General Discussion

In Texas, you do not register to vote by party. Texas is an open primary each voting cycle but once you vote in one party's primary, you are locked into that party's primary for the rest of the two-year voting cycle. That means that if you vote in one party primary for the first round of voting, then you cannot vote in the other party primary for any runoff races. Many local races are non-partisan and there are no primaries but there are usually runoffs if no candidate gets a majority of the vote. There may have been some cross over voters in the past, but Texas has not elected a Democrat to statewide office in about 30 years and so most people stay in their own party primary. Here there are competitive races in the US Senate seat for both parties and so I doubt that there is much crossover.

That said, in 2000 I voted in the GOP primary in Harris County because the judge in a case that I was working on was being challenged by the right-wing religious nut case who was challenging this judge because that judge was a female. The judge in my case had granted my side a summary judgment based on a fun contract theory that I came up with and we were in the appeal process. The RWNJ was supported by an asshole named Hotze who I have other stories about. At the time in Harris County, the winner of the GOP primary would generally win the general election. The judge that I supported won. The case came back to trial on a narrow issue after being on appeal for a couple of years. The case settled after some fun motions. Hotze is an asshole and the judge he was supporting was a real RWNJ who really believed that women should not hold places of authority over women.

In 2000, Gore was going to win the Texas primary and so I had no problem crossing over. In addition, I enjoyed voting for McCain over Bush. Again, there is no party registration in Texas. I voted in the Democratic primary on Monday of this week. The GOP Senate primary is really nasty with a ton of nasty ads on with all three GOP main candidates claiming in their ads that trump supports them. I doubt that any MAGA types crossed over but there are sane republicans who Texas who may have crossed over.

As of yesterday, the Democrats had far higher turnover than was normal in the primary.

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The people showing up so far in the GOP primary are older

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It is possible some younger voters who may have voted in the GOP primary crossed over. Time will tell