans as facing “steep challenges” may be a reasonable characterization of the party’s long-term electoral record, but the poll presented in the story does not itself measure Republican voter support, candidate preference or willingness to participate in the election. Presented without that distinction, the headline can leave readers with the impression that the political outcome is already largely determined.
This does not establish an intent to suppress voting, nor does it make the story voter suppression in the legal sense. But research has found that the way news organizations frame elections can influence how people perceive their ability or willingness to participate. In election journalism, therefore, the question is not only whether a statement is technically defensible, but whether the framing accurately communicates the evidence without unnecessarily suggesting that voters’ choices are inconsequential.
A better, and journalistic headline could have reported what the poll found while leaving the electoral implications open to the readers. “Poll Finds El Paso Voters Critical of Immigration Enforcement” would accurately describe the survey, while “Immigration Enforcement Could Pose a Challenge for El Paso Republicans, Poll Suggests” would preserve the political analysis without presenting the party’s electoral prospects as an established fact.
As the 2026 campaign develops, that distinction will be an important consideration in evaluating El Paso Matters’ election coverage.
October 6: A Correction and a More Precise Question
Bob Moore subsequently responded to our analysis, pointing out that the underlying ACLU of Texas crosstabs included questions asking respondents about how they would vote in the November 3rd U.S. Senate and Texas governor’s races. Moore’s criticism is correct. The original analysis stated that the poll was not a measure of candidate preference, and that statement was too broad.
The crosstabs show that among El Paso respondents, James Talarico led Ken Paxton 50.7% to 24.6% in the Senate matchup, while Gina Hinojosa led Greg Abbott 51.6% to 28.3% in the governor’s race. The survey therefore did contain direct evidence about candidate preferences and provided relevant data for Moore’s discussion about the current political environment in El Paso.
That changes an important part of the original criticism. The question is not whether Moore had polling evidence concerning Republican candidates. He did. It is also not accurate to characterize his conclusion about Republican difficulties as being based solely on questions about immigration enforcement. The additional data he provided demonstrates that the poll included direct questions about candidate preferences.
However, questions remain about how that evidence should be characterized. The survey was conducted among adults rather than a sample limited to registered or likely voters. Although respondents were asked about their likelihood of voting, the results represent a snapshot of adult opinion rather than a forecast of the November electorate. The El Paso sample was also approximately 410 respondents, considerably smaller than the full 1,031-person survey.
The poll’s sponsorship is also relevant context. Change Research conducted the survey for the ACLU of Texas, an organization that openly advocates positions concerning immigration enforcement. That does not establish that the polling results are not valid, but is additional information readers should have when evaluating research being used to characterize an election.
Our analysis therefore overstated its criticism by suggesting that Moore had drawn an electoral conclusion from a poll that contained no electoral data. The crosstabs demonstrate otherwise. The more precise question is whether Moore’s article provided readers with sufficient information to distinguish between what the poll directly measured and what the results suggest about El Paso’s current political environment.
Moore’s response also expands the original question about transparency. He provided a spreadsheet of the underlying crosstabs, which he said he “obtained simply by asking” the ACLU of Texas for it. Although Moore’s article identifies the Senate and governor’s questions and reports the results from those questions, he does not provide readers with the underlying information from the crosstabs. This leaves the legitimate question of whether the readers were provided important access to the underlying data to independently evaluate the detailed information used to support Moore’s conclusions.
This distinction remains important in election journalism. The purpose of this examination is not to establish that a particular conclusion is wrong, but to determine whether the evidence presented to voters supports the conclusions drawn from it and whether the limitations of that evidence are adequately communicated.
We have included the spreadsheet provided by Moore below.
Our series coverage:
Review of El Paso Matters’ Coverage of Arturo Alluin Leaves Unanswered Questions
Leave a comment