AUSTIN – Attorney General Ken Paxton’s convincing victory over Sen. John Cornyn didn’t just topple one of Texas Republicans’ longest-serving leaders. It also produced the GOP’s biggest primary runoff turnout in state history.
In total, about 1.9 million Texans voted in the Democratic and Republican runoff, less than half of the 4.5 million voting in the March primary.
Here are the main takeaways:
Nearly 1.4 million Republicans cast ballots in Tuesday’s bruising Senate runoff between Paxton and Cornyn to decide who will face Democratic state Rep. James Talarico of Austin in November.
Paxton received 885,962 votes, nearly 64%, to Cornyn’s 501,729 vote, or 36%.
The two other GOP statewide runoffs – for attorney general and railroad commissioner – drew fewer votes but each still topped 1.3 million.
The previous GOP record was set in 2012, with 1.1 million votes in the Senate runoff between Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Ted Cruz, a former Texas solicitor general.
Cruz won, running as the outsider conservative challenging an establishment favorite. Dewhurst was widely viewed as the better-known, better-funded front-runner before Cruz surged in the runoff with strong Tea Party support. Cruz went on to win the seat that year and again in 2018 and 2024.
The runoff drew far fewer voters than March’s GOP primary, when about 2.2 million Republicans cast ballots.
That’s a familiar dropoff in typically low-interest elections held weeks after the main contest.
Democrats saw an even steeper falloff. More than 2.3 million people voted in the party’s March primary, but only about 550,000 returned for the runoff.
The party lacked the kind of high-profile matchup that consumed Republicans.
Dallas County Republicans showed far less runoff slide than Democrats, another sign of the intense interest in the Paxton-Cornyn fight.
More than 73,000 Republicans voted in the Dallas County runoff, down from about 104,000 in March. Democratic turnout collapsed more sharply, falling from roughly 282,000 primary voters to about 70,000 in the runoff.