The midterm election season begins Tuesday with primaries in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas, offering some of the first concrete evidence of what voters want as the country moves toward the general election in November. The primaries are scheduled to stretch into September, when the contest for control of Congress and statehouses will be decided. Republicans say Trump’s most recent election delivered a broad mandate for their agenda, while Democrats say recent victories show they can still change the trajectory in Washington.
Much of the early focus is on how much Trump still shapes Republican nominations even as he prepares for the second half of his term. Republicans are looking at candidates’ ability to harness his political blessing, while Democrats are trying to determine whether voters are ready to back different tones and different kinds of candidates after a decade in which Trump has dominated national politics.
In Texas, Trump’s endorsement list becomes a live data point for Republican primary voters. The president has backed more than 200 candidates running for Congress and state-level executive offices this year, according to an AP tally, and that endorsement remains coveted. Yet Trump has left some high-profile races off his list, including Texas Senate contenders John Cornyn and his challengers, Attorney General Ken Paxton and Rep. Wesley Hunt. The absence of a Trump endorsement is also notable in other Texas contests, where Rep. Dan Crenshaw and his primary opponent, state Rep. Steve Toth, are navigating the question of whether Trump’s support is necessary to stay insulated in the primary.
The Texas Senate race highlights another complication: some candidates are trying to claim loyalty to Trump while also differentiating themselves on issues. The AP notes that Cornyn is a longtime Republican and that Paxton and Hunt have emphasized their fealty to Trump. It also points to a contrast in Crenshaw’s profile, describing him as broadly aligned with Republicans on deportations and transgender care for minors while also supporting U.S. military assistance for Ukraine and criticizing what it calls the baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. Crenshaw is being challenged by Toth, and the two have traded accusations about their conservatism.
Fundraising and outside spending remain part of the race for credibility inside Republican primaries, even when Trump’s endorsement is missing. AP reporting says incumbents typically have an advantage in fundraising, and that Cornyn and Crenshaw are significantly outspending their rivals on campaign advertising. The AP adds, however, that it is unclear whether money will be enough to overcome the absence of Trump’s personal blessing this year. That uncertainty is part of what Tuesday’s results are likely to reveal: how strongly endorsements function as a substitute for—or amplifier of—cash and name recognition in Republican nominations.
Democrats, meanwhile, are using Texas primaries as a split-screen test of strategy against the Trump presidency. AP reporting says Democrats are still deciding what to do about Trump: whether the party wants a fighter, a healer, or something else. In Texas, the Senate primary offers two competing images of what Democratic politics should look like now. On one side is Rep. Jasmine Crockett, whose campaigns emphasize direct confrontation with Republicans. AP notes that one Crockett advertisement says she “drives the president crazy,” and another uses the tagline “Crockett fights for us.”
On the other side is state Rep. James Talarico, a former middle school teacher pursuing a divinity degree. AP reports that Talarico denounces “politics as a blood sport” and describes Democrats’ appeal as a return to “timeless values of sincerity and honesty and compassion and respect.” For Democrats trying to turn Texas from red to purple, the key question is not only whether Trump’s political standing is weakening among voters, but which of these competing approaches better positions Democrats to win the nomination and then translate it into general election support.
Another line of division for Texas Democrats involves whether party supporters want generational change rather than familiar incumbents. AP reporting describes a contest in which Rep. Christian Menefee, 37, faces Rep. Al Green, 78, in a primary shaped by redistricting. The state redrew its maps in a way that combined parts of their two districts, setting up a matchup in which Menefee is only weeks into his first term after winning a special election and Green is serving his 11th term. A crypto super political action committee, Protect Progress, is running advertisements that frame the choice as a handoff from “Democrats used to be the party of the future” to a call to “pass the torch” to Menefee.
North Carolina’s primaries carry their own incentives, especially because of the state’s approach to redrawing districts. AP notes that North Carolina has redrawn its congressional districts more often than any other state over the past decade, using different maps in essentially every election going back to 2020, plus additional maps in the prior decade. The current version was drawn by the Republican-dominated legislature last fall, leaving nearly all districts solidly red or blue with one exception: the 1st Congressional District, which leans right but could still be contested by Democrats.
Those district maps shape what Tuesday’s primaries may foreshadow for turnout and for how much suspense remains in the November general election. AP says that most House races will be effectively decided in the primary rather than in November, and that the “lack of suspense appears to contribute to political apathy.” The AP also contrasts turnout rankings from previous cycles: North Carolina ranked between 11th and 14th in turnout in the past three presidential races when it was a battleground, but in the past four midterm elections it was no higher than 23rd.
Money, too, is influenced by the reduced competitiveness created by redistricting. AP reports that in the 1st Congressional District, the five Republican candidates have collectively reported almost $4.5 million in spending, according to Federal Election Commission filings. That figure, the AP says, is more than three times the combined Democratic and Republican spending in any of the state’s other races. Taken together, Tuesday’s primaries and the map-driven structure behind them are likely to show whether party strategy can overcome a political environment that narrows the number of credible paths to shifting control in November.