Tomorrow is the 2022 Primary Election Day. Polls open at 7am and close at 7pm. El Paso has historically determined the winners during early voting. Early voting ended on Friday and the results will likely be published around 7pm tomorrow. Candidates who are in the lead during the early voting period will likely be the winner in the Primary. Because El Paso heavily votes Democrat, the Primary winners will likely prevail on Election Day in November.
We have finalized our Primary Voters Guide 2022. Use this link to download a printable copy.
Texans casting votes during early voting across Texas have been low. In 2020, less that 25% of Texas registered voters cast a vote in the primaries. That is slightly higher than in 2018 when about 17% of registered Texans voted in 2018.
However, according to numbers released by the Texas Secretary of State, less than 10% of Texan registered voters have cast a vote during early elections for the 2022 primaries.
In El Paso, 23,016 votes have been cast in the Democratic Primary. For the GOP, there were 9,450 votes cast during the early voting period. In total, 32,466 votes were cast in El Paso during the early voting period, putting the turnout for El Paso in early voting at about 6.5%.
This is slightly higher than the 4.7% early voting turnout in El Paso in 2020.
However, El Paso early voting turn out in the 2022 Primaries is lower than the rest of Texas.
The race to watch is the battle of the two incumbents – Art Fierro and Claudia Ordaz Perez. Readers may remember that Ordaz Perez moved into Fierro’s district instead running to keep her seat against Lina Ortega. Fierro, in return sued to keep Ordaz Perez off the ballot but his suit was rejected by the court.
The race to watch at the state level is Beto O’Rourke. O’Rourke must demonstrate a convincing outcome in the Primaries to have any hope of unseating the incumbent governor in the Republican state on Election Day in November.
El Paso Politics will be monitoring election activities through Tuesday evening and will report any developments as they happen. We plan on making predictions shortly after the early voting number are released tomorrow. Those readers that are signed up to our newsletter will be the first to know how we predict the races. If you haven’t signed up yet, go to this link to sign up.
