Polls in Texas for today’s primary election are about to close, and traders have some high expectations for the total turnout during this voting cycle.
The Texas Senate Republican primary turnout market currently forecasts that 2.16 million voters will turn out to vote for either Sen. John Cornyn or Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton during early voting and Election Day.
Traders also expect Democratic turnout to exceed Republican turnout. The market forecasts that 2.3 million Democratic voters will vote in the Texas Senate primary election for Texas Rep. James Talarico or U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett.
What are the numbers so far?
The numbers so far match traders’ expectations for which party will have the higher turnout in the Senate primary. The market shows a 92.7% chance that Democrats will have higher turnout by the end of Election Day.
VoteHub reports that more than 1.3 million Republican voters and 1.5 million Democratic voters showed up during the early voting period or cast mail-in ballots. So far, both totals are outpacing turnout in the 2022 primary election, with Republicans increasing their turnout by 127.6% and Democrats increasing their turnout by 242.2%.
What’s driving the higher Democratic turnout?
Texas’s voter turnout during this primary season isn’t just expected to eclipse the 2022 primary voting period. The New York Times reported that there is a possibility that the Democratic primary voter turnout could surpass the state’s 2.8 million turnout rate during the 2008 presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
Matthew Wilson, a political science professor with Southern Methodist University, told the Times that Democrats are turning out in record numbers because of the “palpable” excitement of the Talarico and Crockett race. He told the newspaper that Democratic voters “for the first time in a long time, actually have an interesting, contested primary and sense that they have a chance to win the seat.”
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