Cozen Currents: A Guide to the 2026 Primaries

“With the increased use of gerrymandering, primaries on both sides of the aisle are often becoming more competitive than the general elections themselves.” — Howard Schweitzer, CEO, Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies

The Cozen Lens

• The 2026 primary season kicked off last week with notable Democratic and Republican primaries in Texas and North Carolina.
• Before Democrats and Republicans can train their eyes on November’s battle for the Senate majority, they’ll have to contend with their own intra-party fights over their respective ideological futures.
• A similar situation is playing out in the House, which could see a record number of incumbents lose their primary races.

Subscribe to Cozen Currents

The Tides of March

2026 Primaries. Voters in Texas, North Carolina, and Arkansas headed to the polls last week for the first primary elections of the 2026 election cycle.

• Democrats and Republicans alike are battling for the future of their parties in their respective primaries. As Democrats reckon with former President Biden’s legacy and President Trump’s 2024 reelection, younger candidates are running against older generations and progressives are challenging incumbents from the left. On the Republican side, candidates who have shown more independence from President Trump are facing opponents more closely tied to the president’s MAGA movement.
• Last week’s primaries occurred just days after Trump launched strikes on Iran. While war in Iran has the risk of alienating some in Trump’s “America First” base, thus far, Republicans have maintained a largely united front on the issue. Affordability remains a top issue this year. If the Iran conflict drags on and causes higher gas prices as the general election draws nearer, there could be political risk for the GOP. Iran may also become a litmus test issue for the left. Axios reported that progressive groups planned to support primary challenges against Democrats who voted against last week’s War Powers Resolution to limit the White House’s military action in Iran. Only four House Democrats ultimately voted no.
• Primary season continues with contests later this month in Mississippi and Illinois and in other states until mid-September. The Illinois primaries next week feature open competitive high-profile Democratic primaries with establishment and progressive candidates in the second and ninth congressional districts. Major upcoming primaries include Georgia and Pennsylvania (both May 19th), California (June 2nd), Maine (June 9th), New York (June 23rd), and Michigan (August 4th).

Takeaways from Texas. The Lone Star State is the biggest state with primaries this month and provides lessons for Democrats and Republicans alike.

• Results from the Democratic US Senate primary in Texas, in which state Rep. James Talarico defeated US Rep. Jasmine Crockett, indicated high turnout. Over 2.2 million voters participated, the highest number for a Democratic midterm primary in the Lone Star State in decades and over 100,000 more than the Republican primary. This is no guarantee of Democratic victory in November but is a sign of high enthusiasm. Hispanic voter turnout in the Democratic primary was also high, raising questions about whether the GOP’s gains with this demographic in 2024 will hold this year. In five rural majority-Latino counties, total votes in the 2026 Democratic primary exceeded Vice President Harris’s share in 2024. Talarico won counties where the share of Latinos is 60 percent or greater, 62 percent to Crockett’s 35 percent. Democratic gains among Latino voters could make it more challenging for Republicans to net the five seats redrawn to favor their party last year. Of these five districts, four are majority Latino.
• Texas has also highlighted the importance of President Trump’s endorsement. The only incumbent House Republican on the ballot on Tuesday who did not have the president’s endorsement, US Rep. Dan Crenshaw, lost to a primary challenger from his right, state Rep. Steve Toth. Sen. John Cornyn edged out Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Republican US Senate primary but not by enough to avoid a runoff. Trump is expected to endorse Cornyn and previously said in a social media post that he would request that the non-endorsed candidate drop out, but his endorsement may not clear the field. Paxton said in an interview with Real America’s Voice this week that he planned to stay in the race.

Takeaways from North Carolina. The Tar Heel State was home to notable primaries that pit ideological factions of the Democratic Party against each other.

• Primary challengers were more successful in state legislative races. Progressives defeated incumbent moderate state Reps. Carla D. Cunningham, Shelly Willingham, and Nasif Majeed (two of them by substantial margins), who occasionally voted with Republicans to override vetoes by Governor Josh Stein (D).
• Nevertheless, Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, endorsed by US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), narrowly lost to Rep. Valerie Foushee (D) in the fourth congressional district, a race that featured an early example of political spending by the AI sector in the 2026 midterms. The Washington Post reported that Jobs and Democracy PAC, which is tied to a political organization funded by Anthropic, spent $1.6 million to support Foushee.
• An anti-incumbent mood may be as strong a political force as Trump’s endorsement. North Carolina state Senate President Pro Tempore Phil Berger (R) is losing to a primary challenger by a razor-thin margin in a race that still hasn’t been called, despite a Trump endorsement and $10 million in political spending in support of him.

Key Senate Primary Dynamics

The Fight for the Soul of the Senate Democratic Caucus. For Senate Democrats, the path to a Senate majority begins with a series of high stakes primary battles in which voters will decide the best ideological path forward for the party.

• As Politico reports, Talarico’s victory over Crockett in last week’s Senate primary was a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for Democrats who’ve long dreamed of turning Texas blue. However, Texas is far from the first state Democrats will need to flip to regain a Senate majority. Texas Democratic voters’ preference for “electability” over partisanship does not settle the intra-party ideological war that’s set to criss-cross the country this summer.
• According to ratings from the Cook Political Report, Democrats’ path to retake the Senate begins with defending a “Likely Democratic” open seat in Minnesota, a “Lean Democratic” open seat in New Hampshire, and two “Toss Up”-rated races: an open-seat in Michigan and Sen. Jon Ossoff’s seat in Georgia. While the general election campaign in Georgia and in New Hampshire (where Rep. Chris Pappas has all but locked up the Democratic nomination) is underway, intra-party progressive vs. moderate feuds in Minnesota and Michigan are set to stretch into August. The latest polling finds Minnesota Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanigan, running in the progressive lane, ahead of US Rep. Angie Craig, a moderate who flipped a Trump-won district in 2018. In Michigan, centrist US Rep. Haley Stevens is in a tight race with Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive endorsed by US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), and moderate-progressive branded state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. The race has turned increasingly bitter in recent weeks, sparking concerns that the drawn out primary could hobble whichever candidate emerges from the field in the general election.
• From there, Democrats will look to make gains by flipping the two “Toss Up”-rated seats defended by the GOP: North Carolina and Maine. Actually regaining control of the Senate would require additional wins in both Alaska and Ohio, each rated as “Lean Republican,” barring a surprise victory for Democrats in Texas or Iowa. While Senate Democrats secured their top recruits in North Carolina, Ohio, and Alaska, the party’s Maine primary, essential to flipping the Senate, is shaping up to be a bruising battle. Polls suggest that oysterman Graham Platner, a Sanders-style economic populist, is leading Maine Governor Janet Mills. But Platner is dogged by repeated associations with Nazi symbolism while Mills is fighting off attacks over her age, a particularly potent issue for Democratic voters following the 2024 presidential election. Either line of attack is sure to be weaponized by Maine’s incumbent Senator Susan Collins (R) who’s proven difficult to beat no matter the national environment.

The GOP Plays Defense. As favorites to hold the Senate, the GOP has fewer competitive primaries to stress about. However, with a national environment that favors Democrats, every intra-party misstep is a concern.

• For the GOP, any number of potentially damaging primary battles have been headed off by a swift endorsement by President Trump. Even so, the most notable exception is Georgia, where the party is eyeing its top pickup opportunity of the 2026 cycle. Senate Republicans originally sought to recruit Georgia Governor Brian Kemp into the race, but he passed, leading to a three-way battle between US Reps. Buddy Carter and Mike Collins, as well as football coach Derek Dooley. Neither GOP congressional leadership nor Trump have weighed in on the race, leaving the candidates to fight it out. Polls suggest that Collins is leading the three-man field, but they also show Ossoff beating all three GOP candidates. This dynamic increases the urgency of coalescing around one candidate and limiting the intra-party squabbling.
• While not the GOP’s top concern, Senate GOP leadership is forcefully advocating for the president to end the high profile fight between Cornyn and Paxton for the GOP’s Texas Senate nomination. The two are entangled in a May run-off after more than $70 million in spending on Cornyn’s behalf only brought him slightly ahead of Paxton in the first round. Senate GOP leadership fears that a prolonged run-off, or worse, a Paxton nomination, would require tens of millions dollars more investment to defend the seat in November.
• Elsewhere in North Carolina, the GOP swiftly coalesced around (and officially nominated last week) Michael Whatley to serve as the party’s Senate nominee. Despite the unified support and only token opposition, Whatley received just 65 percent of the vote, suggesting that he has his work cut out for him in boosting his name recognition ahead of the fall. Meanwhile in Montana, the party is hoping to avoid spending heavily after Sen. Steve Daines (R) announced his retirement last week. This raises the profile of a race that features a Democratic-backed independent.

Key House Primary Dynamics

The Winter of Our Discontent. Ten years after 2016, Democrats still argue about what they represent besides being the party opposing Donald Trump.

• American politics has a push and pull. As is the case in modern times, public opinion is thermostatic — granting majorities to one party before quickly growing bored and hostile to them. Following a few years on the backfoot, Democrats finally regained the advantage in party affiliation in national surveys. Over the five special elections for the House of Representatives in 2025, the party outperformed its 2024 margins by an average of 17 points.
• But even so, Democrats struggle to be more than the second-worse option. Even as they’ve seen significant electoral success since the 2024 presidential election, the party’s favorability rating — both in general and among members of their own party — fell to record lows last year. Only 34 percent of adults and 73 percent of Democrats have a favorable image of the Democratic Party. The perception only gets worse the more specific the poll gets about the actions of Democrats in Congress. A record low 18 percent of all voters approve of how Democratic lawmakers are doing their job, while a plurality of Democrats themselves concur. For context, 35 percent of all voters in the same poll approved of how Republican lawmakers are doing their job. Besides classic conflicts between progressives and moderates, the coalition is also split by support for Israel and Palestine and whether to embrace populism or institutionalism.
• The base thinks that the party isn’t fighting hard enough. All of this pressure has to go somewhere, and in many cases, that’s into surprisingly competitive primary battles. A staggering 30 House Democrats face at least one primary contender who has raised $100,000 or more. Many of these insurgents are aiming to harness the pugilistic outlook of the frustrated party faithful. About one-eighth of the party’s collective House fundraising has been raised for this purpose, which itself is forcing incumbents to spend more in the primaries and less in the general elections.
• Representatives in the House are none too happy either. Retirements in the lower chamber are tied for the most this century (with time still on the clock): roughly one in eight lawmakers in all. A suite of mid-decade redistricting is also firming up solid red and blue seats across the country. This is making primaries the only contestable election in many districts and is forcing several incumbents into the same contests. Of the twenty-three open Democratic seats, only four are rated as not solidly going towards one party or the other per the Cook Political Report.

A Party of One. The sine qua non of GOP party membership is an endorsement from President Trump.

• Much has been made of Crenshaw’s primary loss in Texas. But to quote the Cook Political Report, “There’s no clean through-line connecting these members [in contested primary races], whose vulnerabilities stemmed from the ideological to the personal to the geographic.” While Democrats are wrapped up in high-minded discussions about the future of the party and everything from what they represent to how they should accomplish their goals, the open question on the GOP side is a simpler one. Crenshaw was the only incumbent House Republican running for re-election across all three states that held primaries last week who did not get Trump’s endorsement, so he lost. In the words of one Republican pollster, “The candidates who struggled were almost exclusively the ones without his support.” You can be far-right or moderate, populist or establishment, but one thing is certain — you have to have loyalty.
• More Republicans in the lower chamber are retiring than Democrats, 34 to the Democrats’ 23. Twenty-nine of these are solid seats one way or the other (according to Cook Political Report). As with Democrats, mid-decade redistricting is firming up safe red districts in various states and forcing GOP incumbents to duke it out to stay in Congress.

Share

Share this...

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Linkedin