Identifying Districts Potentially in Play, Part 6

Back in July, as part of our series of analyses identifying districts potentially in play, we found that a challenging party’s candidate raised at least half as much as the incumbent party’s candidate in 90% of the Texas legislative and congressional seats that were...

Sen. Flores Sworn in and Other News for October 12

SD19: Sen. Pete Flores (R-Pleasanton) was sworn in today (Friday) during a ceremony in the Senate Chamber. Flores defeated former Rep. and U.S. Rep. Pete Gallego (D-Alpine) in last month’s special runoff election, which was triggered by the resignation of former Sen....

Identifying Districts Potentially in Play, Part 3

Today we continue our exploration of districts that may be in play in the general election by looking at the contribution totals of the candidates as of their July semiannual (state) and July quarterly (federal) campaign finance reports. Since 2004, 62 Texas...

Primary Election Toplines

It’s after 2 a.m., and another primary election is now in the record books, or will be when those last 97 boxes are counted. We wanted to highlight a few facts and observations about the election tonight. We will go into more detail in the coming days. For now,...

Endorsement and Campaign News for February 20

AGRIC: Comm. Sid Miller’s (R) campaign released a new video on illegal immigration and sanctuary cities featuring an endorsement by Maria Espinoza of the Remembrance Project. SD8 open: An internal poll conducted for the Angela Paxton campaign shows her with a 47%-32%...

State of Play for Open-seat Races

Last week, we explored how the success rate of open-seat primary candidates varied with how their contribution totals ranked among their rival candidates. In general, money has been a pretty good predictor of primary success since at least 2006, the first year of our...

Separation Seen in Some House Open-seat Races

January semiannual reports were due for state officeholders and candidates on Tuesday. They cover contributions received and expenditures made during the second half of 2017. For most primary challengers and open-seat candidates, they are the first window into their...