Ex-Biden aide flags 'biggest story everyone is missing' that could spell disaster for GOP

On Tuesday, Texas GOP voters elected to nominate Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his bid for Senate, but on Wednesday, political data strategist John Hagner flagged a telling marker buried within the election data that may spell disaster for Republicans in the midterm elections.

In March, Texas held its primary election, during which around 2.3 million Democrats and 2.2 million Republicans cast their votes, the first time since 2020 that Democrats “voted in higher numbers than Republicans.” The GOP race for Senate kicked off a runoff election between Paxton and incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) which was held on Tuesday, and the results, Hagner noted, spoke volumes.

“If the [Associated Press] vote estimate for the runoff is accurate, it’s nearly a million votes less than the March Democratic primary and 900k less than the March Republican primary,” Hagner wrote in a social media post on X. “Divided and demoralized and choosing lunatics? Ok!”

According to the unofficial election results from the Texas Secretary of State, close to 1.4 million GOP Texas voters cast their ballot Tuesday for either Paxton or Cornyn. Paxton received nearly 886,000 votes, and Cornyn, nearly 502,000.

Back in March, Paxton received just over 883,000, and Cornyn, around 910,000. Conversely, Democratic Texas state Rep. James Talarico amassed over 1.2 million votes in the March Democratic primary.

Those figures, as noted by Neera Tanden – who acted as a senior adviser to former President Joe Biden – were perhaps the “biggest story out of Texas” given its contrast to voter turnout in the March primary.

“This is the biggest story out of Texas that everyone is missing,” Tanden wrote Wednesday in a social media post on X. “Far more people in Texas voted for Talarico than Paxton in their primaries. Obviously general elections are different, but a big enthusiasm gap between the two campaigns.”