Nolte: No Sign of Blue Wave in Texas

Every campaign season, Democrats and their allies in the corporate media assure us that Texas is on the verge of turning into a Blue state.

It’s no different this year, with the Great Blue Hope being the Democrats’ newly-minted U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, who believes God is non-binary, the Bible is pro-abortion, and atheists are more Christian than Christians.

We’ll see.

Anyway, the Great Blue Wave thinking goes like this…

Midterms tend to go against the political party sitting in the White House. The left’s hatred for President Trump will drive Democrats to the polls in huge numbers. Democrats are especially angry that Trump is deporting their rapists, murderers, wife beaters, drug dealers, child molesters, and their cheap labor.

So, get ready for the Big Blue Wave, where Democrats swamp the GOP at the polls.

With the usual hemming and hawing that the midterms are eight months away and a million things can happen between now and then to affect the outcome, we must still read whatever tea leaves are available, and what I’m seeing in the results from Tuesday’s Texas primaries contains no indication of an enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans.

Here’s what I mean (with 80 to 90+ percent reporting)…

In the hotly-contested primary races for the U.S. Senate, the raw vote count on the Republican side is currently 2.002 million. On the Democrat side, it is 2.118 million.

In the gubernatorial primary race, the GOP raw vote count sits at 1.967 million. The Democrat side pulled in only 1.54 million.

In the race for attorney general, the GOP attracted 1.706 million raw votes. Democrats drew 1.905 million raw votes.

Granted, these are just the statewide races. The local races are even more difficult to read as far as enthusiasm because each race is its own thing.

Primary elections are far from perfect indicators of what a general election might look like. Each party is running its own race with a unique dynamic. Still, nearly two million Republicans turned out to vote in a gubernatorial primary that was a foregone conclusion. That says something.

Some might argue that something close to a turnout tie in Texas spells bad news for the GOP. Maybe. But general elections are very different from primary elections, and when you look at the dynamics of November in this Red State, if I were a Democrat eager to flip a state Blue in a Blue wave, I would like my primary turnout to be something better than close to a tie.