Democrats in Texas are getting excited.
Ahead of the March 3 U.S. Senate primary, more people have voted early in the Democratic race so far this year than voted in the entire 2022 primary, according to VoteHub, an independent and nonpartisan political analysis website.
The contest pits Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a member of Congress from Dallas, against state Rep. James Talarico, from the Austin suburbs. Voters have been casting their ballots in record numbers, giving the party faithful hope that one of their candidates has a chance of becoming the first Democrat elected statewide in Texas in over 30 years.
Why We Wrote This
In politically red Texas, Democrats rarely have hope. But their U.S. Senate primary race features two candidates whose contrasting styles and online reach are giving the party a jolt of energy.
In one sense, these numbers are not surprising. A midterm election typically favors the out-of-power party, and the in-power party tends to suffer even more if the president is unpopular. Both factors are true here for the Republican Party and President Donald Trump. Most polls show Mr. Trump’s favorability rating has dropped to averages in the low 40s nationally, and to about 50% among Texas voters.
But the Senate race is giving Democrats extra juice this year, experts and pollsters say. With the candidates’ policy positions mostly aligned, the Crockett-Talarico contest has become a clash of styles and strategies. It’s a race that Democrats will be closely watching nationwide, because of its importance to the party’s efforts to take control of the U.S. Senate and how it embodies divisions within the Democratic Party.
“Democrats could use a few high-profile dogfights in the primary because it gins up interest,” says James Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. “We don’t know if it will generate a victory for them, but so far it’s good to … excite the base.”
Whoever wins the primary will face off in November’s general election against the winner of the Republican primary, where four-term Sen. John Cornyn faces a tough challenge from Texas Attorney General and MAGA firebrand Ken Paxton.
“Hunger for a different kind of politics”
On a chilly Monday evening in Waco, the line to see Representative Talarico stretched around the block. Whoever wins the Democratic primary is unlikely to win here – Mr. Trump won this mostly rural central Texas county by 33 points in 2024 – but Talarico supporters packed the ornate, century-old Hippodrome Theatre.
The turnout in the Republican stronghold encouraged Oliver Santander, who attended the rally with his sister, Emily.
“I’m just happy to see everyone here,” he said. “You don’t think your voice is as loud until you get around the crowd like this.”
Mr. Talarico entered the race as a relative unknown, but he has shot to stardom following a strategy popular among recent Democratic candidates. He has courted moderate Texans, touting his Christian faith and his work across the aisle as a state lawmaker.
He has also enjoyed several viral interviews. His first major national appearance came when he appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast in July last year and Mr. Rogan said he should run for president. More recently, CBS pulled his interview with Stephen Colbert on the Late Show off the air over concerns it would violate a Federal Communications Commission regulation on political messaging. The interview instead appeared on the show’s YouTube channel, and the controversy only seemed to attract more eyeballs: at least 6 million more views than Colbert’s quarterly average on TV.
Henry Gass/The Christian Science Monitor
A Presbyterian seminary student, Mr. Talarico’s decision to make his faith – and his opposition to Christian Nationalism – a centerpiece of his politics has helped attract supporters. The hope among some of them lining up in the cold in Waco is that he can attract support from non-Democratic voters as well.
“I am tired of being pitted against my neighbor. I am tired of being told to hate my neighbor,” Mr. Talarico noted at his campaign event. “Across the political spectrum there is a deep hunger for a different kind of politics.”
Both Representatives Talarico and Crockett “have a lot to offer,” said Bill Purdue, a lifelong Democrat, as he waited to enter the theater.
But, he added, “a Democrat like Talarico, who comes from a strong religious point of view, would have a good opportunity to catch the ear of the many religious folks that live in Texas, particularly those that are perhaps sitting on the fence.”
Henry Gass/The Christian Science Monitor
“Try something new”
Mr. Talarico emphasized his calmer style and olive-branch strategy at the Waco event. “When you extend an open hand rather than a fist, you’ll be surprised how many people take that hand,” he said.
If he represents an open hand, Ms. Crockett has unashamedly branded herself as the fist in that analogy.
She entered the race in December with a national profile built through three years of aggressive, viral clashes with Republicans in Congress. Her firebrand style has enthused Democrats critical of the party’s unwillingness to take the fight to the Trump administration.
“We need someone who is a proven fighter in this moment, someone who will not back down, someone who will not fold,” she said in an interview last weekend. “My track record is clear. I have always fought for the people that I represented, and I’ve never folded.”
Ms. Crockett is not the style of candidate Democrats have chosen to run in recent top-ticket statewide races. Former U.S. Reps. Beto O’Rourke and Colin Allred – who ran for U.S. Senate in 2018 and 2024, respectively – campaigned as moderates, hoping to win over more centrist Republicans. Both lost.
While branding herself as a fighter, not a conciliator, Ms. Crockett is also running an unconventional campaign. She has spent little on campaign ads so far, and her rallies have often been pop-up events with little advance notice. She doesn’t appear to have a campaign manager or a media spokesperson. The Crockett campaign did not respond to multiple interview requests sent to a general campaign email.
These choices have frustrated national Democrats, NOTUS reported earlier this month, but her campaign says they are her best path to victory.
“We reject the DC playbook of politics as usual, because this moment — and winning — demands something different,” Karrol Rimal, a Crockett campaign staffer, told the news organization NOTUS in a statement.
This reflects a discussion national Democrats have been having, says Renée Cross, a political scientist at the University of Houston.
The discussion has been that Democrats “have to try something new,” she adds. “These two candidates, even though their styles are different, they have Democrats excited.”
Democratic confidence has been further boosted by an unlikely victory in a state senate runoff election in January, where a union president flipped a seat in a district that Mr. Trump had won by 17 points in 2024.
That has “made Democrats feel like, ‘This is really possible now,’” says Dr. Cross. “It really could be possible for Democrats to take a U.S. Senate seat.”
Racial tensions in primary
The primary contest has been marked by some racial tension. Earlier this month an influencer alleged that Representative Talarico had described former Representative Allred as a “mediocre Black man” to her. Mr. Allred broadcast the allegation in a social media video and announced his endorsement of Ms. Crockett. Mr. Talarico later said he had described Mr. Allred as a mediocre campaigner. Two liberal podcasters faced fan backlash – including accusations of racism – after discouraging donations to the Crockett campaign because they don’t think she could win the general election.
One of the early ads in the primary references the claim that Republicans helped nudge Ms. Crockett toward running because they believe she would be easier for the GOP to beat in a general election. That claim, along with discussions of her loud, fiery personality, play into common stereotypes of Black women, critics say.
Because both candidates are staunch progressives with few policy disagreements, these personality differences have been magnified, says Dr. Henson.
“In this race it’s more of an argument about temperament,” he adds. “And you can’t have that without thinking that race and gender are creeping into this race as well.”
Plenty of Democrats, he adds, think “people are using Jasmine Crocket’s combative style and rhetoric to cover concerns about how her race may affect her general election prospects.”
Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters
Coming down to the wire
Recent polls have returned different results. A Texas Politics Project poll released this week has Ms. Crockett leading by 12 points, and the overwhelming favorite among Black primary voters. A January poll conducted by Emerson College had Mr. Talarico with a nine-point lead. An internal poll from his campaign, released this week, had him with a four-point lead.
But notably the state lawmaker entered the primary with less name recognition, and that deficit appears to be narrowing. In August 2025, 54% of Texas voters responded “Don’t Know/No opinion” when asked for their view on him, according to the Texas Politics Project. That figure had dropped to 34% this month.
At the rally in Waco, several attendees said that they would support whichever Democrat wins the U.S. Senate primary in November – even if they favor Representative Talarico.
Dennis Hanley arrived at the rally having already voted. He said he’s been voting for Democrats in Texas for 30 years, throughout their long losing streak in statewide elections.
He has liked Mr. Talarico since his Joe Rogan podcast appearance, and he’s confident that the seminarian’s campaign means that Texas will finally elect a Democrat to statewide office.
“I’m also a Jasmine Crockett fan,” he said. “We need her. But I happen to follow [Talarico’s] ideology and his mindset more than hers.”
“The tide of the country is definitely turning,” he added. “People are sick of it, and I think that enough people are going to cross over – good and decent people from the other side – who’ve also had enough.”
Along with this story on the Democratic primary in Texas’ U.S. Senate race, we will run a separate story looking at the Republican primary in the same race in coming days.