The 2026 midterm election season kicked off Tuesday with primaries in Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas, featuring several high-profile contests that will set the tone for November as voters weigh in on President Donald Trump’s second administration and Democrats debate their party’s direction.
Republicans are defending a razor-thin majority in the House, and under pressure from Trump they have tried to bolster their efforts by redrawing congressional maps in several GOP-controlled states. Tuesday’s elections put a spotlight on those new maps in Texas and North Carolina, where the party has targeted six Democratic-held seats and prompted some bruising intraparty battles in the process.
But Democrats have history on their side: The party that’s out of the White House typically has an edge in midterm elections, and they are hopeful that rising voter sentiment against Trump might allow them to flip the House. They have already performed above expectations in several off-year and special elections.
Two key races in the battle for the Senate — Texas and North Carolina — also came into focus, though Republicans will have to wait until a May runoff to determine their nominee in the Lone Star State.
Here’s what has stood out so far — and what we are likely to learn as results continue coming in Tuesday evening.
Texas’s nasty GOP primary will head to a runoff
A heated and intensely personal Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas won’t be over until May.
Sen. John Cornyn, a four-term incumbent and GOP stalwart, will head to a runoff against the state’s firebrand attorney general, Ken Paxton, who has sought to frame Cornyn as a relic of the George W. Bush era.
Cornyn far outraised Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt, another primary challenger, but could not secure a majority against the scandal-plagued Paxton as they battle between their visions of traditional conservatism or a MAGA-backed bombast.
Democrats are facing a similarly existential choice between Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D), who says her unfiltered clapbacks against Trump and the GOP are the best way to rile up the party’s base, and state Rep. James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian preaching a blend of Christianity and left-leaning values. That race had not yet been called as of 10 p.m. Central time.
Crockett expressed concern that confusion over new voting rules had caused Democratic voters to be turned away from polling sites in Dallas County, where she is from, and might impact her standings. A judge ordered Democratic polling places to remain open two hours later, but the Texas Supreme Court blocked that order following a request from Paxton.
In North Carolina, a popular Democrat will face a Trump ally
Tuesday’s results confirmed the November matchup for the U.S. Senate in North Carolina that many expected: Michael Whatley, a former Republican National Committee chairman, will face off against the state’s former governor, Roy Cooper, after both were projected to defeat their primary opponents.
It’s one of a handful of open seats — thanks to the retirement of Sen. Thom Tillis (R) — that could aid Democrats in their tough quest to win control of the chamber.
Republicans have won every U.S. Senate election in this purple state since 2008, but national Democrats have placed high hopes in Cooper. He is a popular, battle-tested prospect who has never lost an election during nearly three decades in elected office.
New maps may create opportunities for both parties
Republicans’ efforts to redraw North Carolina’s congressional maps focused on increasing their chances in a single seat: a bluish swing district in the northeastern part of the state.
Their improved prospects gave way to an intensely personal, five-way contest where Laurie Buckhout was projected to prevail on Tuesday night. She will face off against Rep. Don Davis (D), who is fighting for his political life in November in what is likely to be one of the closest-watched House races nationwide.
To make that seat more competitive, though, the GOP also made the solidly red district representing Western North Carolina a lot less of a sure thing for their party.
That’s where Jamie Ager, a farmer and top recruit by national Democrats, is likely to see a boost in fundraising and enthusiasm from party officials after he was projected to win his primary. He will look to unseat Rep. Chuck Edwards (R) in the fall.
Expect to see a similar dynamic in Texas, where Tejano singer Bobby Pulido — another favorite of party insiders — was projected to win his primary against emergency room doctor Ada Cuellar, who was running to his left. This majority-Latino seat swung to Trump and was redrawn to boost the GOP, but Democrats are betting that they can undo some of his gains with Hispanic voters in the San Antonio area and the Rio Grande Valley.
Older Democratic lawmakers face new-guard challengers
In two races on Tuesday, older Black Democratic members of the House are trying to keep their seats as they compete with younger, upstart candidates pitching themselves as a new generation of political leaders.
In North Carolina’s Research Triangle, 69-year-old Rep. Valerie Foushee (D) is fending off a challenge from her left by Nida Allam, 32, a Durham County commissioner who previously ran against her in 2022.
Foushee is benefiting from a last-minute surge of money from Jobs and Democracy PAC, a group aligned with the AI company Anthropic. But Allam has looked to turn that money — as well as money Foushee took in a past race from AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel organization — into an attack against the incumbent.
A similar dynamic is playing out in Houston, where two sitting House members — Democrats Al Green and Christian Menefee — were drawn into the same seat in Texas Republicans’ redistricting push.
Their age difference is even greater: Green, 78, has represented parts of Houston for more than two decades in the House, while the 37-year-old Menefee — who has pitched himself as a much fresher face — has been there for just a month. He won a special election following the death of Rep. Sylvester Turner.
Trump’s influence is on the ballot
Several races on the ballot Tuesday were expected to indicate whether Trump’s endorsement can shore up an establishment figure facing a serious challenge.
The first answer may come in North Carolina, where longtime state Senate leader Phil Berger faces a tough reelection challenge after receiving an unusual endorsement from the president.
Sam Page, the longtime Republican sheriff of Rockingham County, has made a formidable bid against Berger, and some on his team had privately indicated they were worried the Senate leader could lose his race.
More clues could come in South Texas, where GOP voters will pick between two candidates with the same last name: former congresswoman Mayra Flores, who ran in the district’s last two elections, is facing a Trump-backed former federal prosecutor, Eric Flores.
The winner in this majority-Hispanic district, which Republicans redrew with the goal of flipping it red, will try to unseat Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D).
Texas GOP voters will weigh in on scandal
Two Texas races feature elected officials who have been dogged by allegations of infidelity — and whose candidacies will test Republican voters’ appetite for overlooking those scandals.
A reelection bid from Rep. Tony Gonzales (R) has been rocked by allegations that he had an affair with a staffer who lit herself on fire and died. Gonzales faces a rematch against Brandon Herrera, a hard-right firearms manufacturer and YouTuber whose 4 million followers know him as “the AK Guy.”
The district, which stretches hundreds of miles along the border from San Antonio to El Paso, includes the site of a deadly school shooting in Uvalde. Gonzales broke from his party a few months after the 2022 tragedy to support a gun-control bill pushed by Democrats — one of the key reasons that Herrera launched a campaign against him.
Meanwhile, Paxton, the state attorney general, was impeached in 2023 by the Texas House on charges that he abused his office to cover up an affair.
That topic came up plenty in the three-way primary with Cornyn and Hunt and is bound to come up again in the general election if Paxton, who was acquitted in the Texas Senate, prevails in the runoff in May.
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