Via Markos, First Read reports:

An Obama source emails First Read that the campaign is expecting turnout between 3.6 to 3.8 million in the Texas Democratic primary.

Consider that John Kerry received 2.8 million votes in the Lone Star State in the 2004 general election.

“That’s a lot of ‘new’ Democratic voters,” the Obama source says. “Will be great for Texas Dem Party that’s working to rebuild and only needs to pick up four seats to take back the state house.”

Now, from the looks of things the popular vote in Texas is going to be very close, so these humongous numbers are a credit to both Democratic campaigns.

In 2004, Kerry received 2.8 million votes (38%) while Bush received 4.5 million votes (61%) in Texas. Unless the new million are all former Bush voters, adding one million Democratic voters probably wouldn’t result in a Democratic win of the state. But it will certainly make it close and it will likely force McCain to spend far more money on turning out the Republican vote in Texas than any Republican would like to spend. That is, one million new Texas Democratic voters ought to scare McCain immensely, as it is a big sign that Democrats will be able to challenge for the reddest of red states.