Dem
47
GOP
53
Today's the day. Yep, primary season officially gets underway, with North Carolina, Texas, and Arkansas all picking the candidates who will advance to the general election (or, in some cases, who will advance to a runoff).
As we noted in passing yesterday, early voting is up substantially in North Carolina, about 24% over the 2022 primaries, and even a few points higher than the 2024 primaries, despite that being a presidential year. Western Carolina University political scientist Chris Cooper has crunched the numbers, and he reports that the turnout among Democratic voters is up 26% (despite there being no competitive statewide primaries on that side of the contest), among Republican voters is up 8%, and among unaffiliated voters is up a remarkable 40%.
The story is similar in Arkansas... maybe. There is no question that primary voting is way up in the Razorback State, and that it will break the record of 208,528 votes set in 2022. However, things are a little slower there than elsewhere, and so while Arkansas Secretary of State Cole Jester (R) has confirmed that there are going to be well more than 208,528 votes, he has not revealed how many more. He's a funny guy, that Jester.
Arkansas is also a de facto one-party state, where the governorship and all of the federal offices are held by Republicans. In two of those cases (U.S. Senate, and one U.S. House district), the incumbent is running for reelection. In the four other cases (governor, the other three U.S. House districts), the incumbent is running for reelection AND has no primary opponent. So, in this case, the increase in turnout might not be driven by Democrats and/or independents showing up to the polls in droves.
And then there is Texas, where the jump in turnout this year is massive, especially on the Democratic side. Again, as we mentioned in passing yesterday, Texas allows voters to pick either a Republican ballot or a Democratic ballot for the primaries (at that point, the voter is locked in through any runoff elections and cannot switch again). Compared to 2022, the number of people requesting a Republican primary ballot is up 125% this year. And the number of people requesting a Democratic ballot is up an unbelievable 240%.
The race that everyone cares about is the U.S. Senate race. And if only one of the two primaries was competitive, we'd suspect some sort of ratfu**ing was going on. But they are both competitive, and so it is probable that for every Republican who takes a Democratic ballot in hopes of sticking the blue team with the weaker candidate (presumably Rep. Jasmine Crockett), there would be a Democrat who takes a Republican ballot in hopes of sticking the red team with the weaker candidate (definitely AG Ken Paxton).
In fact, we would argue—albeit mostly based on speculation—that the circumstances of this year's election should be driving a lot of voters in the Republican direction. We'd say the "electability gap" between Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Paxton, who is nutty, corrupt and immoral, is much larger than the "electability gap" between Crockett and state Rep. James Talarico. So, a ratfu**ing Democrat should have more motivation to cross the aisle than their Republican counterpart. Meanwhile, the Republican primary is almost certainly headed to a runoff, meaning that any Republican or independent who is a fan of either Cornyn or Paxton should be casting ballots on that side of the contest, because they will almost certainly have the opportunity to support their favored candidate twice.
But again, it's not the Republican ballots that are going like hotcakes, it's the Democratic ballots. Given the additional context provided by North Carolina, and the lack of viable alternative explanations, the most obvious conclusion is that Democratic/independent/throw the bums out enthusiasm is way up in Texas this year. We'll probably have a clearer picture tonight. And thereafter, we'll see if that enthusiasm is enough to flip the Senate seat, especially if the more controversial Crockett is the blue team's standard-bearer.
Naturally, we will have our rundown of the results tomorrow. (Z)