And that can’t make many people at the University of Texas at Austin happy. The average number of Republican votes in gubernatorial and midterm Senate races in 2010 and 2014 has been about 2.8 million, according to records kept by the Texas Secretary of State,” James Henson writes in The Rio Grande Guardian. “The average Democratic vote total in those races has been approximately 1.9 million.”
“In other words, historical results suggest approximately 900,000 more Republican voters than Democratic voters in the average midterm election. A hypothetical defection of 6 percent of Republican votes to O’Rourke subtracts about 168,000 votes from the average GOP vote total. Even if we were to assume that all of these Republican voters fled to O’Rourke – as opposed to just staying home – that would leave Cruz ahead by approximately 564,000 votes. Could Democrats increase turnout enough to close that gap?”
Henson lectures at UTA and is the director of the Texas Politics Project.
