(Bloomberg) -- Voters will be sending an early signal this month of whether President Donald Trump will be a bigger motivator for Democrats than Republicans in the November elections that will decide control of Congress.
March primaries in Texas and Illinois -- as well as a surprisingly competitive special election in a southwestern Pennsylvania congressional district -- will also begin to reveal how internal party squabbles could shape the outcome of the fall vote that also will serve as a national referendum on his presidency.
Balloting in Texas on Tuesday opens a season of primaries for House and Senate races that extends through September. Democrats are counting on those contests to whip up enthusiasm among their core voters, who already are energized by anger at Trump, in the party's drive to wrest control of the House, and perhaps the Senate, from Republicans.
“Primaries and especially ‘specials' tell us which voters are paying attention and motivated enough to turn out,” said Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist in Washington who worked on Texas Senator Ted Cruz's 2016 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. “Usually, that pattern holds for the duration of the election cycle.”
Republicans are confronting historical forces, retirements in their ranks and discouraging polling. Democrats are hoping this year's contests will mimic 2017 state elections in Virginia and New Jersey -- and several special elections for offices in other states including gaining a Senate seat in Alabama -- with big turnout among women and young voters, both groups that tend to favor their candidates.
Democrats need a net gain of 24 House seats to take majority control, and since the end of World War II the party holding the White House on average has had a net loss of 26 seats in midterm elections. Although Democrats would need just two seats to claim the Senate, they have a bigger challenge because they're defending 26 seats in the upper chamber, compared to just eight for Republicans.
The voting in Texas, the nation's second-largest state, will include all 36 House districts as well as one Senate seat. Since the Lone Star State touches two time zones, polls won't be closed statewide until 9 p.m. ET.
A surge in early voting among Democrats has some Texas Republicans feeling anxiety pangs.
“Through early voting, Democratic turnout has been surprisingly high, while Republican turnout has been average,” said Matt Mackowiak, a Republican consultant based in Texas. “The reasons are complex, but could prove an enthusiasm advantage for Democrats, which would benefit them in November, if it holds.”
The fact that at least eight Texans will leave the U.S. House before the next term has swelled the number of candidates running and Democrats are eyeing at least three districts in the state -- all won by Hillary Clinton in 2016 -- that they hope to flip from Republican control in their efforts to win the House.
Democrats have 111 House candidates in this year's Texas primary, compared with 49 in 2016, data compiled by Bloomberg Government shows. For the first time in decades, the party has also fielded at least one candidate in every Texas congressional district.
One contest that will be especially closely watched is a Houston-area congressional race where the national committee that leads House Democratic campaign efforts stirred controversy by releasing opposition research about one of the party's own candidates, Laura Moser, out of fear she's too liberal to win a general election.
The 7th Congressional District race has seven Democrats competing for the chance to take on GOP Representative John Culberson in an affluent and highly educated area that Clinton narrowly won. In Texas, if no candidate secures a majority of the vote, the top two finishers will compete in a May 22 primary runoff.
In the Senate race in Texas, neither Republican incumbent Cruz nor Democratic Representative Beto O'Rourke face serious primary opposition. Cruz is favored to win re-election in a state where Trump won by 9 percentage points and the last Senate election Democrats won was in 1988.
After Texas, a March 13 special election between Democrat Conor Lamb and Republican Rick Saccone for a U.S. House seat in southwest Pennsylvania is next on the calendar. The 18th congressional district seat was vacated by Republican Tim Murphy following a sexual harassment scandal.
The contest, in a district that backed Trump by 20 percentage points in the 2016 election, has attracted unusually heavy spending from both sides. Trump also plans to visit the area Saturday to try to sway the outcome.
If Democrats manage an upset victory -- and polling shows the race to be close -- they're certain to use it to argue that they have the momentum this election year.
David Wasserman, an election specialist with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said every indication he's seeing is that Lamb "has the momentum heading into Election Day."
“Democrats still should have no business winning a district Trump won by 19 to 20 points,” Wasserman said. While Lamb is a “uniquely strong candidate,” he said, if Republicans can't hold on to the GOP-leaning district it "bodes really poorly" for their chances of holding the House majority.
After the balloting in Texas and Pennsylvania, Illinois will hold a March 20 primary that features a high-spending governor's race as its marquee contest. Republican Governor Bruce Rauner is rated as one of his party's most vulnerable incumbents and Democratic billionaire J.B. Pritzker has invested $63 million of his own money to try to win his party's primary.
A Chicago-area congressional district primary will also test whether an abortion rights opponent still has a place in the Democratic Party. Representative Dan Lipinski, the son of a longtime Chicago congressman, is facing a strong primary challenge from his left by liberal activist Marie Newman as he seeks an eighth House term.
The incumbent is going up against liberal groups that have rallied around Newman as part of a debate over the kind of candidate who should represent the Democratic Party. Newman has also been endorsed by two Democrats who are part of Lipinski's own Illinois delegation, Representative Luis Gutierrez and Representative Jan Schakowsky.
--With assistance from Greg Giroux
To contact the reporters on this story: John McCormick in Chicago at jmccormick16@bloomberg.net, Sahil Kapur in Washington at skapur39@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Joe Sobczyk at jsobczyk@bloomberg.net, Justin Blum
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