the March 4 primary, Ratcliffe finished second with 29 percent of the vote, behind Hall's 45 percent. Because Hall came up short of a majority, a runoff election was required. For the May 27 runoff, Ratcliffe was endorsed by the Tea Party Express, the Senate Conservatives Fund, and the Club for Growth. Hall was endorsed by the National Rifle Association, former Congressman Ron Paul, former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, and former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee. Ratcliffe defeated Hall with 53 percent of the vote, the first time in twenty years that a sitting Republican congressman in Texas had been ousted in a primary. Ratcliffe was one of four candidates to defeat a sitting incumbent U.S. representative in a primary election in 2014. In the November 2014 general election, Ratcliffe ran unopposed. With a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+25, it is the fifth most Republican district in Texas and is tied for the 13th most Republican in the nation. 2016 election On March 1, 2016, Ratcliffe easily defeated two challengers in the Republican primary, getting 68 percent of the vote, 47 percentage points ahead of the second-place finisher. Once again, no Democrat filed to run in the November general election. In the general election, Ratcliffe defeated a third-party candidate with 88% of the vote. 2018 election On November 6, 2018, Ratcliffe won re-election to a third term with nearly 76 percent of the vote, defeating Democratic challenger Catherine Krantz and Libertarian challenger Ken Ashby. Tenure When Ratcliffe took office on January 3, 2015; he became only the fifth person to represent the 4th District since its creation in 1903. All but one of his predecessors had held the seat for at least 25 years. The Dallas Morning News said in April 2016 that "Ratcliffe's first term in Washington proves that freshman lawmakers can be players of consequence in Congress." In a September 2016 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, Ratcliffe questioned then-FBI Director James Comey about whether the FBI's decision not to recommend criminal charges against Hillary Clinton in connection with the email controversy came before or after Clinton was interviewed by investigations; Comey responded that the final decision had been made after the interviews. Ratcliffe subsequently suggested that the FBI had "predetermined the result" of the investigation. Ratcliffe was a member of the Republican Study Committee and the Congressional NextGen 9-1-1 Caucus. In late 2018, Ratcliffe was reportedly considered for