The 2026 midterm election season kicks off Tuesday with primaries in Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas, including 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 GOP-controlled states. Tuesday’s elections will put a spotlight on those new House maps in Texas and North Carolina, where they have targeted a total of 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.
The night’s primaries will also kick into high gear with two key races in the battle for the Senate. Democrats are especially bullish about their chances in North Carolina, where former Democratic governor Roy Cooper is likely to face former RNC chairman Michael Whatley. And volatile primaries on both sides in Texas could shape their long-held — and long-failed — hopes of flipping the red state blue.
Here’s what we are likely to learn from Tuesday’s primaries:
All eyes are on Texas’s U.S. Senate primaries
The marquee race on both sides is in Texas, where a pair of hotly contested primaries for a U.S. Senate seat will set the direction for each party as they wrestle with how to approach the fast-changing politics of the second Trump administration.
Sen. John Cornyn, a four-term incumbent and GOP stalwart, is facing off against two primary challengers who have framed him as a relic of the George W. Bush era. Cornyn has far outraised the state’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, but has not surpassed the scandal-plagued MAGA darling in the polls as they battle between their visions of traditional conservatism or a sharp right turn.
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 representative James Talarico, a Presbyterian seminarian preaching a blend of Christianity and left-leaning values.
The possibility of Paxton as the nominee has given Democrats hope they could win a Senate seat in Texas for the first time in more than three decades. But racial overtones have cast a shadow over the primary as some say that Talarico, a White man, would fare better among independents and centrist Republicans — a claim that Crockett, a Black woman, characterized as a “dog whistle.”
The presence of a third GOP primary candidate, Rep. Wesley Hunt, means that the Republican contest will go to a May 26 runoff if neither Paxton nor Cornyn wins a majority of Tuesday’s vote.
Scandal overshadows Texas congressional race
Perhaps the most closely watched House primary will also be in Texas, where 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 two years ago and is trying again. He came within 400 votes in a run-off primary in 2024.
Texas will test Republican voters’ appetite for overlooking alleged infidelity in more ways that one. Paxton, the Texas attorney general, was impeached in 2023 by the state House of Representatives on charges that he abused his office to cover up an affair — a topic bound to come up in the general election if he prevails over Cornyn. He was acquitted in the Texas Senate.
Redistricting creates openings — and battles — for Republicans
After Republicans redrew congressional maps in both North Carolina and Texas to give themselves more of an advantage in a handful of districts, they are now facing some bruising intraparty battles for those newly red seats.
In northeastern North Carolina, several candidates are battling in an intensely personal race to face off against Rep. Don Davis (D), whose competitive seat was redrawn to include more conservative areas. Army veteran Laurie Buckhout, who came up short against Davis two years ago in a bluer iteration of that seat, faces State Sen. Bobby Hanig and local sheriff Asa Buck.
And in a South Texas seat that stretches from Brownsville to Corpus Christi, Republican 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, in one of several races that might indicate how much sway the president’s endorsement still carries.
Democrats see opportunities — and a shrinking map
In other cases, the new maps have created hard choices for Democrats: Some candidates say they were all but forced to run against each other in the smaller number of districts where they might win in November.
In Houston, two sitting House members — Democrats Al Green and Christian Menefee — were drawn into the same seat, albeit with very different track records. Green, 78, has represented parts of the metro area for more than two decades in the House, while the 37-year-old Menefee — who won a special election following the death of Rep. Sylvester Turner — has been there for just a month.
A similar situation is playing out in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Rep. Julie Johnson (D) is facing her predecessor, former congressman Colin Allred, after Republicans turned her blue district into a deep-red one. Allred, a former NFL linebacker, made a failed bid for U.S. Senate two years ago and was planning on challenging Cornyn again until Crockett jumped into that primary. The primary for this majority-minority district could mark an end to Allred’s political career if he loses.
But even with maps being drawn to leave them at a disadvantage, Democrats see opportunity in Texas and North Carolina. The GOP’s plan to flip some seats depends on keeping Trump’s 2024 wins. Other Republican candidates may struggle to duplicate those results.
National Democrats have pointed to Tejano singer Bobby Pulido as a top recruit to face off against Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R) in a majority-Latino South Texas seat that swung to Trump. He must first beat emergency room doctor Ada Cuellar, who has drawn the backing of figures such as Crockett and who says Pulido is too conservative. Likewise, in Western North Carolina, similar buzz could emerge around farmer Jamie Ager — if he manages to win a crowded primary contest to run against Rep. Chuck Edwards (R) in a district that became lighter-red in redistricting.
A barn burner kicks off for North Carolina’s U.S. Senate seat
After a series of high-profile disagreements with Trump, two-term Sen. Thom Tillis (R) is not running for reelection — creating a wide-open race in a purple state Democrats see as crucial to their hopes of flipping control of that chamber.
Trump supports Michael Whatley, the former chair of the Republican National Committee, who faces five primary opponents Tuesday but is widely expected to win the nomination.
Democrats are even more confident in the state’s popular former governor, Roy Cooper, who many say presents the most battle-tested option to win statewide in North Carolina. Their party has not held a U.S. Senate seat in nearly two decades, but Cooper, a former state attorney general, has never lost an election.
One North Carolina incumbent could be in trouble
Another notable race is playing out in North Carolina, where incumbent Rep. Valerie Foushee (D) is fending off a challenge from her left by Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam.
The race in the deep-blue district around the state’s affluent Research Triangle has attracted considerable attention and outside spending, with Foushee benefiting from a last minute surge of money from Jobs and Democracy PAC, a group aligned with the AI company Anthropic.
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. Allam is also benefiting from outside spending, from Leaders We Deserve, the Democratic group aiming to oust some incumbents and elect younger leaders.
The X factor: A massive increase in turnout
A sharp uptick in turnout during early voting has bolstered the belief that the party’s voters are motivated to fight back against Trump.
North Carolina reported 9.2 percent turnout before Election Day, the most midterm primary voters in history, according to local news outlets.
And about 1.35 million people in Texas — or 7.2 percent of the state’s electorate — had voted in the state’s Democratic primary through Feb. 27. By comparison, around 1 million voters — or 6.2 percent of the electorate — had cast their ballots statewide around the same time in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary election.
Matthew Choi, Liz Goodwin, Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Hannah Knowles, Dan Merica, Theodoric Meyer, Clara Ence Morse and Marianna Sotomayor contributed to this report.
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