For our list of the most competitive races in Texas congressional and legislative elections, we lifted the color scheme from the inventors of the federal terror watch, ranking races by the threat to each incumbent, to the incumbent party, or just by the level of interest and heat generated.

Yellow means there's trouble on the sidewalk. Orange is trouble on the front porch. Red is trouble walking in the door.

Incumbents' are indicated by an (i). An asterisk (*) indicates an open seat, and those are rated by the apparent competitiveness of top candidates (closer = hotter). This is certainly and intentionally subject to argument, and we'll revise and adjust as the March 4 primary approaches. Let us know what you think.

Races involving incumbents are listed first; open seats follow.

Changes this week: Elevated CD-4 and HD-60 to red and HD-4 and HD-112 to orange; lowered HD-6 to orange.

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West Austin voters cast ballots in early voting at an Austin Public Library branch on October 30, 2013.

It’s admittedly difficult to draw real conclusions based on just two days of early voting, but here we go: Both parties are seeing initial turnouts in some key large counties that are up big over the last non-presidential primary cycle. But there are some significant exceptions.

On the Republican side, it seems the biggest turnout gains over 2010 are in North Texas. Consider these numbers:

•    In Dallas County, turnout has more than doubled — from 4,617 to 10,251 — spurred by a nearly eight-fold increase in mail-in ballots.

•    In Tarrant County, turnout has nearly doubled — from 5,720 to 11,096. There, too, the increase in mail-in ballots is driving the increase.

•    Denton County is also nearly doubling turnout from four years ago. In fact, the only large county in North Texas bucking the trend is Collin County, where turnout has "only" gone up by 23 percent.

Turnout has increased healthily also in Harris County, from 13,044 to 16,633, and Bexar County, from 5,107 to 8,484. Another GOP stronghold in the Houston suburbs, Montgomery County, has nearly doubled its turnout from 2010.

On the Democratic side, there aren’t as many examples of huge jumps in turnout. The big exception is in Tarrant County, where turnout has nearly tripled, from 1,676 to 4,739. Travis County has also experienced a big jump; turnout has nearly doubled to 4,244. Lots more Democrats are also turning out early in Dallas County — from 3,491 to 5,533.

Turnout, though, is static in a traditionally strong county for Democrats, El Paso County. And in Harris County, turnout is down significantly from 2010 — from 7,676 to 5,316.

The picture should come into focus some more by next week. Turnout could be affected by contested local races in specific counties. And with Texas voters becoming increasingly comfortable with casting ballots early, the distribution of votes during the early voting period might be moving toward the front end of the cycle. With the gubernatorial and (probably) the senatorial contests at the top of the GOP ballot turning into yawners, the party could be hard pressed to match the 1.4 million-plus turnout of two years ago.

At first glance, though, it would seem that these numbers are in line with the larger historical trend of declining participation of voters in the Democratic primary, with the huge exception of the Obama-Clinton donnybrook in 2008, and steadily increasing participation in the Republican primary.

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This week in the Newsreel: Ted Nugent hits the road with Attorney General Greg Abbott, Ted Cruz touts the state's energy production and Kyle Janek may be on the list for University of Texas System chancellor.

You can view the video at: https://trib.it/1dU47Wy

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With the party primaries underway, we asked the insiders about whether the parties themselves are necessary — and got an overwhelming yes for our trouble.

Most of the politics and government insiders said the candidates get a benefit from the parties, but 63 percent said a well-financed third-party political action committee was better for a candidate than the backing of a well-financed political party.

Finally, we asked whether the party platforms are useful, a question that 70 percent answered no.

As always, we collected remarks along the way and a full set of those are included here. A sampling follows:

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Are state political parties obsolete?

• "Dixiecrats, Shivercrats, Wallacites, Perot, Tea Party; the more things change, the more they stay the same."

• "Can't speak for the Ds, but new leadership and a renewed focus on the platform has made the state Republican Party more relevant than it's been in a long time."

• "Though not obsolete, they have a new and very narrowly defined role in the process. We really now only need them to manage a state-of-the-art voter file, run the primary election and do generic hard contrast messaging against the other side."

• "No, the state parties are needed to run primaries and state conventions; RNC and DNC don't give a flip about those things. State parties could, however, do a better job at voter ID, registration, and GOTV."

• "Someone has to run the elections. State parties directly run the primary elections with funding from the sec of state. They run the conventions which are an integral part of the nominating process for the presidency."

• "Obsolete - no. Dysfunctional - yes!"

• "They're not obsolete, because you need them to get on the ballot. But they are largely irrelevant."

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Other than the ideological identification with a particular political party, does a candidate get any benefit from the state parties?

• "In Texas, party affiliation is everything. It's like joining the right mafia family- you can get made or you can get whacked."

• "If you are not the party's nominee, you don't get the base vote (see 2006 general election results for Carole Strayhorn, independent for Governor). Even if it is only 39%, the base vote seems like a benefit to me!"

• "They are still able to in-kind significant resources like micro-targeting and the voter file, staff support and tracking/communications against the opposing side."

• "If you're an R, party affiliation gives you a leg up in virtually all parts of Texas except Austin and the border."

• "The benefit comes in the general elections. Both parties accept outside funds to mail directly to the base."

• "With half the voter voting straight ticket Republican or Democratic the parties represent important 'brands' that certainly down ballot candidates need"

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Is a candidate better off with the help of a well-financed third-party political action committee or the help of a well-financed political party?

• "PAC's employee better strategists and can do more than a traditional party. Also, the party folks do not get involved in primaries so having a pac on your side early means help in March and November, if you are so fortunate."

• "This is an interesting question. For now, it's the parties, but I could see this changing in the VERY near future. We'll have so many Super PACs in the next cycle...”

• "This is a meaningless question. Is the 3rd party PAC Battleground Texas or TLR or someone else? Is the help cash or in-kind? If it is in-kind, is it specific to your campaign or is it generic (and probably ineffective) GOTV? Is it really help, or is it meddling? Oh, and I've yet to see a 'well financed' political party."

• "Parties are sometimes weakened when they have to 'stand by their man/woman.' PACs can stand with the candidates who agree with their principles only."

• "If you want someone to do your dirty work, then let the PAC take care of it so the 'political party' can say, 'Harrumph! We don't condone such behavior!'"

• "A state party with equal resources as a third- party pac is better for the candidate since they can directly coordinate with the state parties but in many cases, cannot do so with the pac."

• "Political party money never makes it to actual candidates."

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Do state party platforms matter in Texas politics?

• "And only a slight yes on this one. There are extreme positions in the platforms that are cobbled together by rules-loving delegates that care only about one or two issues. Candidates cannot oppose a platform, but also do not have to agree with it 100%"

• "To the true believers."

• "Platforms matter for energizing party regulars. Platforms don't matter much in campaigns, and usually platforms have only a slight, indirect effect on policy making."

• "Meaningless platform planks keep the extremists on board both parties."

• "Party platforms matter until the day after the elections."

• "For the folks on the edge, yes; for the folks who really get it done in Austin, not even close."

• "Does anybody read it?"

Our thanks to this week’s participants: Gene Acuna, Cathie Adams, Brandon Aghamalian, Jenny Aghamalian, Victor Alcorta, Brandon Alderete, Clyde Alexander, George Allen, Jay Arnold, Charles Bailey, Dave Beckwith, Amy Beneski, Andrew Biar, Allen Blakemore, Tom Blanton, Chris Britton, David Cabrales, Raif Calvert, Lydia Camarillo, Kerry Cammack, Thure Cannon, Snapper Carr, Janis Carter, Corbin Casteel, William Chapman, Elizabeth Christian, Elna Christopher, Beth Cubriel, Randy Cubriel, Denise Davis, Hector De Leon, June Deadrick, Glenn Deshields, Holly DeShields, Tom Duffy, David Dunn, Richard Dyer, Jeff Eller, Jon Fisher, Wil Galloway, Norman Garza, Dominic Giarratani, Bruce Gibson, Stephanie Gibson, Kinnan Golemon, Jim Grace, John Greytok, Clint Hackney, Anthony Haley, Wayne Hamilton, Bill Hammond, Richard Hardy, John Heasley, Ken Hodges, Steve Holzheauser, Laura Huffman, Deborah Ingersoll, Mark Jones, Robert Jones, Lisa Kaufman, Robert Kepple, Richard Khouri, Tom Kleinworth, Dale Laine, Nick Lampson, Pete Laney, Bill Lauderback, James LeBas, Luke Legate, Leslie Lemon, Richard Levy, Ruben Longoria, Vilma Luna, Matt Mackowiak, Luke Marchant, Bryan Mayes, Dan McClung, Mike McKinney, Robert Miller, Steve Minick, Bee Moorhead, Mike Moses, Steve Murdock, Nelson Nease, Keats Norfleet, Pat Nugent, Todd Olsen, Nef Partida, Gardner Pate, Robert Peeler, Jerry Philips, Tom Phillips, Wayne Pierce, Allen Place, Kraege Polan, Gary Polland, Jay Propes, Ted Melina Raab, Karen Reagan, Tim Reeves, Patrick Reinhart, David Reynolds, Carl Richie, Kim Ross, Grant Ruckel, Luis Saenz, Andy Sansom, Jim Sartwelle, Barbara Schlief, Stan Schlueter, Bruce Scott, Robert Scott, Ben Sebree, Christopher Shields, Nancy Sims, Jason Skaggs, Ed Small, Todd Smith, Larry Soward, Dennis Speight, Jason Stanford, Bill Stevens, Bob Strauser, Colin Strother, Sherry Sylvester, Gerard Torres, Trey Trainor, Vicki Truitt, Ware Wendell, Ken Whalen, David White, Darren Whitehurst, Seth Winick, Alex Winslow, Peck Young, Angelo Zottarelli.

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Monday, Feb. 24

• Fundraising reception for U.S. Senate candidate David Alameel; Headliners Club, Austin (11:30 a.m.-1 p.m.)
• Fundraising reception for state Sen. John Whitmire; 8 West Oak Drive North, Houston (5:30-7 p.m.)

Tuesday, Feb. 25

• Fundraising reception for the Texas Legislative Study Group; The Austin Club, Austin (5-7 p.m.)

Thursday, Feb. 27

• On the Road: A Texas Tribune Symposium on Demographic Change; Union Building, University of Texas at El Paso; (8 a.m.-2:30 p.m.)
• Discussion about the 2014 elections, sponsored by Texans Against Lawsuit Abuse and Texans for Lawsuit Reform; The Houston Club, Houston (11:30 a.m.-1 p.m.)

GOP gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott's decision to have shock rocker turned Second Amendment advocate Ted Nugent join him in a couple of events to kick off early primary voting injected another controversial note into the race for the Governor's Mansion. By the end of the week, the story had gone national thanks to footage of Abbott avoiding questions from a CNN reporter and the decision of Rick Perry, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul to weigh in on the issue, with each taking varying degrees of exception to Nugent's description of President Obama as "subhuman mongrel."

Conservative activist James O'Keefe released another clandestine video that purportedly showed Battleground Texas volunteers collecting phone numbers while registering voters. O'Keefe said that is against Texas law, and the office of Secretary of State Nandita Berry suggested that voter registration practices by Battleground Texas might rise to a “potential level of offense” of state election law. Battleground said it did nothing wrong.

The dozen Republicans vying to replace Steve Stockman in Congress are looking for ways to stand out in a crowded field when more unites them than divides them. One candidate, though, stood out by saying that he did not want to represent Harris County if elected because "they have plenty of congressmen." Lumberton lawyer Chuck Meyer said afterward that he "clearly misspoke."

Word emerged this week that Perry is quietly lobbying for Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Kyle Janek to be the next chancellor of the University of Texas System. The post is open after the current UT System leader, Francisco Cigarroa, announced he is leaving to devote his time again to his surgical career.

The Senate Health and Human Services committee at a hearing on Thursday discussed Texas’ efforts to expand access to women’s health services across the state. Outside the hearing, abortion rights advocates held a rally to protest last year's law that imposed new regulations on abortion facilities.

To address shortfalls in Medicaid financing and billions in annual uncompensated care costs, Ted Shaw, president and chief executive of the Texas Hospital Association, issued a call to action to hospitals on Friday. The proposal was short on specifics, but one priority would be to find a solution that distributes available Medicaid financing more equitably than the current system.

David L. Evans of Benbrook was appointed presiding judge of the Eighth Administrative Judicial Region by Gov. Rick Perry for a term that expiring four years from the date of qualification.

State Sen. José Rodríguez, D-El Paso, was elected chairman of the Senate Hispanic Caucus at its meeting Wednesday evening. Houston Democrat Sylvia R. Garcia was chosen as vice chairwoman of the gr0up.

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn picked up the backing of the National Federation of Independent Business, the nation's leading small-business association.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst received the endorsement of the Texas Apartment Association for re-election.

Former Dallas City Councilwoman and current GOP HD-102 candidate Linda Koop picked up endorsements this week from the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas and the pro-public ed Texas Parent PAC. Koop is one of three challengers — Adryana Boyne and Sam Brown are the others — vying to unseat the incumbent Stefani Carter, R-Dallas.

The political arm of the Texas Civil Justice League has endorsed:

•    Chief Justice Nathan Hecht, Justices Phil Johnson, Jeff Brown and Jeff Boyd for the Texas Supreme Court.

•    Greg Abbott for governor and David Dewhurst for lieutenant governor.

•    In the GOP primary, Judge Leanne Johnson of the 9th Court of Appeals in Beaumont, Judge John Bailey of the 11th Court of Appeals in Eastland and Patricia Grady for district judge in the 212th District Court in Galveston County

•    In the Democratic primary, Chief Justice Ann Crawford McClure of the 8th Court of Appeals in El Paso

Deaths: Richard "Dick" Reynolds, who represented Richardson in the state House for two terms in the 1970s and served at the Texas Department of Insurance when that agency was overseen by an appointed panel of commissioners. He was 86.