Political wonks everywhere will be closely watching tonight as the Texas Republican primary runoff election returns come in. At stake is who will win the GOP nomination for a Senate seat now held by incumbent John Cornyn. Challenging Cornyn is Ken Paxton, who has now been endorsed by Donald Trump. But no matter which candidate emerges victorious, there's going to be a lot of bad blood left over, heading into the general election, which is going to require an enormous amount of money to be spent defending what should have been a fairly safe Republican seat.

This all means that almost no matter what happens in November, the entire fiasco is going to be seen as a win for Democrats. Even if Paxton or Cornyn does manage to defeat Democrat James Talarico in the general election, this race will have consumed a fortune in campaign donations that could have been spent elsewhere. The spending has already set records -- right now roughly $130 million has been spent on the Republican contest alone. That's just on the primary election, mind you.

What many political observers have been pointing out, in the waning days of the primary runoff, is how vicious the race has become between Cornyn and Paxton. These two guys quite obviously hate each other, and they aren't shy about letting their rage out in their ads. Will this mean that whichever candidate does emerge is too weak to win the general election? That's what Democrats are hoping for, and the level of vitriol between the two campaigns seems to suggest that it's at least a possibility.

If Cornyn wins the runoff, how many Paxton voters are going to vote for him in November? If Paxton wins, how many Cornyn voters will get behind him? Those are the real questions, and they won't be answered tonight. Of course, most Texas Republicans will indeed wind up voting for whichever candidate has an "R" next to their name in November, but for those who are die-hard supporters of both Cornyn and Paxton, that's going to be a lot harder to do. After months -- and tens of millions of dollars in attack ads -- spent convincing people that either Paxton or Cornyn simply is not worthy or qualified to serve, it's going to be a very tough thing for such hardcore supporters to go ahead and vote for someone they revile.

There's also the question of how Trump is going to react. If Paxton wins, Trump will pat himself on the back and continue trashing Cornyn right up until he leaves office. But if Cornyn ekes out a win tonight, it's going to be very tough for Trump to first admit that his endorsement of Paxton didn't work and then to throw his support behind Cornyn for the general election. Trump hates having to reverse himself like this, so it remains to be seen how he would handle a Paxton loss tonight. "Badly" is probably a safe bet.

There's also the question of how much can be raised for the general election fight. One of Cornyn's strengths is how many deep-pocket Republican donors Cornyn personally knows who will pony up for a very expensive general election campaign. This is one reason Cornyn is so well-liked among the Republican caucus in the Senate -- because he is so good at raising money. If Paxton wins, however, those funds are quite likely to dry up completely (Cornyn has vastly outspent Paxton in the primary, thanks to his deep-pocket supporters). This would mean that Trump himself might have to spend big on the race, or that Paxton will be at a serious disadvantage against Talarico. Talarico has been raising impressive amounts of money for months without having to spend any of it, since he won the Democratic primary outright (there is no Democratic runoff being held today, in other words). So Talarico's already got a big jump on whichever Republican wins tonight.

How realistic a chance does Talarico have to win an upset victory? Well, that is going to depend a lot on who wins tonight. Cornyn is seen as having a better chance of fending off Talarico, while Paxton is seen as more vulnerable. Head-to-head polling shows a very tight race no matter which Republican is running against Talarico, but the polls also show that Cornyn would have a few points more support than Paxton. Since polling shows either possible race as essentially a tie right now (within the margin of error), a few points might be all it takes.

Democrats will celebrate if Paxton does win the Republican nomination tonight, because he is a lot more flawed a candidate than Cornyn. However, these flaws don't guarantee a Talarico win, because Cornyn has already spent tens of millions of dollars attacking Paxton on all his baggage and all his flaws. This means when Talarico starts doing the same thing, the voters are essentially going to have already heard it all. It won't be anything new. And once voters reach this point of ad saturation -- where they just tune them all out in exhaustion -- spending more money doesn't wind up helping much.

Talarico could either become the one Democrat who finally managed to achieve the Democratic dream of "turning Texas blue," or he may just wind up being the latest in a long line of candidates Democrats have gotten wildly excited about -- who all failed to win. The key to which of these he becomes is likely going to be how many voters will wind up so disgusted with the results of the GOP runoff tonight that they decide to sit out the November election, saying: "I just cannot bring myself to vote for that man."

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant