What Went Down At Biden’s State Of The Union And Texas’s Primary Election

You have to be careful not to overstate what primary turnout means — after all, as a general rule, people don’t tend to vote in primaries for offices other than president. Statewide races do a lot to drive turnout, and with more activity in the gubernatorial and attorney general races, the GOP probably had more high-profile primary contests on the ballot in Texas today. But so far tonight, the relative turnout in the Republican primary has far outdistanced the Democratic primary, including in comparison to the 2018 primaries. Four years ago, about 1.5 million voters participated in the GOP primary compared to a little over 1 million in the Democratic primary, whereas at this point about 1.1 million GOP votes have been cast to just 640,000 Democratic ones. That means there’s a ratio of about 1.8 GOP votes to 1 Democratic vote, compared with a 1.5 to 1 ratio in 2018.

In Texas, the Associated Press has called the Democratic primary in Texas’s 34th District for Rep. Vicente Gonzalez. As a reminder, though, Gonzalez was facing a difficult reelection bid in his current 15th District and decided to seek office in a much safer seat. At least in my book, it looks like this move worked to his benefit.

And with a majority of results now in, the two candidates who were at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 are still performing poorly. According to the New York Times, Alma Arredondo-Lynch — who’s challenging incumbent Rep. Tony Gonzales in the 23rd District — has 14.7 percent of the vote versus Gonzales’s 78.8 percent, with 65 percent of precincts reporting. (Gonzales was one of five members of the Texas House GOP contingent to vote to certify the 2020 presidential election results.) Over in the 35th District, Sam Montoya languishes in seventh place with 9.2 percent of the vote, with 51 percent of precincts reporting.