Tag Archives: incumbents

By Jim Ellis — Thursday, August 20, 2026

INCUMBENTS

Florida Rep. Cory Mills (R-New Smyrna Beach), who lost his renomination bid on Tuesday, is only one in a long list of incumbents being voted out of office. / Photo by Gage Skidmore, Flickr

With Rep. Cory Mills (R‑FL) losing his renomination bid on Tuesday and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R‑AK) placing well behind former Rep. Mary Peltola in Alaska’s top‑four jungle primary, the tally of incumbents denied renomination now stands at 13, plus Sen. Sullivan’s failure to finish first. Eleven of the defeats have occurred in House races – seven Democrats and four Republicans – while two Senate Republicans have been denied renomination.

The near‑parity between the parties indicates that these results are not driven by overt partisanship. Instead, they reflect a broader anti‑incumbent, and likely anti- establishment, mood. Voters in both parties appear frustrated with the current governing system.

Democrats are nominating avowed socialists in several districts, while Republican base voters, particularly in Senate contests, are signaling dissatisfaction with incumbents they believe are not enacting enough of the Trump agenda.

The most telling statistic is not the number of incumbents defeated, but the margins by which they lost. These figures should concern any incumbent facing voters in November.

Among the 11 House defeats, Democratic incumbents averaged just 40.1 percent of the vote, while their challengers averaged a commanding 56.3 percent. Republican House incumbents fared only slightly better, averaging 41.7 percent to their challengers’ 52.8 percent. These are not narrow repudiations; they are decisive rejections.

The largest losses occurred on the Democratic side. In Texas, Rep. Al Green (D‑Houston) lost a redistricting‑induced incumbent pairing to newly elected Christian Menefee (D‑Houston) by a lopsided 69.3 – 30.7 percent.

While some attribute the margin to redistricting, most of the new 18th District came from Green’s long‑held 9th District, meaning he should have had the advantage. His strong opposition to President Trump was not the issue; rather, his age – approaching 80 – and 22‑year tenure likely weighed heavily against him.

The second‑largest defeat came in New York’s 10th District, where two‑term 50-year-old Rep. Dan Goldman lost 65.8 – 34.0 percent to former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who ran as a Democratic Socialist. Here, ideology was the driving factor, despite Goldman himself being a staunch liberal even as an heir to the Levi Strauss fortune.

On Aug. 9, another veteran Democrat, Connecticut Rep. John Larson – first elected in 1998 and nearing 80 – managed only 32.9 percent against former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin and two other challengers.

Republican Senators also lost in landslide proportion. Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy failed even to qualify for the runoff, receiving just 24.8 percent of the vote. In Texas, four‑term Sen. John Cornyn mustered only 36.2 percent in a runoff against scandal-tainted Attorney General Ken Paxton. Turning to Alaska, Sen. Sullivan will likely finish with roughly 43 percent against ex-Rep. Peltola, leaving him a great deal of work to do in a short period to change his trajectory for the general election.

While these primary results suggest an ominous environment for incumbents, they do not necessarily point to a partisan wave. Instead, 2026 is producing unusual and potentially revealing electoral outcomes that underscore voter restlessness across the political spectrum.

By Jim Ellis — Thursday, August 13, 2026

Primaries

A total of 43 states have now conducted their primary elections, and we have already seen 12 incumbents – 10 in the House and two in the Senate; seven Democrats and five Republicans – fail to win renomination. This is an unusually high number, particularly in the House, but whether it signals a coming major change general election is difficult to determine at this stage. Even so, the pattern offers several notable clues.

One of the most striking findings is the large average defeat margin (16 percentage points) among the 12 incumbents. Such lopsided results suggest an electorate that is, at minimum, frustrated with the current political status quo.

The fact that incumbents in both parties have lost – and that almost all did so by substantial margins – indicates that voters on opposite ideological ends are expressing dissatisfaction, albeit for different reasons. Democratic electorates are clearly gravitating toward more ideologically extreme candidates, while Republican voters appear discontent with what they perceive as slow pace of achievement from the officeholders they have routinely elected.

In the House, seven Democrats and three Republicans have been denied another term. Of the seven Democratic defeats, only Reps. Adriano Espaillat (D‑NY) and Shri Thanedar (D‑MI) lost by margins within four percentage points.

Among the remaining 10 House defeats, the average margin of victory exceeded 17 percentage points. Two races set the high‑water mark: Rep. Al Green (D‑TX) losing to fellow Rep. Christian Menefee (D‑TX) by 38.6 points, and Rep. Dan Goldman (D‑NY) falling to former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander by 31.8 points.

Three defeats occurred within the past two weeks – Reps. Thanedar, Andy Ogles (R‑TN), and John Larson (D‑CT) – demonstrating that the trend is not confined to any single moment in the cycle. Incumbents have now fallen in March, May, June, and August, pointing to a broader and more persistent wave of discontent.

Of the 12 defeats, eight can reasonably be attributed to ideological or partisan motivations. On the Democratic side, incumbents who lost to candidates publicly identifying as Democratic Socialists – Reps. Espaillat, Goldman, and Diana DeGette (D‑CO) – were rejected because they were not far enough to the political left. Though Rep. Thanedar did not lose to a self‑identified Democratic Socialist, state Rep. Donovan McKinney (D‑Detroit) campaigned aggressively on the argument that the incumbent was not sufficiently liberal.

On the Republican side, the dynamic was the reverse: incumbents were deemed as not suitably conservative. This was most evident in Sen. John Cornyn’s (R‑TX) loss to Attorney General Ken Paxton, and retired Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein defeating Rep. Thomas Massie (R‑KY), aided by former President Trump’s very public criticism of Massie’s votes against the MAGA agenda.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R‑LA) faced similar pressure to that of Rep. Massie, failing even to qualify for the runoff after finishing 20 points behind first‑place finisher Rep. Julia Letlow (R‑Start), who received President Trump’s endorsement. The President became actively involved in the race because he wanted to see Sen. Cassidy, who voted for impeachment in 2021, fail to win renomination.

Though ideology may not have been the principal factor in Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s (R‑TX) 15‑point defeat, challenger Steve Toth (R‑The Woodlands) clearly ran to Crenshaw’s right.

Two incumbents – Reps. Green and Larson – lost primarily due to age‑related concerns, as younger challengers capitalized on generational contrasts. About a dozen elderly Democratic incumbents were challenged by younger opponents who used the generation gap as a principal reason for voters to turn away from the incumbent and a pair of the upstarts were successful.

Two others fell for distinct reasons. Rep. Julie Johnson (D‑TX) lost to former Rep. Colin Allred largely because Allred was better known to Democratic voters and Johnson was forced into unfamiliar territory under the new Texas map. Rep. Ogles lost to former Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher (R) due to a campaign‑finance scandal and seeing substantially new territory, including the city of Memphis, added to his district under the new Tennessee redistricting map.

While each defeat has its own unique circumstances, the sheer volume and the average double-digit margin across the 12 races are already reverberating through general election campaigns.

It remains to be seen whether any additional incumbents will fall in the remaining seven primaries, and how many more may lose in November. Expect campaigns to begin making strategic adjustments as we move into political prime time after Labor Day.