Greg Abbott’s map is a confirmation of what everybody suspected: He’s the only candidate Republican voters had any real interest in, and he enters the general election round with a firm grip on the GOP base in a state where Democratic candidates are still trying to win widespread acceptance. Wendy Davis was also a prohibitive favorite in her primary, but as the map shows, she has some work to do. Ray Madrigal, a candidate who scarcely made an impression, beat Davis in 10 percent of the state’s 254 counties. Coindentally, that happened to Gov. Ann Richards in the 1994 Democratic primary, when an unknown named Gary Espinosa got 22.2 percent against her. Madrigal’s take on Tuesday, mostly in South Texas? 20.9 percent.

David Alameel led the Democratic race for U.S. Senate in all the right places: the Metroplex, the Houston area, Austin, San Antonio and South Texas. But he came up a couple of points short of avoiding a runoff. Kesha Rogers has been a Democratic candidate and nominee for office before but faces two disadvantages in a runoff: The party itself is campaigning against her (she supports impeachment of President Obama, for one thing), and Alameel has her outgunned in the campaign finance department.

Dan Patrick’s map has fewer bright red counties than his opponent’s map, but it includes some of the most important ones, notably the Houston area, where Patrick is from, and the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the second most populous. David Dewhurst’s overall problem — that of an incumbent who got only 28 percent of his own party’s support in a re-election bid — is compounded by his geographic problem. He won rural Texas, but his most successful of three challengers took most of the metropolitan votes.

Ken Paxton finished first in a three-candidate race by doing well in Republican strongholds like his home in Collin County and by expanding his support — with a boost from an ad featuring effusive praise from Ted Cruz — to other parts of the state. Dan Branch’s map shows a candidate doing well enough across the state to get into a primary while not lighting up any large section of the map. In Dallas County, what might have been the dominance of a local politician was diluted by Paxton’s relative strength. He doesn’t have an obvious geographic base of support.

Glenn Hegar came within 74 votes (in the unofficial count from the secretary of state) of winning the nomination without a runoff. It shows on his map: He dominated his home area, Houston, and also in other populated areas of the state. Harvey Hilderbran’s map, to start with, shows you what part of the state he has represented as a member of the Texas House. He did well in the Hill Country — he’s from Kerrville — and points west, where his television advertising was concentrated.

Editor's note: Hilderbran conceded the Comptroller race on March 7.

Sid Miller did well in the part of the state he represented in the state House, and in suburban Republican areas where he concentrated his campaign efforts. Tommy Merritt’s map, like Miller’s, first illustrates his home: the northeast Texas counties where the red is deepest. And it shows where he starts behind the front-runner — in the metropolitan and suburban counties where most of the voters live.

Kinky Friedman did fairly well across the state in spite of negative endorsements from his own Democratic Party. He was strongest along the Mexican border and in the Hill Country. Jim Hogan, a relative unknown who snuck into the runoff by outperforming a candidate who had the party’s blessing, did well enough in Central and West Texas to get to the second round. Now he’s running against one of the most famous names on the Democratic ballot.

Wayne Christian’s map lights up in the brightest red in the part of East Texas he represented in the Texas House. He did well enough elsewhere in the state to get into the runoff without any particular area of the state outperforming another. Ryan Sitton won strongly in more counties than Christian did without getting as many votes overall. That’s because so many of his bright red counties have relatively small populations. He has work to do in the counties that dominate Republican victory maps.