Millions of Texas Republicans cast their ballots Tuesday for conservative propositions and candidates during the state’s primary election.
The state GOP called the ten ballot propositions presented during the party’s primary as “an opinion poll of Republican voters and not a policy referendum.” Texas Republicans overwhelmingly supported the ballot propositions, which included protecting the southern border and protecting transgender minors, election results show.
Over 1.7 million Republican voters answered yes to whether Texas should deploy necessary state law enforcement to seal the southern border and enforce immigration laws, including deporting illegal aliens, according to election results. A similar number of voters voted “yes” to a proposition that would ban “chemical castration, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and genital mutilation surgery on all minor children for sex transition purposes.” (RELATED: Texas Begins Investigating Parents Of Transgender Kids For Potential Child Abuse)
A proposition stating that the state should eliminate property taxes and another saying that Texans should not be penalized for refusing to get the COVID-19 vaccine were also approved by Republican voters by wide margins.
Republican candidates for Texas’ gubernatorial primary race received 1,909,955 votes, while the five Democratic Party candidates received just 1,051,356 votes, according to the Secretary of State’s election website.
Texas Republicans are excited about the voter turnout for the 2022 Republican primary, Texas Standard reported. The Republican gubernatorial race grew from almost 1.6 million votes in the 2018 Texas Republican primary to over 1.9 million in 2022, according to the Secretary of State website.
Texas primary votes (GOP/Dem):
2010: 1.484 million/ 679k
2014: 1.337 million/ 554k
2018: 1.540 million/ 1.017 million
2022: 1.862 million/ 1.006 milion (95% reporting)Texas primary votes by percentage (GOP/Dem)
2010: 69%/31%
2014: 71%/29%
2018: 60%/40%
2022: 65%/35%— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) March 2, 2022
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott thanked supporters in a tweet for voting for him to run against O’Rourke in the November general election. (RELATED: Texas Primary Results Are In: Gov. Abbott And Beto O’Rourke Take Top Slots In Gubernatorial Race)
“Tonight Republicans sent a message they want to keep Texas on the path of opportunity and prosperity,” Abbott said. “Together, we’ll secure the future of Texas and protect the individual liberties we all cherish.”
Abbott called Democratic Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke’s immigration plan “too extreme” in a January statement highlighting the Democratic candidate’s views on eliminating immigration detention, supplying illegal immigrants with state driver’s licenses, and opposing Trump’s “Remain In Mexico” policy for asylum seekers.
“I think when you look at the results from the Republican primary, there was a huge stamp of approval for the work that Gov. Abbott and other legislative leaders have done over the last several years,” Texas Republican Initiative Chairman Mark McCaig told Texas Standard. “And I think Texas voters want to continue the positive momentum that we’ve seen under that conservative leadership.”
Democratic officials in Texas acknowledged Abbott saw major success in the primary race after crafting his message to target Conservative Republican voters.
“One of the things that’s important to note is that in our state right now … we have real dangerous leadership and that Greg Abbott has definitely failed Texans,” Texas Democratic Party Co-Executive Director Jamarr Brown told Texas Standard. “And we noticed that he had to really go to the right to be able to get out of his primary, where [the] Republican Party in Texas was very divided.”
The Texas Democratic Party plans to “be advertising every day to Texans to talk about the issues that matter,” Brown told Texas Standard.
