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People vote on Election Day at the West Gray Metropolitan Multi-Service Center in Houston, Tuesday, March 3, 2026.<\/p>\n
Raquel Natalicchio\/Houston Chronicle<\/p>\n
The state’s red-hot\u00a0Republican primary battles have ignited higher-than-usual voter turnout.<\/p>\n
Going into Friday, the last day of in-person early voting ahead of Tuesday’s runoff elections, almost 800,000 people had voted in the Democratic and Republican primary runoffs. That is about 200,000 more people than what the state saw going into the final day of early voting in 2022, when both parties last had statewide runoffs in a midterm cycle.<\/p>\n
Voter Turnout in Primary Runoffs<\/p>\n
Entering the final day of early voting on Friday, here are the voter totals in the\u00a0primary runoffs in Texas.<\/p>\n
Republican Runoff: 543,462<\/p>\n
Democratic Runoff: 238,456<\/p>\n
Total 781,918<\/p>\n
SOURCE: Texas Division of Elections as of 12 pm on Friday.<\/p>\n
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Cornyn narrowly beat Paxton in that initial round, 42% to 41%. Because neither secured an outright majority in the crowded field, the two top vote-getters advanced to a runoff.<\/p>\n
Cornyn\u2019s camp has to be happy with the turnout numbers they are seeing in Travis and Dallas counties \u2014 two of his best counties during\u00a0the\u00a0March contest.\u00a0Cornyn won both by more than 18 percentage points over Paxton in March, and both counties are now reporting nearly triple the turnout in the Republican runoff\u00a0from\u00a0four years ago.<\/p>\n
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