We don’t have full turnout numbers yet, but as of Wednesday some 363,826 votes were cast in the Democratic primary for Senate in Harris County, while there were 197,389 votes cast on the Republican side. About 140K votes were cast on Tuesday for Dems, and about 70K for Republicans – so much for the thesis that they prefer to turn up on Election Day, at least in Harris County. This easily makes 2026 the second highest turnout for a Dem primary, trailing only 2008 and its 411K votes.
Statewide, it depends on your source, the Texas Tribune tracker or the SOS Election Night page. Dems tallied 2,311,826 votes in the Senate so far in the former, and 2,311,564 in the latter, in both cases with still a few more votes to count, mostly provisionals at this point. On the Republican side the numbers are 2,163,582 and 2,165,744. I’m not sure why the gap is larger there.
Remember Greg Abbott’s threat to spend a ton of money to turn Harris County “dark red” this year? Well, he might want to shore up his support in the Republican Party first, as the candidates he endorsed had at best a mixed bag of results. In addition to Kelly Hancock getting squashed in the Comptroller’s race, Briscoe Cain trailed Alex Mealer in CD09, and John Lujan, for whom CD35 was drawn, underperformed against the Trump-backed Carlos de la Cruz, whose main qualification appears to be that he’s the brother of Rep. Monica de la Cruz. And my favorite result of the night, Abbott-backed Marty Lancton lost his hold on second place in the primary for Harris County Judge and fell behind Warren Howell to finish out of the runoff. Great job, Greg! Keep bringing that energy to these races!
Rep. Hubert Vo not only faces a runoff against challenger (and Chron-endorsed) Darlene Breaux in HD149, he fell behind her in total votes, albeit by a tiny margin, 3,743-3,734. That doesn’t bode well for him in May.
Abbie Kamin’s victory over Audrie Lawton Evans for Harris County Attorney was by just over one percentage point, 50.55% to 49.45%, which translates to just over three thousand votes out of over 310K cast in that race. Two strong candidates, only one could win. Congrats to Abbie Kamin, condolences and best wishes to Audrie Lawton Evans.
Darrell Jordan finished just ahead of Alex Maldonado for District Clerk by an even smaller margin, 18.93% to 18.81%, a mere 365 votes out of almost 316K cast. Latino candidates overall did better on Tuesday than in early voting – County Judge third-place candidate Matt Salazar went from 14% in early voting to 16% overall. I still don’t understand that, but there it is.
As noted yesterday, one incumbent Democratic judge lost their primary (Jim Kovach), but I forgot to mention that one other (Brian Warren) is in a runoff. Justic of the Peace Sharon Burney is also in a runoff; she trailed Melanie Miles on Tuesday. Other incumbent judges all won, and one former judge (Ramona Franklin, sigh) made a successful comeback.
As the Trib notes and as I mentioned yesterday, Rep. Dan Crenshaw lost badly to the terrible Steve Toth in CD02. Rep. Tony Gonzales is in a runoff with Brandon Herrera in CD23. Two incumbent Dems – Reps. Al Green in CD18 and Julie Johnson in CD33, both running in new districts because of redistricting – are in runoffs and were trailing on Tuesday, so a total of as many as four current members of Congress could be ousted before November. Add the new member (Frederick Haynes) in CD30, who will succeed Jasmine Crockett, and that’s a lot of turnover already.
Kamala Harris made a late endorsement of Rep. Jasmine Crockett in the Senate primary. She has now endorsed Rep. James Talarico, and sent a fundraising email for him as well.
Oh, and it looks like Donald Trump may be getting ready to endorse Sen. Cornyn in the runoff. Maybe, who knows with that guy. I’m sure Team Paxton will be magnanimous about it if that happens.
Congratulations to Emerson College for nailing the Dem Senate race in their most recent poll:
The polling in this Texas Senate race has been wack. Maybe the highest ever standard deviation I’ve seen for a contest, even higher than NY Mayor last year. Someone is gonna be really wrong https://fiftyplusone.news/polls/senate/democratic-primary/texas
— G. Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris) 8:10 AM – 3 March 2026
On the other hand, UT-Tyler, what in the world were you doing?
I’ll have more when I get my hands on a fuller data set. In the meantime, here are various takeaways and roundups from TPM, the Trib, Daily Kos, The Downballot, the Texas Observer, Mother Jones, Lone Star Left, and Marc Campos.
UT-Tyler is in the part of Texas that went Crockett. If you look at the primary results by county/CD and compare to the percentage of the population in those areas that are African-American, you get the same map twice. So, it isn’t totally surprising that their calculation of likely voters looked different than those based on polls in other parts of the state. We already know that essentially all weighting based on “likely voters” is now officially crap and guesswork.