Early voting in Texas primary begins next week

AUSTIN, Texas - Early voting begins next week on Tuesday, Feb. 17.

This week, two top political leaders in Texas provided their take on momentum and messaging as the midterm primary races get closer to the ballot box.

What they're saying:

Democrats are riding high after a big win in the Fort Worth area where a special election for a state senate seat was flipped — from red to blue. 

Texas Democrat Party Chairman Kendall Scudder believes the win indicates a big shift in attitude by Texas voters.

"You can look at Senate District 9, that just last week we overperformed in 31 points, and we saw in predominantly Hispanic and Latino precincts that was where the largest over performance was. I think a lot of Hispanic and Latino voters as well as other voters gave Donald Trump a chance, you think you can make things better show me what you got and he did, and for the last year they realized they've been lied to," said Scudder.

Texas GOP Chairman Abraham George blamed the loss in the Texas Senate D-9 Special Election on low turnout by local Republicans. He noted a re-do for the seat will be voted on in the November General Election and gave a different perspective on the Hispanic vote.

"So, I was at a town hall in South Texas, I don't know, three, four days ago. The biggest thing I heard was not about ICE. It was all about property tax. They wanted to know what are we going to do about property taxes? Because we asked, and like I even kind of preempted in my speech saying, I know some of you may be looking at and your neighbors are saying something bad about Republicans. And they said, "No, we support legal immigration. We support deportation of illegal immigrants," said George.

What you can do:

Early voting starts Tuesday the 17th. 

The Battleground Texas segment runs live at 3 p.m. on Monday through Friday on FOX Local and later on FOX 7’s other social media platforms.