Here’s what Texas voters should be paying attention to on primary Election Day

From The Texas Newsroom:

Election Day has arrived in Texas, marking the final chance for the state’s voters to pick who they want on the ballot in November.

Voters who didn’t already cast a ballot early can do so on Tuesday, March 3, can find their polling location on the Texas Secretary of State’s website. Polls close at 7 p.m. CST, except in El Paso, where they close at 7 p.m. MST. Voters will have until then to make a decision in several races, from governor and lieutenant governor to the U.S. Senate.

Voter turnout during early voting already exceeded expectations, a sign Texans are more engaged in the primaries than usual. From if that momentum continues, to the potential impact of redistricting, to Attorney General Ken Paxton’s attempt to become a congressional candidate, here are the key things to be paying attention to this Election Day.

The U.S. Senate primaries

All eyes are on Texas’ two U.S. Senate primaries, where the results could give us a glimpse of what to expect nationally this midterm election year.

The Republican side of the Senate race is a hotly contested battle between incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, Attorney General Ken Paxton and U.S. Rep Wesley Hunt. It’s Hunt’s first go at a statewide race, and he is the least known candidate of the three. But his participation in the race could have a big impact on who ultimately wins the seat.

That’s because in Texas, candidates need to receive 50% of the votes plus one in order to win a party’s nomination outright. In both a University of Houston Hobby School of Public Affairs poll and a University of Texas’ Texas Politics Project poll, Hunt has enough votes to send the race into a runoff between Cornyn and Paxton.

Paxton’s had an edge in polling so far, likely because he is perceived as the more far-right of the candidates and primary voters tend to lean to the more extreme sides of their party.

On the Democratic ticket, U.S. Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett and State Rep. James Talarico have been pushing voters to make a tough decision. Gloria Leal, the legal advisor for LULAC, said Crockett is “fiery, she is way energetic, speaks louder than Mr. Talarico, but at the same time, communicates [her] message very, very effectively.” To her, Talarico is, “calmer and more measured in his delivery.”

Polling has been all over the place, with the most recent showing Crockett ahead of Talarico by 12 points. A poll conducted about a month earlier showed Talarico ahead by 9 points.

How redistricting changed the game in Texas

Tuesday’s primary is the first statewide race since a controversial mid-decade congressional redistricting passed the Texas Legislature last summer under pressure from President Donald Trump and Abbott.

Republican state lawmakers redrew the boundaries of all 38 U.S. House districts in Texas to give five seats to the GOP. The plan, which was adopted following a two-week quorum break by Democrats in the Texas House, involved significant shuffling of non-white voting populations that tend to vote Democratic, particularly in major metro areas like Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

Democrats and civil rights groups sued the state to block the plan’s implementation, arguing that it was deliberately intended to dilute and weaken non-white voting strength — a practice known as racial gerrymandering, which is barred by U.S. Constitution and Voting Rights Act. The state countered that the plan was purely a case of partisan gerrymandering, which is legal.

The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately allowed the new map to be used for the 2026 midterm elections.

March 3 will bring contests in the redrawn districts to a head. In Houston, the new map transformed Texas’ 9th Congressional District from a Democratic bastion, long represented by Congressman Al Green, into a likely Republican pickup. Former 2022 Harris County judge candidate Alex Mealer and state Rep. Briscoe Cain are jockeying for first place in a crowded GOP contest, which is likely to go to a runoff.

Green, rather than running in the redrawn 9th District, is competing in the Democratic primary for the redrawn Texas’ 18th against Congressman Christian Menefee, who won a special election Jan. 31 to complete the term of the late Congressman Sylvester Turner. Much of the Democratic base of Green’s former 9th District has been packed into the 18th. However, recent polling shows the contest as highly competitive.

In the Dallas area, there’s a fierce contest in Texas’ 33rd Congressional District between Congresswoman Julie Johnson, who currently represents Texas’ 32nd, and her immediate predecessor in TX-32, former Congressman Colin Allred, who entered the race after withdrawing from the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate last December. The current representative of Texas’ 33rd, Democratic Congressman Marc Veasey, opted not to run for reelection after the redistricting removed a stretch of Fort Worth, where he lives.

Voter turnout — and what it could mean for November

Early voting numbers are offering an early test of enthusiasm — particularly among Texas Democrats. Within the first week of early voting, Democratic turnout far outpaced recent midterm primaries statewide. In North Texas, more Democrats cast ballots than Republicans in Tarrant and Dallas counties during the opening stretch of early voting. Similar patterns emerged in San Antonio and Austin, where early voting totals were significantly higher than previous years.

By the time early voting ended last Friday, more than 1.3 million people had cast ballots in the Democratic primary, while just under 1.2 million voted in the Republican primary.

According to Matthew Wilson, a political science professor at Southern Methodist University, the spike in Democratic participation may reflect heightened energy in the party this year.

“Democrats have generally not perceived that they had that great of a chance to win statewide office, and they haven’t had especially interesting primaries,” Wilson said. “But those two things aren’t true this time.”

But political analysts like James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin, caution against reading too much into early primary numbers.

“Higher turnout among partisans in one party’s primary election or the other doesn’t necessarily mean that that party will have an advantage or be victorious come the fall election,” Henson said.

Henson noted that it wasn’t unprecedented for Democrats to outpace Republicans in a primary year. The most recent examples were in 2008, when Barack Obama won the presidency, and in 2020, when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in his first bid for reelection.

In both cases, however, a majority of Texans voted for the Republican presidential candidate in the general election. Also in both cycles, incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn won reelection.

The Texas Newsroom’s Rachel Osier Lindley contributed to this story.

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