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

Someone on PBS just noted that Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert is wearing something that says “drill baby drill.” This is a callback to a slogan used by Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin in 2008 and came up last week as a point about energy independence from Russia. I’ve been somewhat surprised not to hear more about it over the last few days. (But maybe I wasn’t looking in the right places.)

Alex, I’m going to go out on a short limb and say it will be super difficult for O’Rourke to win statewide in 2022 if he couldn’t win in 2018.

O’Rourke appears to be declaring an early victory in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in a speech in Fort Worth. “It looks like, from the early returns, I will be your nominee for governor for the state of Texas,” the former presidential candidate said, according to reports. Should O’Rourke go on to win tonight’s primary, he’ll likely face Abbott in November — but that won’t be an easy feat for him. During his presidential run, O’Rourke took controversial stances that could hurt his political standing in the state. Plus, Texas hasn’t elected a Democrat to a statewide office since 1994.

Over in Washington, D.C., I’m watching lawmakers schmooze while they wait for the State of the Union to start. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just called the joint session of Congress to order — notably, she is not wearing a mask. The House just relaxed its mask mandate in time for the speech. It’s an interesting statement for Democrats to make, given that masks have become so politicized.

According to a campaign press release, Huffines conceded in the GOP primary for Texas governor. Huffines, who arguably ran on Abbott’s right flank, is only netting about 12 percent of the vote, according to the New York Times, compared to Abbott’s 69 percent. In a statement, Huffines said that he will not be “contesting the outcome of this election.” But, he promised voters, “I will not be going away.”

In what is shaping up to be the only interesting statewide Texas primary involving an incumbent, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is currently shy of the magic 50 percent plus one mark to avoid a runoff as he seeks reelection under a cloud of scandal. With 29 percent reporting, Paxton is at 43 percent, followed by Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush (son of Jeb!) at 22 percent, former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman at 21 percent and Rep. Louie Gohmert at 15 percent. Seems like there’s a decent chance Paxton doesn’t avoid a runoff, but the race to face him in that potential second round looks pretty up for grabs.

In the race to succeed longtime GOP Rep. Kevin Brady in the deep-red 8th District, the Republican primary looks decidedly one-sided so far. With 38 percent reporting so far, Morgan Luttrell leads Christian Collins, 58 percent to 19 percent. These two candidates were locked in something of a proxy war within the GOP, with groups like the Congressional Leadership Fund (the House GOP’s super PAC) and individuals like Rep. Dan Crenshaw backing Luttrell, and Sen. Ted Cruz and House Freedom Action (the Freedom Caucus’s super PAC) backing Collins.

Shortly after polls closed in Texas, Republican Wesley Hunt reportedly declared victory in the GOP primary for Texas’s newly created 38th District. To be clear, the district, which has a partisan lean of R+27 was expected to be an easy pickup opportunity for the GOP. So, should Hunt win tonight’s race, he’ll likely be the favorite in November. Moreover, his win could present an interesting opportunity for Texas Republicans, who have long struggled to recruit candidates of color for congressional seats.

As Nathaniel just noted, Casar is in a good position to win the Democratic nomination for Texas’s 35th District. It’s also a win for progressives — Casar has been endorsed by the Sunrise Movement, Indivisible, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Our Revolution and Justice Dems.

In the Democratic primary for Texas’s 35th District — an open, dark-blue seat — progressive Austin City Councilman Greg Casar is way ahead with 60 percent of the vote. With half of the votes already counted, he seems to be in good position to win the nomination outright, avoiding a runoff with state Rep. Eddie Rodriguez.

Harris County — Texas’s most populous county, and home to Houston — has faced a barrage of technical difficulties throughout the day today. As a result, the county election officials have asked the Secretary of State for an extension on the 24-hour deadline to count all the ballots.

It all started at 6:30 a.m. when the county’s election website map, which allows voters to find voting locations, crashed. Meanwhile, there were delays due to voting machine glitches, and in some cases, reports of staffing shortages. “We have had multiple complaints across the county of voting machines not being delivered, missing equipment, and machines still not operational,” Harris County GOP Chair Cindy Siegel said in a statement to the Houston Chronicle.

Harris County introduced new voting machines last year that create a paper audit trail, and the county had a new strategy for doling out the machines: rather than dividing the machines evenly between Democrats and Republicans, they would be allocated based on past turnout data at each polling site. However, the new machines seem to be causing some headaches and even with the more equitable division of equipment, there were reports of long lines and delays at some polling sites.

We’ll be keeping an eye on whether the SoS grants Harris County an extension on tallying up the votes and will keep you posted on any updates.

Belief in the “Big Lie” — the false idea that Trump was the true victor of the 2020 presidential election — is widespread amongst Republicans. The latest weekly YouGov/The Economist poll found that 70 percent of Republicans said they believed Biden did not legitimately win the election.

And as Geoffrey just said, that dynamic is playing out in today’s primary, too, where dozens of Republicans have either explicitly said the 2020 election was fraudulent or made voter fraud a large part of their campaigns.

We found that 42 of 151 Texas Republicans running for the House or governor have either publicly questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election or supported overturning it. And at least two — Sam Montoya in the 35th District and Alma Arredondo-Lynch in the 23rd District — were at the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Not every Republican running for office in Texas has vocally embraced the Big Lie, but we did find in our research another 33 candidates who have brought up “election integrity” or voter fraud as an issue in their campaigns. And candidates in this category hold a range of views: Most have broadly said that tougher voting restrictions would restore trust in elections, but others have gone much further — either saying they support election audits in Texas or across the country.

There were also 68 Republicans running who haven’t publicly addressed whether they support the Big Lie or election security. In total, we were only able to identify eight GOP candidates who said publicly that they thought Biden had won. Five are incumbents who voted to certify the 2020 election results, and four of them are now facing primary challengers. Three are longshot candidates: Lulite Ejigu in the 29th District, Gregory J. Thorne in the 22nd District and Rob Rosenberger in the 17th District. (All are running against at least one candidate who believes in the Big Lie, and none are likely to win their primary.)

Ultimately, one of the biggest things to watch tonight will be how candidates who have embraced the Big Lie fare. It’s true that Trump hasn’t gone after incumbent Republicans in Texas who voted to certify the election like he has in other states, but there are still plenty of opportunities for candidates who support the Big Lie to prevail. In several districts, like the 11th, 16th, 18th and 19th, there’s only one candidate — the Big Lie supporter — running in the primary. That means several Republican House members in deep-red districts who voted to overturn the election, like Reps. August Pfluger and Jodey Arrington, will likely coast to reelection.

With 22 percent of the vote reporting, progressive Jessica Cisneros is out to an early lead over Rep. Henry Cuellar in the Democratic primary for Texas’s 28th District, 72 percent to 22 percent. However, only Bexar and Guadalupe counties (in the San Antonio area) are reporting so far, and that’s Cisneros’s base. Expect Cuellar to make up ground once some of the border counties, like Starr, report. This one isn’t over yet.

Trump remains a popular and influential figure in the GOP, and it’s likely that Texas Republican primary voters will have a very positive opinion about the former president. After all, a survey from the University of Texas at Austin/The Texas Tribune/YouGov found earlier this month that 80 percent of Texas Republicans held a favorable opinion of Trump, including 52 percent with a very favorable view.

While polling on favorability and job approval are not exactly apples-to-apples, those numbers among all adult Texans who identify as Republican aren’t terribly different from Trump’s approval among GOP primary voters in the last midterm election. Back in 2018, as the chart below shows, more than 9 in 10 Republicans approved of Trump’s performance as president, based on survey data of validated primary voters from the Cooperative Election Study, including about three-fourths who strongly approved.

Trump is no longer president — so the question of whether voters approve of his job performance is off the table — but it’s clear that he still retains a strong hold over his fellow Republicans, and this has already had big consequences in Texas’s GOP primary. Most obviously, Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from him has taken root among both voters and candidates, despite a mountain of evidence that shows the presidential election was free and fair.

For instance, in that same UT Austin/The Texas Tribune/YouGov survey, two-thirds of Republicans said Biden didn’t legitimately win the 2020 election. And based on FiveThirtyEight’s analysis, almost all Texas Republicans running for the House or governor have either denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election outcome, called the result into question or played up the issue of voter fraud. Just six of the 82 GOP candidates who had a discernible position on the legitimacy of the 2020 election or voter fraud said Biden won fair and square.

Tonight we should expect pretty much every nominee from the GOP to be solidly pro-Trump, which is why the big thing to watch will be just how well candidates who support the Big Lie do.

While the outcome of the Democratic primary for governor isn't in doubt, it will still be interesting how well O'Rourke does in areas of the state like the Rio Grande Valley, where Democrats have struggled to maintain the support of Latino voters. In 2018, O'Rourke's difficulty in the RGV during the Democratic Senate primary -- he lost many of those counties to little-known opponent Sema Hernandez despite winning 62 percent of the vote overall -- foreshadowed how he would underperform Hillary Clinton in those same areas against Ted Cruz in November.

Democrats' struggles with Latino voters have only gotten worse since then, and O'Rourke is facing off against two Latino candidates: Joy Diaz and Inocencio Barrientez. A significant level of protest voting in heavily Latino areas could indicate real trouble for his underdog bid this fall.

A bit of news involving the most populous county in Texas -- Harris County, which includes Houston -- as polls close tonight across most of the state.

Officials from Harris County notified the Secretary of State's office tonight they would likely be unable to meet the required 24-hour deadline for all counties to report early and election day results. (This requirement is not part of the changes implemented under SB1.)

As described by Secretary of State John B. Scott in a statement issued tonight, the reason for the delay is procedural and due "only to damaged ballot sheets that must be duplicated before they can be scanned by ballot tabulators at the central count location." A 2009 law also stipulates votes must be continuously counted, and although Scott's office is not saying it will grant Harris County an extension, they are offering assistance to all counties who run into hurdles to meet the tabulation deadlines.

"Our office stands ready to assist Harris County election officials, and all county election officials throughout the state, in complying with Texas Election Code requirements for accurately tabulating and reporting Primary Election results. We want to ensure that all Texans who have cast a ballot in this year's Primary Elections can have confidence in the accuracy of results," Scott said.

Last December, we found that Trump had started taking more risks in his endorsements this election cycle, backing more non-incumbents and primary challengers trying to unseat fellow Republicans. He’s also endorsed earlier than in previous cycles.

But this isn’t really the case in Texas. Yes, Trump endorsed quite a few candidates early on — the majority of his Texas endorsements, 10 out of 19, came in 2021. But after a two-month break from endorsing candidates in Texas, Trump has suddenly issued a spate of late-running endorsements: He endorsed three candidates on Feb. 16 and six on Feb. 17. (Trump’s actually endorsed more candidates than that in Texas for various local and statewide positions, but we’re only tracking his 19 endorsements for governor and federal office.)

How Trump’s endorsees are doing tonight

House and governor candidates endorsed by former President Donald Trump in Texas’s
Republican primaries

Candidate	Office	% Reporting	Vote Share	Status
Pat Fallon*	TX-04	0%	0%	—
Lance Gooden*	TX-05	0	0	—
Jake Ellzey*	TX-06	0	0	—
Michael McCaul*	TX-10	0	0	—
August Pfluger*	TX-11	0	0	—
Kay Granger*	TX-12	0	0	—
Ronny Jackson*	TX-13	0	0	—
Randy Weber*	TX-14	0	0	—
Monica De La Cruz	TX-15	0	0	—
Jodey Arrington*	TX-19	0	0	—
Troy Nehls	TX-22	0	0	—
Beth Van Duyne*	TX-24	0	0	—
Roger Williams*	TX-25	0	0	—
Michael C. Burgess*	TX-26	0	0	—
Michael Cloud*	TX-27	0	0	—
John Carter*	TX-31	0	0	—
Brian Babin*	TX-36	0	0	—
Wesley Hunt	TX-38	0	0	—
Greg Abbott*	TX Gov.	0	0	—

Trump also hasn’t endorsed any primary challengers in Texas — even though there are a few House members running who voted to certify the results of the 2020 election, something Trump has deemed worthy of a primary challenge in other races. In fact, his two non-incumbent endorsements (Monica De La Cruz in the 15th District and Wesley Hunt in the newly created 38th District) are hardly risky bets. They’re running in open primaries without an incumbent, but both are party favorites and front-runners. In other open primaries where there’s less of a clear favorite, like the ones in the 1st and 8th Congressional Districts, though, Trump has stayed silent.

As we’ve written before, if Trump is endorsing candidates who are already likely to win, it makes it harder to judge how much Trump’s endorsement actually sways results. But it may also indicate that Trump wants to stack up easy wins in Texas, at least — an effort to associate his brand with victory.

While much of the focus tonight will be on Rep. Henry Cuellar, the lone Democratic representative facing a serious primary challenge, two Republican incumbents are also behaving like they’re in real races: Reps. Dan Crenshaw in Texas’s 2nd District and Van Taylor in the 3rd District. Both men previously represented swing districts that Trump carried by just 1 percentage point in 2020, but in the process of redistricting, Republicans redrew both seats to be solidly Republican. Under the new map, Trump would have won Crenshaw’s district by 23 points and Taylor’s by 14 points, according to analysis from Inside Elections.

While that means neither Crenshaw nor Taylor will likely have to deal with competitive general elections for the next few cycles, it does complicate things for them in the primary by adding a crush of unfamiliar Republican voters to their districts. Both men have plenty of conservative credentials, but have occasionally strayed from Trumpian orthodoxy. Taylor, for instance, didn’t sign onto an amicus brief accompanying a lawsuit (filed by the state of Texas) seeking to overturn the election results, or vote to object to the Electoral College certification in January. He also voted in favor of establishing a bipartisan commission to investigate Jan. 6 last May. Crenshaw, meanwhile, signed the brief but didn’t vote against certifying the 2020 election, and he has publicly castigated Trump-world favorites including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene as “grifters” and “idiots.”

Of the two, Taylor looks like he’s in the more competitive race. He has a more serious opponent in former Collin County Judge Keith Self; his perceived sin of voting for the Jan. 6 commission is more weighty among Republican voters; and he simply doesn’t have Crenshaw’s financial resources. The Congressional Leadership Fund, the Washington, D.C., super PAC aligned with House GOP leadership, and Elect Principled Veterans Fund are spending on his behalf, which is a boost to him but also a sign of his vulnerability.

Crenshaw doesn’t have as credible an opponent, but that hasn’t stopped him from spending like he does. The Houston Republican shelled out nearly $2 million over the first six weeks of the year, more than many candidates spend over the course of their entire campaigns.

The primary goal for both incumbents is to receive an outright majority of the vote and avoid a costly runoff. Whether they are able to do so will be significant, as it could give us a hint about how sensitive GOP primary voters are to even the smallest of slights against the former president.

With 23 percent of precincts reporting, Abbott might be in a good position in his reelection bid. So far, according to early vote totals, he’s received roughly 68 percent of the vote. He’s trailed by former state Sen. Don Huffines at 13 percent and former Texas GOP Chair Allen West at 11 percent.

And on the Democratic side, former presidential candidate O’Rourke appears in good shape, too. With 28 percent of precincts reporting, he’s already netted nearly 93 percent of the early vote.

Keep in mind though, as my colleague Nathaniel Rakich noted on Twitter the results of these races probably won’t get formally called for another hour or so — after polls close in O’Rourke’s hometown of El Paso.

One other thing of note for tonight: This is the first election held using any of the new congressional maps drawn as part of the decennial redistricting process. And in Texas this could make a big difference tonight, as its new map is significantly different from its old one. Most obviously, the state now has two new congressional districts — the 37th and 38th — as a result of its booming population growth. However, it has a lot fewer competitive districts: The old map had 14 districts with FiveThirtyEight partisan leans between D+15 and R+15, while the new map has only three.

That’s because the Republicans in charge of Texas redistricting drew the map to advantage their party by shoring up incumbents’ districts. The map has 24 Republican-leaning seats and only 13 Democratic-leaning ones (there is also one perfectly divided district). It also has an efficiency gap of R+15, which means the map is expected to elect 15 percent more Republicans than a perfectly fair map would. That’s worth almost six extra seats for Republicans in the next House of Representatives.

For more on why Texas’s map may be the most extreme gerrymander in the country, check out this video of me in a bolo tie.

One of the biggest trends coming out of the 2020 election was Trump’s improvement among Latino voters. And nowhere was Trump’s improvement more evident than in South Texas and along the U.S.-Mexico border, as Republican vote share rose across the board — including some massive swings in formerly deep blue territory that became much more competitive in 2020.

Yet it remains to be seen how much these shifts will affect the parties’ direction, especially as it pertains to turnout in the party primaries. In recent times, Latinos have played a much bigger role in Democratic primaries than GOP contests: In the 2018 midterm, for instance, Latinos made up around 3 in 10 Democratic primary voters in Texas, but only about 1 in 10 in the Republican primary, based on survey data of validated primary voters from the Cooperative Election Study.

The question now is: Could Latino voters hold more sway in Texas GOP primaries in 2022? Some early data from South Texas and the border region suggests that might happen. In the 28 counties that cover that part of Texas, many of which are heavily Hispanic, 81 percent of primary voters in 2018 cast a Democratic ballot. But through Feb. 25, just 73 percent of early primary voters in those areas had cast a Democratic primary ballot for 2022. We’ll see what the final tallies show, as we shouldn’t read too much into early voting data, but it might indicate at least some increase in Latino participation in GOP primaries.

Today’s primary is the first election following the sweeping voting restrictions bill Texas Republicans passed last year, with voting rights advocates closely watching to see how the changes might impact voter turnout and access. And already we’ve seen glimpses of a potential dampening effect on absentee voters.

The new law made several changes around voting by mail, including banning the distribution of mail-in ballot applications and new ID requirements to vote by mail. Texas voters now have to provide their driver’s license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number on both their application for a mail-in ballot and the envelope used to return their completed ballot. And the number they use must match the information in their voter record (so if your voter record has your driver’s license number, but you use your Social Security number on the mail-in ballot application, it will be rejected).

These requirements have led to some confusion, resulting in thousands of mail-in ballots being rejected, according to local election officials across the state, who say the vast majority of rejections are due to the new ID requirements. Early reports indicated there’s also been a 40 percent drop-off in the number of people voting by mail, relative to the 2018 midterms — mostly from Republicans.

However, it’s important to note that the new voting law in Texas also includes a process in which voters can correct ballots rejected for technical errors like these. Voters who make a mistake — like forgetting to write down their driver's license number on the envelope — can correct the mistake online through a new online ballot tracker. So there’s a chance that some of the rejected ballots will be cured and counted.

Traditionally, Democrats like to think of themselves as being the party of diversity and inclusivity. But in Texas, at least in many marquee races, a good chunk of the candidates favored to win their elections tonight are white.

We’ll start at the top of the ticket, where O’Rourke, a former Democratic presidential candidate, is hoping to challenge Abbott for control of the governor’s mansion. Of course, there are Democrats of color running against O’Rourke — like Joy Diaz — but most polls give the former congressman a clear edge. Below him, in the race for lieutenant governor, only one Democrat of color, Carla Brailey, is challenging Patrick. The one exception to this seems to be the Democratic primary race for attorney general, where candidates of color like Rochelle Garza and Lee Merritt typically poll in the upper tier among the six Democrats running. It’s also arguably the best opportunity for the party to win a traditionally GOP seat in Texas.

Texas Democrats do at least seem to be aware of the problem, though. Several Democrats told The Texas Tribune in November that they wanted to cultivate a more diverse bench. And in December, Matthew Dowd, who is white, dropped out of the Democratic primary for lieutenant governor claiming that he did “not want to be the one who stands in the way of the greater diversity we need in politics.”

But, somewhat surprisingly, it’s the traditionally white Republican Party of Texas that’s shown greater diversity at the top of the ticket this year. Even though most incumbents are white, many of their opponents are not. One of Abbott’s most formidable challengers, for instance, is former Texas GOP Chair Allen West, who is Black. And lower down on the ballot, Land Commissioner George P. Bush and former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman, both of whom are Hispanic, are running for attorney general — and could give incumbent Ken Paxton a run for his money. State Rep. James White, who is Black, is also challenging Sid Miller for the agriculture commissioner’s office.

To be sure, though, a number of Democratic candidates of color are running in races lower down on the ballot. In fact, according to political scientists Bernard Fraga and Hunter Rendleman, 23 Black Democrats and 31 Hispanic Democrats are running for the House (though not all will be competitive in the general election).

But the diversity at the top of the respective Democratic and Republican ticket is an interesting dynamic to behold — especially given that Republicans in the state have previously struggled to actively recruit candidates of color. Plus, given the state’s growing Latino population, it’ll be interesting to see whether voters of color prefer candidates whose experiences align with their own or if candidate diversity will be a factor when deciding who to vote for tonight.

According to Fraga and Rendleman, there are also 61 Latino candidates running for House or governor today: 34 Democrats and 27 Republicans. (That’s much closer to parity than the number of Black candidates running, reflecting the fact that Latinos are only a Democratic-leaning, not solidly Democratic, group.)

There are 61 Latinos running for House and governor today

Hispanic candidates for House and governor in Texas

CANDIDATE	OFFICE	PARTY
Rudy A. Atencio	TX-07	R
Linda Nuno	TX-10	D
Ruben Landon Dante	TX-14	R
Eliza Alvarado	TX-15	D
Aizar Cavazos	TX-15	R
Vangela Churchill	TX-15	R
Monica De La Cruz	TX-15	R
Julio Garza	TX-15	D
Mauro Garza	TX-15	R
Ruben Ramirez	TX-15	D
Vanessa Stephanie Tijerina	TX-15	D
Michelle Vallejo	TX-15	D
John Villarreal Rigney	TX-15	D
Irene Armendariz-Jackson	TX-16	R
Veronica Escobar*	TX-16	D
Deliris Montanez Berrios	TX-16	D
Carmen Maria Montiel	TX-18	R
Joaquin Castro*	TX-20	D
Cherif Gacis	TX-21	D
Claudia Andreana Zapata	TX-21	D
Ricardo Villarreal	TX-21	D
Alma Arredondo-Lynch	TX-23	R
Tony Gonzales*	TX-23	R
John Lira	TX-23	D
Victor Melgoza	TX-27	D
Eric Mireles	TX-27	R
Maclovio Perez Jr.	TX-27	D
Anthony J. Tristan	TX-27	D
Tannya Judith Benavides	TX-28	D
Ed Cabrera	TX-28	R
Jessica Cisneros	TX-28	D
Henry Cuellar*	TX-28	D
Cassy Garcia	TX-28	R
Rolando Rodriguez	TX-28	R
Jaimy Blanco	TX-29	R
Sylvia Garcia*	TX-29	D
Julio Garza	TX-29	R
Lizbeth Diaz	TX-30	R
Kelvin Goodwin-Castillo	TX-30	R
Brad Namdar	TX-32	R
Antonio Swad	TX-32	R
Carlos Quintanilla	TX-33	D
Juana Cantu-Cabrera	TX-34	R
Laura Cisneros	TX-34	D
Mayra Flores	TX-34	R
Vicente Gonzalez*	TX-34	D
Gregory Scott Kunkle Jr.	TX-34	R
Filemon Meza	TX-34	D
Beatriz Reynoso	TX-34	D
Osbert Rodriguez Haro	TX-34	D
Diego Zavala	TX-34	D
Greg Casar	TX-35	D
Alejandro Ledezma	TX-35	R
Sam Montoya	TX-35	R
Eddie Rodriguez	TX-35	D
Rebecca Viagran	TX-35	D
Phil Covarrubias	TX-38	R
Roland Lopez	TX-38	R
Diana Martinez Alexander	TX-38	D
Inocencio (Inno) Barrientez	TX Gov.	D
Joy Diaz	TX Gov.	D

Since there are so many Latino candidates running, we won’t be tracking their results in real time, but I will check in on them periodically throughout the night. In total, Democrats could nominate anywhere from seven to 14 Latinos, while Republicans could nominate anywhere from two to 14. (Several heavily Latino congressional districts, such as the 15th and 34th, feature several Latino candidates.)

In what should come as no surprise, we can expect Democratic primary voters to be relatively liberal and Republican primary voters to be relatively conservative in today’s election. But as a handful of Democratic primaries feature more ideological battles over the party’s direction, it’s worth examining what the Democratic primary electorate may look like in Texas.

Back in 2018, about a quarter of Democratic primary voters in Texas identified as “very” liberal, according to the Cooperative Election Study, while a little more than one-third said they were liberal. Meanwhile, around one-quarter said they were moderate and almost 1 in 10 said they were more conservative. If the 2022 Democratic primary electorate looks similar to this, it would be somewhat more left-leaning than Democrats nationally, at least based on estimates from Gallup, which found in 2021 that 35 percent of Democrats identified as liberal and 15 percent identified as very liberal.

Admittedly, this is an imperfect comparison between a survey of all adults (Gallup) versus one of validated voters (CES), but this would seemingly be a point in favor of the (much debated) argument that primary electorates are more ideologically extreme than the broader electorate.

However, don't read too much into this. Democrats have identified as more liberal in recent years, but what "very liberal" means could vary from state to state. For instance, using the same CES data, the ideological breakdown of the Democratic primary electorates in Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania all looked pretty similar to Texas’s back in 2018.

In 2018, now-Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley shocked the political world by unseating 20-year incumbents in their Democratic primaries. And in 2020 we saw similar upsets, with now-Reps. Marie Newman, Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush also ousting long-serving congressmen in their Democratic primaries.

As we wrote in 2020, thanks to an increasingly powerful progressive campaign apparatus, the left wing of the Democratic Party is now an established player in the party’s primaries. And in 2022 that apparatus is back at it, already challenging a handful of incumbent Democrats as well as supporting a number of progressive candidates in competitive open races.

This year, as in the last two election cycles, FiveThirtyEight will once again be tracking the success of candidates endorsed by progressive groups and progressive leaders to monitor the movement’s influence within the party. In Texas, there are four candidates who have been endorsed by progressive groups/people we’re watching:

How progressives are doing tonight

House and governor candidates endorsed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Indivisible, Justice Democrats, Our Revolution, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Sen. Bernie Sanders or the Sunrise Movement running in Texas’s Democratic primaries

Candidate	Office	% Reporting	Vote Share	Status
Jessica Cisneros	TX-28	0%	0%	—
Jasmine Crockett	TX-30	0	0	—
Greg Casar	TX-35	0	0	—
Veronica Escobar*	TX-16	0	0	—

The highest-profile progressive candidate with the most groups/people supporting her campaign tonight is Jessica Cisneros, who is running in the 28th District. This will be Cisneros’s second time taking on eight-term incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar, who is a long-time moderate in the party and has opposed abortion rights, which may alienate some Democratic voters. Cisneros has the backing of the Sunrise Movement, Indivisible, Sen. Bernie Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, Our Revolution, Justice Dems and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Meanwhile, Greg Casar is another high-profile progressive candidate running for an open seat in the state’s deep blue 35th District. He also has the support of nearly all these groups (except Progressive Change Campaign Committee). Casar is running against three other Democrats for that nomination.

I’ll be watching these races in Texas tonight, and other progressives in primaries down the road, so stay tuned.

Political scientists Bernard Fraga and Hunter Rendleman have identified at least 35 Black people who are running for House or governor in Texas, and we’ll be tracking their success throughout the night.

How Black candidates are doing tonight

Black candidates for House and governor in Texas in Democratic and Republican primaries

CANDIDATE	OFFICE	PARTY	% REPORTING	VOTE SHARE	STATUS
Victor D. Dunn	TX-01	D	0	0	—
Jrmar (JJ) Jefferson	TX-01	D	0	0	—
Martin Etwop	TX-02	R	0	0	—
Doc Shelby	TX-03	D	0	0	—
Iro Omere	TX-04	D	0	0	—
Tartisha Hill	TX-05	D	0	0	—
Benson Gitau	TX-07	R	0	0	—
Al Green*	TX-09	D	0	0	—
Trey J. Hunt	TX-12	D	0	0	—
Eugene Howard	TX-14	D	0	0	—
Sheila Jackson Lee*	TX-18	D	0	0	—
David Anderson Jr.	TX-21	D	0	0	—
Raven Harrison	TX-26	R	0	0	—
Lulite Ejigu	TX-29	R	0	0	—
Jasmine Crockett	TX-30	D	0	0	—
Arthur Dixon	TX-30	D	0	0	—
Jane Hope Hamilton	TX-30	D	0	0	—
Vonciel Jones Hill	TX-30	D	0	0	—
Keisha Williams-Lankford	TX-30	D	0	0	—
Barbara Mallory Caraway	TX-30	D	0	0	—
Jessica Mason	TX-30	D	0	0	—
Abel Mulugheta	TX-30	D	0	0	—
Roy Williams Jr.	TX-30	D	0	0	—
James "J. Frank" Harris	TX-30	R	0	0	—
Dakinya "Kinya" Jefferson	TX-30	R	0	0	—
Colin Allred*	TX-32	D	0	0	—
EE Okpa	TX-32	R	0	0	—
Marc Veasey*	TX-33	D	0	0	—
Carla-Joy Sisco	TX-35	D	0	0	—
Marilyn Jackson	TX-35	R	0	0	—
Centrell Reed	TX-38	D	0	0	—
Jerry Ford	TX-38	R	0	0	—
Wesley Hunt	TX-38	R	0	0	—
Michael Cooper	TX Gov.	D	0	0	—
Allen B. West	TX Gov.	R	0	0	—

Already, though, we know there are going to be a lot fewer than 35 Black winners tonight. Nine of those Black candidates are all running in the same race: the Democratic primary for the open seat (Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson is retiring) in Texas’s 30th District, where the voting-age population is 40 percent Black. The district will likely elect a Black member of Congress, but it can only have one Democratic nominee. On the other hand, five of these candidates are running unopposed, all Democrats: Iro Omere in the 4th District, Rep. Al Green in the 9th District, Trey Hunt in the 12th District, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee in the 18th District and Rep. Colin Allred in the 32nd District. Omere and Hunt, though, are running in very red districts, so while they will win their primaries, they are highly unlikely to join the ranks of Black members of Congress. Finally, there's a big disparity in which party’s banner most Black candidates are running under: Only 11 of the 35 Black candidates in today’s elections are Republicans.

Judicial races are generally not top of mind for voters as they head to the polls. But these elections can be incredibly consequential — sometimes, for instance, they are important signals for how voters are thinking about issues like crime and justice. And in Texas, judges are elected in partisan races, which means the primaries are very important for determining who will ultimately win.

One set of races I’m watching tonight is in Harris County, where a slew of prosecutors are challenging Democratic incumbents. For over a year, district attorney Kim Ogg has been pushing local judges to set higher bonds for violent crimes and then blaming the judges for rising crime if they didn’t comply. Prosecutors working in her office are now running against some of those judges.

In 2017, Ogg was elected as a progressive prosecutor but since then, liberals have accused her of breaking her campaign promises. And she’s been increasingly willing to attack other Democrats for embracing bail reform, accusing them of putting citizens at risk. So although none of the prosecutors running in today’s primaries were officially endorsed by Ogg, their success tonight could still be a sign of how well that rhetoric is landing with Democratic voters.

That’s worth watching — not just for what happens in Harris County, but for other Democratic-leaning places like Houston, which are more likely to embrace progressive criminal justice policies like bail reform. In many cities across the country, local politicians across the country have been grappling with higher-than-usual homicide rates since 2020, creating tensions among Democrats like the ones we’re seeing in Harris County. The results tonight could be a sign of how Democratic voters are feeling about certain criminal justice reforms, and whether messages about public safety are resonating with them.

The 2018 midterms were declared the “Year of the Woman,” because of a surge of women running for — and winning — political office. But as we reported at the time, those gains were really lopsided (Democratic women fueled the wave), and the overall share of women in Congress ticked up just 4 percent to 27 percent. Experts also stressed to us that both parties would need to elect more women in order women to ever reach parity in Congress.

And in 2020, more women from both parties did run — with Republican women running and winning in record numbers. However, despite Republican women’s strong performance in 2020, Democratic women still outnumber them nearly two to one in Congress. And tonight in Texas’s primary, Democratic women once again outnumber Republican women, with women making up 44 percent of Democratic candidates, compared to just 22 percent of Republicans.

Since there are so many female candidates running, we won’t be tracking their results in real time, but I will check in on them periodically throughout the night, so stay tuned for updates on how women of both parties fare at the ballot box tonight.

​​It’s finally here! After months of campaigning and prognosticating, Texas’s primary Election Day is upon us (as is President Biden’s State of the Union address, but I’ll get to that in a minute). Tonight, we have our eyes on a number of trends and races in the Lone Star State. Most notably, we’re following the Republican gubernatorial primary (where Gov. Greg Abbott is seeking a third term), former President Donald Trump’s influence on the state attorney general’s race and a handful of congressional match-ups, as well as how the state’s latest congressional map impacts its two new districts.

Texas is typically viewed as a pretty red state despite it trending toward Democrats in the last two presidential elections. (It voted for Trump by nearly 5 percentage points in 2020 and 9 points in 2016.) Given that, there’s still a question in certain races regarding just how far right voters feel comfortable moving and whether incumbent Republicans can easily win their respective reelection bids.

Beyond several interesting GOP matchups, there will be plenty to document on the Democratic side, too. Remember Beto O’Rourke, the failed Democratic presidential candidate who also once ran for U.S. Senate against Sen. Ted Cruz? Well, he’s now running in the Democratic primary for governor in what should be an easy race for him — but you never know what could happen there. Further down the ballot, there are also a handful of competitive Democratic races, especially in districts that neighbor the Texas-Mexico border and in some of the state’s more liberal districts.

Meanwhile, our reporters will also be keeping an eye on Biden’s speech, which is slated to begin at 9 p.m. Eastern. The president has a lot to cover, including Friday’s news that he’s selected U.S. Circuit Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer; the ongoing war in Ukraine, including what America’s role should be; the pandemic and its continued impact on the economy; and much more.

Given the current state of affairs, both foreign and domestic, tonight is a big night for the president. And, as we’ve documented in our presidential approval tracker, Biden’s ratings have plummeted (especially starting late last summer) so today’s speech might be a good opportunity for him to increase his standing — but only time will tell.

As usual, thanks in advance for sticking out the evening with us and please ping us with your questions at @538politics on Twitter. We’ll try our darndest to get your questions answered in real time. Expect us to live-blog into the wee hours if need be (anything for our readers!), but we expect to know the results of some of the marquee primary races sooner rather than later. As a reminder, polls close at 8 p.m. Eastern in Texas. Happy Election Day!