It doesn’t look like that blue wave Democrats have been wishing for will hit Texas in 2022 either. According to recent polling conducted by Texas Tribune, incumbents who hold statewide seats have a large advantage over their primary challengers. While Democrat voters either aren’t paying enough to certain races or don’t have a preferred candidate.

Gov. Greg Abbott currently has a 43% approval rating and 48% disapproval compared to Biden’s 35% approval, 55% disapproval in the state. In a hypothetical matchup with Beto aka Jumping Jack Flap, Abbott is ahead 46-37%. Beto has an unfavorable rating of 50% and only 35% favorable. Among Independents, just 22% have a favorable view of him.

Abbott is also sitting on a massive $55 million war chest as of for his reelection campaign as of June 30th, raking in $18.7 million the final 10 days of the month (June 21-30).

The governor, who’s approval rating among Republicans in the state is 79%, is currently in a commanding lead over his primary challengers. If the primaries were held today, Abbott would get 56% of the vote compared to 13% for former Texas GOP Chair Allen West and just 7% for former State Senator and businessman Don Huffines.

In the race for Lt. governor, incumbent Dan Patrick would also get 56% of the vote if the primaries were held today. Attorney General Ken Paxton earns 48% and his closest opponent is George P. Bush with 16%.

As for Democrats, while they would largely support “Beto” at 70% in the primaries for governor, 67% haven’t thought about the race for Lt. governor enough to have an opinion on who to vote for. 72% said the same about the attorney general race.

This could be a problem for Democrats at the bottom of the ballot since Texas no longer has straight ticket voting. Challengers down the ballot won’t be able to ride the coattails as they did in 2018 when Beto came within 2.6% of beating Ted Cruz in the Senate race.

Since Republicans are generally more informed, they are likely going to vote up and down the ballot versus vote in the top races and leave.

Another early indicator Texas Republicans will dominate next year is the State House runoff race in District 118 for a seat previously held by a Democrat. Republican John Lujan defeated Democrat Frank Ramirez in a runoff race 51-49% in a District which is 75% Hispanic.

I wrote here why I believe Texas will remain red. We still have to remain vigilant and we did so in 2020. Donald Trump won the state by 5.6%, John Cornyn held on to the U.S. Senate seat by 10 points and we didn’t lose a single State House seat. We can’t let our foot off the gas, Texas must remain a Republican stronghold to fight any government overreach in D.C.