MCALLEN – A higher number of new Democrats turned out to vote than new Republicans in the Rio Grande Valley for the 2018 primary election. 

In Hidalgo County, the number of registered voters went up, according to the Elections Administrator Yvonne Ramon.

She says unlike a presidential election, they’re running two separate elections: Republican and Democrat races.

“Even if the Democrats and the Republicans were to choose to share a ballot, which in Hidalgo County they don’t, they do share polling locations. But regardless there are two separate elections running,” she explains.  

Ramon says there were close to 350,000 registered voters for 2018. She says that’s more than those registered in the last gubernatorial election in 2014.

However, voter turnout is still too low.

“When you see that we’ve got 340,000 plus registered voters and you only see 40,000 go and vote, definitely the number is low,” she says.

Ramon says despite this, unofficial numbers show nearly 14 percent of Hidalgo County’s voting population voted Democratic, while 2.8 percent voted Republican.

The elections administrator says she wants to see voter numbers up closer to 50 percent.

Hidalgo County officials say they’re still counting military and overseas votes. They say final numbers will become official once they’ve been canvased.

Unofficial Cameron County results show out of 200,300 registered voters, 16,432 voted Democrat and 4,081 voted Republican.

In Starr County, out of 32,417 registered voters, 14,790 voted Democrat and 12 voted Republican.

We’re still waiting for unofficial results from Willacy County.