A record number of Democrats voted in Texas’ primary : NPR
People gather at a campaign rally for Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico March 2 in Houston.
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Danielle Villasana/Getty Images
In another positive sign for Democrats in this midterm election year, turnout numbers near the final in Texas show that the Democratic Senate primary had the most people voting than any other primary for statewide office in Texas history.
More than 2.3 million votes were cast in the primary in which state Rep. James Talarico defeated U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett. Nearly 2.2 million Republicans voted in this year’s Senate primary, which heads to a runoff between incumbent Sen. John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
That eclipsed the 2.2 million people who voted in the 2024 Republican Senate primary.
But 2024 was a presidential year, and the vote included a theoretically competitive primary between President Trump and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. The only other Texas primary elections that dominated this year’s Democratic primaries were presidential primaries — not for statewide offices: About 2.9 million voted in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, and about 2.8 million voted in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.
Both elections were marked by hotly contested races — in 2008 between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during a long primary campaign, and in 2016 with a dozen well-known Republican candidates, including Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his home state senator, Ted Cruz, who won.
Democrats see big shifts in their favor in heavily Latino counties
The record turnout is another indicator of Democratic enthusiasm for these midterm elections, as polls show the party has an advantage over those who are most interested in voting in this election and those who say they would rather be in charge of Congress.
Significant shifts in their favor in counties with large Latino populations also give Texas Democrats hope. In 2024, Trump won a record number of Latinos for a Republican candidate, and his success included many heavily Latino counties in South Texas.
But compared to the 2024 Senate primaries, Democrats made significant gains this year with the group, according to an NPR analysis of data from The Associated Press and the Texas secretary of state’s office. In the state’s 10 most populous counties, which are also at least 50% Latino, Democratic primary votes increased by an average of 128%. The Republican primary in these same counties saw an average vote drop of 4.8%.
Trying to answer the biennial question about Democrats and Texas
Primary success doesn’t always equate to general election victories, and Democrats repeatedly raised hopes for Texas in recent elections — only to be repeatedly disappointed.
Democrats are seeking to put Texas on the map in a long-shot bid to take control of the Senate this year. And there is reason to hope. Texas’ demographic changes in recent decades, particularly the increase in the number of Latinos and Asian Americans, have made it a state where whites are the minority. It is one of seven states considered a “majority minority.”
This led to the question of when or if Texas would turn blue.
But demographics are certainly not destiny, as the state has been something of a white whale for Democrats. Despite these trends, no Democrat has been elected statewide in Texas since 1994.
The only race that has been close in the last 30 years was the 2018 Senate race, when incumbent Republican Sen. Ted Cruz beat incoming Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke by less than 3 points. O’Rourke ran again for governor two years later – and lost handily, by 11 points.
It’s worth noting that Democratic turnout in this year’s primaries more than doubled compared to the 2018 and 2022 primaries, but winning vote totals in those years’ general elections averaged 4.3 million, or 2 million more than in the Talarico-Crockett primary.
