Texas went so blue Talarico got more early votes than Paxton got in total - The Independent
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Ruby red Texas went so blue during the GOP’s crushing midterm defeat that Democrat James Talarico got more early votes than Republican Ken Paxton got in total.
Talarico defeated Paxton with more than 5.4 million votes in a blue tsunami that hit their state and other reliably Republican states such as Iowa and Kansas.
Paxton got 4,249,373 total votes, including 3,232,667 early votes, according to data from Texas Secretary of State Robert S. Howden’s office, last updated late Thursday afternoon.
Talarico got nearly 150,000 more votes from Texans who cast their ballots before Election Day than Paxton’s total vote tally. The Democrat got a total of 5,444,982 votes, including 4,397,474 early votes.
Nearly 66 million Americans voted by mail or early in-person in the midterms, according to an NBC News tally. This includes a record-breaking 7.7 million early voters in Texas, KHOU 11 reported.
Even Trump, a once-mail ballot skeptic, encouraged his supporters to vote early for Republican candidates.
“If your state has early voting, do not wait. Go out and vote,” he said in a video shared on social media.
Trump visited Texas four times to stump for Paxton during his blitz of rallies last month to drum up support ahead of the midterms.
The president, who has been dealing with his own record-low approval ratings, wasn’t able to convince enough Texans to vote for the unfavorable candidate. It also didn’t help that Trump repeatedly mocked Paxton’s fashion sense until the Republican started to dress in a Navy suit and red tie like the president.
Forty-six percent of Texans disapproved of Paxton’s job as state attorney general in October, compared to 35 percent who approved, according to polling from the University of Texas and The Texas Politics Project. The number of Texans who disapproved of Paxton’s job has increased by 10 percent since April 2021.
Paxton was impeached in 2023 as the Texas House of Representatives accused him of abusing the powers of his office to help donor Nate Paul, an Austin businessman under federal investigation. He was later acquitted by the Texas Senate.
Republican strategist Karl Rove said on Fox News Radio’s The Brian Kilmeade Show Wednesday that Paxton “drew down the entire Republican ticket” in Texas.
Republican incumbent Greg Abbott was also defeated by Democrat Gina Hinojosa in the governor’s race. Hinojosa will be the first Democrat to be sworn in as governor of Texas in more than 30 years and the first Latina in state history.
Trump, who gushed over the “strong and highly respected” GOP governor Tuesday morning, made a U-turn hours later, raging on Truth Social, “If Greg Abbott, the Governor of Texas, hadn’t become a RINO [Republican In Name Only] in the last six months of his Political Life, he wouldn’t have lost. He went back to his original formula, and it wasn’t pretty!”
