Originally Posted: March 4, 2018
The 2018 primary elections kick off this week, and Democrats are already seeing reasons to be excited deep in the red, beating heart of Texas.
The Lone Star State holds the nation’s first primary on Tuesday, but the initial eight days of early voting through last Tuesday already showed Democrats reaching record levels in a midterm year. To that point, they’d surpassed GOP voter turnout and their own party’s numbers during the same period in 2016, a presidential election year where voting numbers are typically much higher.
The rising Democratic enthusiasm mirrors what the party has already seen across the country in the nearly year and a half since President Trump was elected — more than three dozen state legislature seats changing hands, important wins in Virginia and New Jersey last year and mobilization through rallies and protests.
Texas’s primary brings the first actual voting in the 2018 midterm cycle, giving both parties a chance for a more concrete measure ahead of November’s elections. Early signs of such a swell in a bulwark red state could be an even more ominous sign for Republicans nationally this fall if it’s borne out by Tuesday’s results.
“Texas is the nation’s bellwether right now,” said Tariq Thowfeek, the communications director for the Texas Democratic Party. “It’s a good gauge of the incredible progressive energy we have across the country in a state that is ranked at the bottom of the barrel in voter turnout.”
After the last day of early voting on Friday, the Cook Political Report’s David Wasserman found that in the top 15 counties in the state, the Democratic early vote had spiked 105 percent over 2014 numbers. On the Republican side, there had been only a 15 percent uptick.
A surge in Democrats on the ballot
It’s not just an uptick in Democratic voters happening in Texas, but an increase in candidates putting their names on the ballot, too. Democrats are fielding a modern-day record number of candidates across the state. There are 111 U.S. House candidates running for the minority party, and they are spread across all 36 Texas congressional districts — the first time that’s happened in 25 years, and a departure from two years ago when Democrats didn’t run candidates in eight seats.
On a state legislative level, Democrats have candidates in 132 of the 150 state House districts and in 14 of the 15 state Senate districts up for election this year. That includes four Senate districts where Democrats didn’t field candidates in 2014 or 2012, and 20 new House districts where they didn’t have candidates in either 2016, 2014 or 2012.
Cal Jillson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, said that the Democratic surge is even more impressive given that it’s usually GOP voters, not Democrats, who have been reliable in non-presidential years.
“It’s one word — enthusiasm. In a midterm election like this, what you normally expect to see is the Republicans’ primary turnout might be twice what the Democratic turnout is, so to have the Democrats even with, and even slightly ahead, of Republicans in this midterm election is really extraordinary,” Jillson said. READ MORE