Democrats are eyeing a midterms wave and Republicans are feeling blue over this recent voting trend
Another primary is in the can. On Tuesday, Illinois held its primaries, which included a host of acrimonious races where pro- Israel, crypto and AI money proliferated.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker got his preferred candidate for Senate in Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton in a display of his political heft as he ponders his own 2028 presidential run.
Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss won in the hotly contested Illinois 9th district, where the American Israel Public Affairs Committee poured money to prop up Laura Fine and former journalist and streamer Kat Abughazaleh came in second.
But the actual results of the races aside, another dynamic playing out across the country is coming to the forefront: Democratic primary voters are showing up in historic numbers, which should make the party feel extraordinarily confident about a blue wave in November — and deeply concern Republicans, if history is any indicator.
Take a look at Illinois. In the Senate race, Democrats accounted for about 69 percent of the 1.7 million votes cast. While Illinois is largely regarded as a blue state, that is still a staggering percentage of the turnout.
Even in 2020, when Joe Biden won the state by a wider margin than Kamala Harris did in 2024, he only won 57 percent of the vote. When Chicago’s own Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008, he won with 61.8 percent of the vote.
One could make the argument that the contested primary between Stratton and Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robin Kelly made the race more contested raised the stakes while Republicans almost certainly know they have little to no chance of winning in the land of Lincoln.
But let’s take a look at the primary in Texas, where the Democrats and Republicans both had contested Senate races, with incumbent Sen. John Cornyn facing a primary challenge from Attorney General Ken Paxton, and state Rep. James Talarico beating Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Dallas.
Some 2,165,744 Texans voted in the GOP primary, which will go to a runoff, while 2,311,826 Texans voted in the Democratic primary. And it looks like Hispanic voters are turning out in droves.
In Zapata County, located right in the heart of the Rio Grande Valley on the border with Mexico, only 1,877 people voted for Kamala Harris and 2,970 voted for Donald Trump in 2024. This month, 2,689 Texans voted in the Democratic primary for Senate. In Jim Hogg County, which is more than 90 percent Hispanic, 856 people voted for Harris in 2024; this month, 1,008 people voted in the Democratic primary.
Back in 2024, Texas served as ground zero for the historic Hispanic shift to the right. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) who had decisely won re-election, spiked the football.
“The results tonight, this decisive victory, should shake the Democrat establishment to its core,” he said.
But last week, Cruz was frank.
“We should always be worried about earning the votes of every vote,” he told The Independent.
