The Missing 400,000.
Texas, rural voters, brain death and AI.
1. What happened in Texas?
In the first GOP U.S. Senate primary, in March, Sen. John Cornyn defeated Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, by a bit more than 30,000 votes. The vote count was ~910,000 for Cornyn and ~878,000 for Paxton. Sadly for Cornyn, he didn’t win a majority, so a run-off primary was held last Tuesday (26 May).
In the run-off primary, Paxton received ~885,000 votes (an increase of just 7000 votes from the March primary). Cornyn received 501,000 votes (an epic collapse of over 400,000 votes from the March primary).
What does this tell us?
To begin with, it tells us that the reason President Trump endorsed Ken Paxton the week before the primary is that he didn’t want to back a losing effort. The Trump political operation polls constantly and their polling confirmed what the public polling was reporting prior to Trump’s endorsement: Paxton was going to win, comfortably. A Trump endorsement of Cornyn would not have changed the outcome. It barely moved the needle for Paxton, whose total vote in both primaries was virtually identical.
Trump’s interest in backing losers is sub-zero. The Trump White House and Trump himself were able to spin the run-off results as further evidence of the president’s “iron grip” on GOP primary voters and no one doubts the depth of his support among them and among Republicans more generally. He’s transformed the party’s demography.
That said, he didn’t “move the needle” in the Texas Senate run-off primary. He got on board with the winner, once it was clear that Paxton would win.
The larger question is: what happened to the ~400,000 voters who enabled Sen. Cornyn to win the first (March) primary? They…disappeared.
Why?
We know that they didn’t go to Paxton. He added, at best, a few thousand Cornyn voters to his vote total in the run-off. We also know the Cornyn campaign had more than enough money to reach every last Cornyn voter (in the March primary) at least twice to urge them to vote for Cornyn again. And yet ~44% of first primary Cornyn voters sat out the run-off primary.
There are a couple of ways to interpret these data. One way (the Trump way) is that the president’s withholding an endorsement of Cornyn sent a message to Texas GOP primary voters that it was okay to vote for Paxton. Trump wouldn’t hold it against them. He would be fine with that.
Another way to look at it (the James Talarico way) is that once it became clear to Cornyn voters that their man was not going to win, they decided to sit out the run-off, abstaining in disgust.
There’s evidence for this. A substantial number of Republican voters in Texas view Ken Paxton with disdain. He was impeached, after all, by a Republican-dominated State House of Representatives, and by a substantial margin (121 for impeachment, 23 against). In this day and age, it’s rare indeed to see bi-partisan agreement on defenestrating a Red or Blue team elected official.
(Ed. Note: Paxton was acquitted by the Texas State Senate, following a strong statement of support for Paxton from then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Paxton’s impeachment fell well short of the two-thirds required for conviction.)
The Talarico’s campaign chances of success rest largely on a significant number of “Cornyn voters” (and voters like them) staying home on Election Day in November. Lower GOP turnout plus high Democratic turnout can add up to a Talarico victory.
The Paxton’s campaign mission, then, is to make sure the state’s Red majority shows up in sufficient numbers on Election Day, regardless of how they might feel about Paxton himself. And that requires the Paxton campaign to portray Talarico as completely unacceptable.
Paxton didn’t waste any time on that front. In his victory speech Tuesday night, he had this to say:
“My opponent is the most extreme radical that Democrats have ever nominated. He's even running a vegan campaign, whatever that is. He goes by a few names that you may all have heard of. Some people know him as Tofu Talarico. Some people call him Six-Gender Jimmy. I've even heard some people call him James Talafreako. And others refer to him simply as Low-T Talarico.”
That was the night before the general election began.
1. Let’s take a look at the Census:
Rank State Rural %
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1 Vermont 63.7%
2 Maine 61.3%
3 Montana 55.9%
4 South Dakota 53.6%
5 West Virginia 51.3%
6 Mississippi 50.6%
7 Arkansas 42.9%
8 Kentucky 41.7%
9 North Dakota 40.8%
10 Alabama 40.7%
11 New Hampshire 39.4%
12 Wyoming 36.8%
13 Iowa 36.2%
14 Alaska 34.1%
15 Idaho 34.2%
16 Wisconsin 29.9%
17 Tennessee 30.0%
18 Missouri 30.0%
19 Oklahoma 28.8%
20 Nebraska 27.4%
21 Louisiana 27.3%
22 Minnesota 26.7%
23 South Carolina 26.4%
24 Kansas 25.8%
25 New Mexico 25.0%
26 Indiana 24.9%
27 North Carolina 23.9%
28 Michigan 23.3%
29 Virginia 22.8%
30 Ohio 21.3%
31 Pennsylvania 21.0%
32 Delaware 19.0%
33 Georgia 19.0%
