But the Republican Party in Texas has been bigger than the Democratic Party for a long time, and unless hundreds of thousands of new people show up or huge numbers of the majority party’s voters decide to change sides, statewide victories will keep going to the red team.
The blue wave some Democrats hope for has to be big enough to top the red seawall that protects Republicans. The Democrats don’t need a wave in 2018 — they need a tsunami.
The arithmetic is straightforward. In the 2016 primaries, 2.8 million Texas Republicans showed up, while only 1.4 million Texas Democrats — just a little more than half as many — turned out. That year’s runoffs were anemic, but the Republicans still pulled twice as many people to the polls.
In 2014, without a presidential race topping the ballot, 1.36 million Republicans came to vote in the primaries. At the same time only 560,033 Democrats turned out.
