Three states held the first primary elections of the 2026 midterm on Tuesday, kicking off an election year that will determine who controls Congress for the next two years, and shape the direction of the two parties in the final years of Donald Trump’s presidency.
The big winner of the night was James Talarico, a Texas state representative who became the state’s Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate. In what was expected to be a tight race against U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a member of Congress from Dallas, Representative Talarico won by a clear margin and avoided a runoff election with Representative Crockett, who conceded on Wednesday.
“This is proof that there is something happening in Texas,” Mr. Talarico said. “Tonight, the people of our state gave this country a little bit of hope. And a little bit of hope is a dangerous thing.”
Why We Wrote This
James Talarico, a Texas state representative, won the Democratic nomination against U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett. On the Republican side, incumbent Sen. John Cornyn is headed to a May runoff with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.
The election was marked by confusion and legal disputes after a change to Dallas County’s voting rules left hundreds of people confused about where to go. A local judge ordered polling sites to remain open an extra two hours. But at the request of Mr. Paxton’s office, the Texas Supreme Court then blocked that order and said that votes cast by people not in line at 7 p.m. – when polls closed everywhere else in the state – should be separated out.
On the Republican side, incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn finished slightly ahead of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Since neither candidate won an outright majority, the two will now face off again in a May runoff election. (U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, a late entrant into the race, finished a distant third.)
The race pits Senator Cornyn, a four-term incumbent unpopular with the party’s MAGA base, against Mr. Paxton, a scandal-plagued Trump ally loved by the far right but loathed by Democrats.
Both parties see Texas’ Senate seat as pivotal in the battle to control the chamber. Democrats – excited by both candidates and eager to punish the Trump GOP – shattered early voting records for a primary. Republicans, fearful of losing a seat they’ve held for decades, have pumped money into the Cornyn campaign. With over $122 million in ad spending, the two races combined became the most expensive Senate primary in U.S. history.
For national Democrats, the outcome may offer a compelling message from voters for how the party should position itself moving forward.
Representative Talarico and Representative Crockett are similarly left-leaning on policy, but while Ms. Crockett positioned herself as a candidate eager to battle the Trump administration, Mr. Talarico explicitly campaigned against zero-sum politics, often citing his Christian faith. Democrats hope the Presbyterian seminarian can win over some independent voters and even moderate Republicans in November.
Democrats have made that bet before, though. U.S. Rep. Colin Allred and former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke both ran for Senate as moderate Democrats hoping to siphon off Republican votes. Both lost.
And first, Mr. Talarico will have to reunite his own party. Democratic primary voters broke clearly along demographic lines, with Black voters largely supporting Ms. Crockett and white and Hispanic voters mostly supporting Mr. Talarico.
“There’s a lot of racial wounds in the party,” says Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “If Talarico is the man of faith that he proclaims to be, then he needs to spend a lot of time bringing this party back together.”
Texas Republicans, meanwhile, are facing at least two more months of division.
The race has already been a bitter and bruising one between Senator Cornyn and Mr. Paxton. It has also been extraordinarily expensive ($95 million of that record $122 million in ad spending was spent in the Republican primary, according to AdImpact data).
“We’ll have another several months of negative campaigns and Republican-on-Republican violence that will drag the whole party through the mud,” says Dr. Rottinghaus.
Elsewhere in the state, Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL who had occasionally broken with his party, was defeated in the primary by hard-line conservative state Rep. Steve Toth. Scandal-plagued GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales will head to a runoff against Brandon Herrera, a YouTuber and gun rights advocate.
Other less competitive primaries around the country set up some marquee races for the general election.
In North Carolina, a purple state home to another key Senate race in November, Michael Whatley, a former chair of the Republican National Committee, will face off against Democrat Roy Cooper, the popular former governor.