Senior Research Fellow, Hobby School of Public Affairs

Expertise: Polling and election trends and practices statewide and nationally, and partisan political change in Texas

Career Highlights:

Richard Murray is known as a pioneer in the art and science of polling and elections, serving for decades as a commentator and forecaster on election night. His principal academic interests include political parties, campaigns, elections, public opinion and interest groups. Murray was an entrepreneur in many ways in his leadership at the University of Houston during the early days of the Center for Public Policy, the precursor to the Hobby School of Public Affairs. He established the center’s polling operations and launched the computer-assisted survey system for the UH Survey Research Institute. Murray co-created the Houston Government Internship Program, now the Civic Houston Internship Program, which has matched more than 1,800 UH students with public offices and organizations.

He launched Letter from Texas in 2025, where he provides insights on the shifting demographics and the future of political dominance in the Lone Star State.

Murray is a native of Louisiana with bachelor’s and master’s degrees in government from Louisiana State University and a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Minnesota. He transitioned in the summer of 2021 from a 55-year teaching career in the University of Houston Department of Political Science to Senior Research Fellow with the Hobby School. Murray has written extensively on Texas politics and elections, and his current research interests focus on partisan political change in Texas.