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The Significance of Primary Elections in 2018

The results are in from the March 6, 2018 Texas primary elections, the first in the nation since President Donald Trump was elected.

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Cruz made his most direct attack on O’Rourke before polls closed in Texas on Tuesday.

Today, Texas holds the first 2018 primaries in the first midterms of the Trump presidency – and it appears the “Trump effect” is having some impact on GOP politics in the Lone Star State.

Come November, Abbott will face off against either Lupe Valdez, the former Dallas County sheriff, or Andrew White, the son of late Texas Gov. Mark White.

In other words, not only can the blue wave narrative distract us from what is happening on the ground, it can also help drive Republican enthusiasm and undermine Democratic turnout – not quite the double whammy Democratic strategists are looking for.

Tuesday was a big night in Texas for Democrats, and women in particular, as voter turnout surged and a majority of women running for Congress won their primaries or advanced to run-off elections. While that doesn’t necessarily mean most of those candidates will be moving forward, the problem in Texas hasn’t been that women aren’t winning – it’s that they haven’t been running.

Polls open at 8 a.m. EST and close at 8 p.m. EST for most of the state.

A year ago, Democrat Gina Ortiz was working for the Trump Administration and now she is running against his agenda.

“I hope that our political environment changes”. “We say, take some of those tax breaks from the wealthiest Americans and put them into middle class jobs”.

“While her professional background demonstrates her expertise on national security and defense, issues more often associated with Republicans and men, her experience as a young women, daughter of an immigrant, and lesbian remind voters that she is not a candidate that represents the status quo”, Dittmar told Business Insider in an email. Republicans cast a little more than 56% of the primary votes to the Democrats’ 44%. In the state’s 10 counties with the highest number of registered voters, 370,219 Democrats voted early compared to 282,928 Republicans.

But O’Rourke has outraised Cruz in recent months and Democratic turnout for Tuesday’s primaries was the highest its been since 2002.

How did the Republican incumbents Gov. Greg Abbott tried to unseat do? It pits Angela Paxton, the wife of Attorney General Ken Paxton, against Phillip Huffines, the twin brother of state Sen. Trump won the state by nine points four years after GOP nominee Mitt Romney beat President Barack Obama by 16 points.

“He has guts. He’s not afraid”. But none of those open seats are expected to flip. One, Texas’s 23rd, is a swing district that’s home to almost one-third of the USA border with Mexico.

In Texas’ 32nd District in Dallas, seven Democrats competed to face U.S. Rep.

In a Dallas-area county won by Clinton in 2016, Republican congressman Pete Sessions will likely be challenged by former National Football League player Colin Allred, who came in first in the primary, assuming he wins the runoff in May.

“If conservatives are complacent – we know that the left is going to show up”, Cruz said on the Hugh Hewitt radio show Tuesday. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, fearing Moser may be too liberal to win the general election, blistered her for comments from a 2014 Washingtonian magazine article in which Moser said she’d “rather have her teeth pulled out” than live in rural Paris, Texas.

The Democrats had an 80 percent turnout in early voting. “And unlike anything I remember”.

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Periello says the Virginia results show there’s room in the party — even in the same primary — for a range of philosophies and styles. Neither White nor Valdez may win a majority of Tuesday’s votes, though. Adrienne Bell (TX-14), an educator and longtime Democratic campaigner, and Linsey Fagan (TX-26), a single mother and entrepreneur, both won with more than 50 percent and face no run-off.

Gage Skidmore  Flickr