smaller conservative areas backing Paxton<\/a> posted higher turnout rates.\u00a0Among the notable dynamics\u00a0identified by The Dallas Morning News:<\/p>\nIn Dallas County, where Cornyn beat Paxton by 18 percentage points in March, 45,974 Republicans voted early in the runoff compared with 64,948 in the March primary, a retention rate of roughly 70%.
\nTravis County,\u00a0where Cornyn routed Paxton by 24 percentage points, kept nearly 80% of its GOP early vote from the primary.
\nTarrant County, another top-performing Cornyn area, held onto about 67% of its early primary vote, despite the steep statewide\u00a0dropoff in runoff participation.
\nHarris County, where Cornyn edged Paxton by a single percentage point, retained 76% of its vote from the first round.
\n![\"Sen.]()
<\/p>\n
Sen. John\u00a0Cornyn speaks during a campaign\u00a0event May 21 with the Houston Association of Realtors in Houston.<\/p>\n
Jason Fochtman\/Staff photographer<\/p>\n
Matt Mackowiak, a senior adviser for the Cornyn campaign, said he expects a close race and that\u00a0Paxton\u2019s campaign is hoping for a smaller runoff electorate.<\/p>\n
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\u201cUnlike Ken\u00a0Paxton, we want high turnout,\u201d Mackowiak said. \u201cWe are working to turn out as many Republicans as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nick Maddux, a spokesman for Paxton\u2019s campaign, declined to comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some Paxton-friendly suburban and exurban counties are seeing sharper declines from March, including:<\/p>\n
Collin County, which Paxton narrowly carried in the primary, retained less than 60% of its March early vote.
\nMontgomery County, one of\u00a0Paxton\u2019s strongest counties in March, was at about the same level.\u00a0Paxton beat Cornyn there by 27 percentage points in March.\u00a0
\nGalveston County, which\u00a0Paxton\u00a0won by 6 percentage points,\u00a0maintained nearly 68% of its GOP early vote from the primary.<\/p>\n
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![\"Attorney]()
<\/p>\n
Attorney General Ken\u00a0Paxton heads a rally May 19 at Matt\u2019s Rancho Martinez in Allen.<\/p>\n
El\u00edas Valverde II\/The Dallas Morning News<\/p>\n
At the same time, those counties are posting higher overall turnout rates in the runoff than some of Cornyn\u2019s biggest metro areas, a trend that could benefit Paxton if it continues through Election Day.<\/p>\n
Republican turnout among registered voters in Collin, Montgomery and Galveston counties was around 6% by the end of early voting, with Montgomery topping 6.4%. Dallas and Travis counties, two of\u00a0Cornyn\u2019s best March counties, were closer to 3%.<\/p>\n
Cornyn showed somewhat stronger numbers in Tarrant and Denton counties, where GOP turnout among registered voters was running closer to 5% and 6%, respectively.<\/p>\n
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Another wildcard is whether supporters of Rep. Wesley Hunt, who finished third in the primary, will break toward Cornyn or Paxton\u00a0in the runoff.<\/p>\n
The winner of the\u00a0will face Democratic state Rep. James\u00a0Talarico<\/a> of Austin.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An official vote center sign is seen at Oak Lawn Branch Library on the first day of early…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":663350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-663349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=663349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/663349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/663350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=663349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=663349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=663349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}