2014 Texas gubernatorial election
The 2014 Texas gubernatorial election was held on November 4, 2014, to elect the Governor of Texas. Incumbent Republican Governor Rick Perry, who had served since the resignation of then-Governor George W. Bush on December 21, 2000, declined to run for an unprecedented fourth full term, making this the first open election for governor since 1990. The election took place between nominees who were selected on March 4, 2014: Republican State Attorney General Greg Abbott and Democratic State Senator Wendy Davis. Also on the ballot were Libertarian Party candidate Kathie Glass and Green Party candidate  Brandon Parmer. Abbott was projected to carry the election, and ultimately won handily with a 20.4 percentage point advantage. Exit polls showed Abbott winning Whites (72% to 25%), while Davis received majorities among African Americans (92% to 7%) and Hispanics (55% to 44%). Abbott won roughly half of Hispanic men, 54% of all women, and 62% of married women. Abbott took office on January 20, 2015, as the 48th Governor of Texas. Libertarian nomination. Results. Kathie Glass was nominated at the 2014 party convention. Primary analysis. In the primary election, Greg Abbott polled 787,766 more votes than Wendy Davis though  both were considered certain winners of their party nominations. The Republican turnout overall exceeded the Democrat strength by 786,487, nearly the same gap as that between Abbott and Davis. Both parties saw their turnout decline from 2010. The GOP had 151,101 fewer primary voters in 2014 than in 2010; the Democrats declined by 133,354. Republicans had a total turnout of 9.8 percent in 2014; the Democrats, 3.7 percent. Political scientist Mark P. Jones of Rice University in Houston, declared that the primary returns "looks bad for Democrats. There also wasn't very much going on [for Democrats] in 2010, yet  more people voted in 2010 than voted in 2014. ... Instead of moving toward turning Texas blue, they are moving back towards Texas as an even redder state." Davis' intraparty rival and political unknown Ray Madrigal (born c. 1942) of Corpus Christi finished with nearly 21 percent of the vote, but he still outpolled the nominee in two high-profile South Texas counties with large numbers of Hispanic voters, Webb (56-44 percent) and Hidalgo (53-47 percent). In the smaller Willacy and LaSalle counties, Madrigal finished ahead of Davis with nearly 61 and 58 percent, respectively. In the 1994 Democratic  gubernatorial primary, a candidate similar to Madrigal, Gary Espinosa, polled 22.2 percent of the vote against incumbent Ann Richards, who was thereafter unseated by George W. Bush. Richards remains thus far the last Democrat to have served as governor of Texas. Despite the similarity with 1994, Davis told a candidate forum after the primary that she expected no difficulty in attracting large Hispanic support in South Texas in her campaign against Abbott. Davis advisor Matt Angle said that he believed the Republicans performed poorly in the primary and would be damaged in the general election by rhetoric against illegal immigration  in the heated primary race for lieutenant governor, which continued to a runoff between the incumbent David Dewhurst and the frontrunner, State Senator Dan Patrick, both of Houston. Conversely, Republican consultant Matt Mackowiak said that the Democrats missed an opportunity to bring voters to the polls in a show of strength: "If they think they can skip the primary and have a stunning victory [in the general election], that's extremely naïve." General election. Debates. The first of two confirmed gubernatorial debates between Wendy Davis and Greg Abbott took place at the Edinburg Conference Center at Renaissance at 18:00 on  Friday, September 19, co-hosted by KGBT-TV, The Monitor and KTLM-TV. KGBT-TV posted the complete video online and can be viewed here. The debate took place in Edinburg, Texas, and it gave both candidates an opportunity to appeal to the Hispanic community, a grouping seen by "Reuters" as an "increasingly important voting bloc in Texas." The second debate took place on September 30 and was also posted online.