Posted on 05/29/2012 8:09:51 PM PDT by Bigtigermike
The Texas Republican Senate primary is headed for a runoff, after Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst fell just shy of 50 percent of the vote Tuesday.
Dewhurst will face former state solicitor general Ted Cruz, a favorite of the tea party, in the July 31 runoff. The winner of that runoff will be a heavy favorite to succeed retiring Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), after Democrats failed to land a top-tier recruit.
With 43 percent of precincts reporting, Dewhurst led Cruz 46 percent to 32 percent. Seven other candidates split the vote enough, though, to push the two into a runoff.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
It’s looking good at this point.
Lets get this guy some decent ads and sew this thing up!
You are spot on.
There is a trend here.
With 96% reporting, Dewhurst has 45% and Cruz has 34%.
We have two months to get more conservatives motivated.
yeah, except (a) Cruz did NOT SIT on the boards of the organizations and (b) those organizations arent for amnesty.
Thanks....looks that way to me. Here are the updated numbers with 86% of the precincts in. The Election Day spread is down to 4.7%!
Early Total Election Day
Cruz 200077 433885 233808
Dewhurst 319024 581709 262685
TOTAL 665268 1291444 626176
Early Total Election Day
Cruz 30.1% 33.6% 37.3%
Dewhurst 48.0% 45.0% 42.0%
Hank
I’m in East Texas. We had a pretty hotly contested rematch contest for State Representative between a Tea Party type (David Simpson) who unseated a real RINO (Tommy Merritt) in 2010. Happy to report, Simpson won handily (60-40).
There were yard signs ALL OVER the place for both Simpson and Merritt. Also for judges, railroad commissioner, you name it. I’m not exaggerating by saying there must be 5000 signs scatterd around longview.
HUNDREDS of them were Cruz signs. I did not see a single Dewhurst sign. Not one. I looked hard, figuring he must have some supporters out here. Not a single one....it was really pretty remarkable.
Hank
IMO Dewhurst put $money and organization into early voting.
Cruz will benefit from the 1-on-1 race, but Dewhurst is a more natural home for Leppert voters. Cruz will benefit from a more conservative electorate in the runoff, but Dewhurst still likely has the organizational advantage.
I think in the final days Dewhurst went negative against Leppert...maybe that will de-motivate Leppert himself and maybe even some of his voters for jumping onto the Dewhurst bandwagon.
Maybe....
I think all things considered, I’d rather be the insurgent here...especially with Palin, Club for Growth, and Jim DeMint. Cruz might just well take this!!!
In the precinct I work as Judge in north Houston Cruz beat Do-Hurst two to one. This bodes well for Cruz because it will be hard to get all the steeple to return for the run off. If this holds true and the base comes out Cruz can make up the ten points.
In the precinct I work as Judge in north Houston Cruz beat Do-Hurst two to one. This bodes well for Cruz because it will be hard to get all the steeple to return for the run off. If this holds true and the base comes out Cruz can make up the ten points.
One would have to assume the runoff will pull less voters than this primary, so we have to hope Cruz voters are more motivated and that dewhersts base of support does not show up in the same numbers. Tis is going to be a very interesting race.
I agree with others Cruz needs some really good media to pull in the peppers voters and demoralize support for dewherst. It amazes me that Texas has such a hands time voting in solid conservatives in primaries. I suppose it is the domination of big media markets and a strong state party that is heavily RINO.
I agree. It seems for as Republican as Texas is we really don’t vote in strong movement conservatives. As we’ve seen in this and many other statewide races you are correct that the establishment is very strong here.
Dewhurst outspent Cruz 5 to 1. Cruz will likely attract some serious Tea Party money for the runoff.
From the Texas Election website:
RACE | NAME | PARTY | EARLY VOTES | PERCENT | TOTAL VOTES | PERCENT | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
U. S. Senator | ||||||||
Glenn Addison | REP | 11,413 | 1.70% | 22,808 | 1.63% | |||
Joe Agris | REP | 2,166 | 0.32% | 4,544 | 0.32% | |||
Curt Cleaver | REP | 3,183 | 0.47% | 6,623 | 0.47% | |||
Ted Cruz | REP | 200,888 | 30.03% | 477,428 | 34.23% | |||
David Dewhurst | REP | 320,995 | 47.98% | 621,850 | 44.59% | |||
Ben Gambini | REP | 3,440 | 0.51% | 7,175 | 0.51% | |||
Craig James | REP | 25,322 | 3.78% | 50,081 | 3.59% | |||
Tom Leppert | REP | 92,500 | 13.82% | 185,934 | 13.33% | |||
Lela Pittenger | REP | 9,016 | 1.34% | 17,940 | 1.28% | |||
----------- | ----------- | |||||||
Race Total | 668,923 | 1,394,383 | ||||||
Early Provisional Ballots Reported | 345 | |||||||
Total Provisional Ballots Reported | 1,775 | |||||||
Precincts Reported | 8,746 | of | 8,779 Precincts | 99.62% | ||||
Statewide Turnout | 10.67% | 13,065,425 Registered Voters |
Cruz did much better on Election day than he did in the Early Voting.”
IF that represents late momentum (due to Dewhurst’s deceptive ads, perhaps...), and IF that momentum holds...
Then Cruz will win.
Yes, motivation in the runoff will be everything. It is going to get interesting, and ugly.
RACE | NAME | PARTY | EARLY VOTES | PERCENT | TOTAL VOTES | PERCENT | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
U. S. Senator | ||||||||
Addie Dainell Allen | DEM | 59,405 | 23.56% | 113,161 | 22.92% | |||
Sean Hubbard | DEM | 39,327 | 15.60% | 79,604 | 16.12% | |||
Paul Sadler | DEM | 86,585 | 34.35% | 173,352 | 35.12% | |||
Grady Yarbrough | DEM | 66,728 | 26.47% | 127,460 | 25.82% | |||
----------- | ----------- | |||||||
Race Total | 252,045 | 493,577 | ||||||
Early Provisional Ballots Reported | 487 | |||||||
Total Provisional Ballots Reported | 1,229 | |||||||
Precincts Reported | 8,782 | of | 8,813 Precincts | 99.65% | ||||
Statewide Turnout | 3.77% | 13,065,425 Registered Voters |
What are the rules for making it into a runoff for lower tier candidates (like Texas House representative)? Does the winner have to make over 50%? If not, do they take the top two or do others down the list (like the 3rd place winner if he is very close) get a shot at the runoff?
Never does a third-place candidate wind up in a runoff. If the No. 2 candidate pulls out, there is no runoff.
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