It won’t get the top billing, but the Freedom Caucus losing the vast majority of the GOP primaries in the WY State Legislature is a great result. Showing the farthest right crazies that nobody likes them even in one of the most conservative states is a way to stop and turn back the rightward slide of the public over the past decade
Yes, it's important if the Republican Party is ever to be revived as even a slightly legitimate organization. I'd prefer for it to be disbanded as a subversive organization that injured national security, like the Nazi Party was officially disbanded in Germany after the war, but that won't happen.
Even as someone who is more Moderate, I'm glad that Nixon won. I love the triumph of good old-fashioned shoe leather over millions raised and a national profile and I don't think it particularly hurts our odds of an upset, which were always long. Hopefully this is a lesson to the party establishment that if they want to get their candidates over the finish line they need to connect with actual voters.
Also, this injects some life into what would have been an incredibly bland and virtually Republican-lite top of the ticket. Nixon will create some enthusiasm among younger and black voters that would otherwise not have been there.
I think this helps turns out POC, especially Black folks, and progressives who would otherwise sit out the election due to the top of the ticket being a former Republican and a carpetbagger moderate. It can help Jolly if his election is close.
I know some folks were hoping Cory Mills would win the primary to make FL-7 a potential flip for us, but honestly I’m glad that a despicable person like that is going to be out of Congress entirely. While going against worse candidates is an advantage (see Ken Paxton), in my opinion having straight up evil deplorable people in elected positions of power spewing and normalizing hate speech is one of the biggest reasons we are in the position we are today in this country.
Most the folks on this site probably agree that GOP politicians mostly all have bad positions and hold some disgusting views, but the MAGA types that project xenophobia and transphobia all over social media and normalize that to millions of people are the worst culprits and need to be taken out of the public eye whenever possible in my view. Even if he is a better candidate for us to flip the district it’s not worth the risk of having Cory Mills in Congress for two more years
I am genuinely surprised that Angie Nixon won the FL-Sen Democratic primary, and I'm even more surprised that Nixon carried Miami-Dade County, which is definitely not the first place anyone thinks of being receptive to voting for a democratic socialist. I like to say that a socialist couldn't win a socialist primary in Miami-Dade, yet a democratic socialist won Miami-Dade in a Democratic primary!
I genuinely don't think Nixon will come close to winning the Florida U.S. Senate race unless the bottom completely falls out for the GOP very late in the campaign, and I would have said the same thing if Vindman won the primary.
But credit Ms. Nixon, a union organizer, for knowing how to harness the enthusiasm of grass-roots Democrats and volunteers — and deftly using social media — to inform them about her candidacy.
A final weekend push in South Florida, home to many Democratic voters even as much of the region has trended toward Republicans, appears to have paid off: Ms. Nixon, who is from Jacksonville, defeated Mr. Vindman in Miami-Dade County, the state’s most populous, and in neighboring Broward County, where he lives.
It's hard to say if there's a trend because this system was only used in 2022 and 2024, and in 2022 she only took 37% in the primary because nobody knew her yet, so that's not a useful data point. But in 2024 her vote share actually went down from the primary. She took 51% in the primary, but in the general election she took 46% in the first round and 49% in the final post-RCV round
AK-Sen: Though maintaining he is not a Democratic plant, Dan J. Sullivan (not the incumbent, the fisherman from Petersburg) admits he voted for Democratic presidential nominees as well as Mary Peltola, who he's now running against in November. He also voted for the senator's independent opponent in 2020 as well as his Republican colleague Lisa Murkowski in 2022.
For the Miami Ballot item: not clear how the election in 2033 is for a 3-year term if the elections move to even-numbered years in 2034. Isn't that 1 year?
Based on primary turnout between the parties (not a perfect barometer, I know) I’d say Moskowitz is the clear favorite in FL-25. It’s been a little under the radar, but hope the DCCC isn’t sleeping on Rodriguez in FL-27; Dems there nearly matched the vote total of Salazar and her opponent. And since she was uncontested I didn’t see any vote totals for Castor in FL-14, but the Republicans added up to 56k, which seems high (although I still think she has an outside shot).
Dem turnout in FL-25 was probably pumped up by Larkin's candidacy. Not clear if those voters will vote for Moskowitz in the fall. I'd continue to call it a tossup.
Context of what makes up State House PA-12: The anchor of the district is Cranberry Township, a town at the junction of I-76 (PA Turnpike) & I-79, came to prominence in the mid-90s when businesses started leaving Pittsburgh (25 miles SSE) & Allegheny County to avoid city & county taxes. Upper middle class soon followed in the late 90s/early 00s but is still slowly growing & becoming richer with high end apartments, condos & planned communities (and the Pittsburgh Penguins practice facility) being built throughout the 2010s. This district will be a tough hold in November but not impossible.
Glad to see Markey is ahead in the polls in Massachusetts. I donated to Vindman but can only guess he ran a terrible campaign. Although Nixon has a tough road ahead but I wouldn't give up on her yet- she must be a great campaigner. I read where Vindman and his wife made attacks against Nixon- terrible strategy, Dems in primaries don't like attacks on fellow Democrats. His support of Israel must have really hurt in Miami, it surely never helped with Jewish voters, even when he was Jewish. Glad to see Dems in Penn's land win the special election. Also glad to see Miami voters combine the municipal elections with the even year elections- it will save millions of tax dollars and boost voter turnout, and result in more women and MORE MINORITIES being elected to local offices. Hopefully all blue states and blue local governments will follow suit.
FL-7: Interesting piece of trivia - this is not the first time Ryan Elijah, who convincingly defeated Rep. Cory Mills in last night's Republican primary, has run for Congress.
When Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) resigned from Indiana's 3rd in 2010, Elijah ran and placed 4th behind Fort Wayne councilor Liz Brown (now a state senator), state Rep. Randy Borror, and state Sen. Marlin Stutzman, who has continued to hold the seat in different time periods to this day. Elijah got 11%.
Elijah also claims he has lived in Florida for 20 years. 2010, believe it or not, was not 20 years ago.
Why would Begich drop out? He’s only 1.7 points out of first place, that’s a small enough gap that he’s still competitive for the win in November. Someone in that strong of a position dropping out to slightly increase our overall odds doesn’t strike me as something any candidate would do.
For the good of the party to have only one Dem in the race. I long said whichever Dem came in first should have the field to themselves so that votes aren’t exhausted in RCV. Dahlstrom did that after just narrowly getting beaten out by Nick Begich in 2024.
I don’t think Democratic candidates should drop out just to make it easier for us to game the system. I like ranked choice voting based on its own merits - because it allows for multiple talented candidates to compete without forcing everyone to drop out to just consolidate around one candidate that’s polling the best. If the only reason for Alaska to have ranked choice voting is so that more people waste their votes, that’s antidemocratic and defeats the entire point of the system.
Well like it or not, RCV has been gamed by both the GOP and even our party since its 2022 implementation. Votes will inevitably be exhausted if there’s no singular candidate from the party. It’s folly to assume voters will rank their second-choice Dem when this basically acting as an extension of the jungle primary. Some might be bitter, and some might just not know to rank. Either way, we have to look at the reality of what Alaska’s RCV system incentivizes. It incentivizes consolidation. We are not the favorites here if the field consists of two Dems and two Republicans.
I don’t really care - I’d rather have a slightly worse chance of winning the Alaska governor’s race than subvert the will of the voters there. If the only purpose of ranked choice voting is to allow for cheating, Alaska shouldn’t have it, and as someone who really would prefer to have ranked choice voting nationwide, I don’t think that discrediting it by turning it into something that’s just a partisan trick is a good way to show that it works.
Alaska’s RCV system is highly flawed in allowing the top 4 to drop out in the first place. It incentivizes gaming and consolidation. RCV works better when there’s just one nominee of each of the major parties running against indies and third parties. That prevents a Paul LePage situation.
I've said this last night, but I was REALLY heartened by the special House race results in Pennsylvania. It definitely gives me hope for breaking the gerrymandered GOP supermajority in the NC legislature this fall.
"-Angie Nixon saved us from wasting tens of millions more on a lost cause"
Let's just hope National Dems don't get too attached to David Jolly. Unless we start seeing independent, high quality polls showing that the race is competitive, any dollar sent to his campaign instead of downballot Dems is a wasted dollar
It’s wild how far Bill Walker has fallen - he was governor of Alaska less than a decade ago and now can’t even get 5% of the vote for governor anymore.
Sarah Palin was also quite the meteoric rise and fall, electorally at least. Ousting an incumbent governor then placing third in a congressional primary 16 years later.
To be fair to Palin she came in second in the congressional primary. And inadvertently set off a chain of events that led to an Alaska senate seat being a pickup opportunity. I can see the senate majority from my house!
It won’t get the top billing, but the Freedom Caucus losing the vast majority of the GOP primaries in the WY State Legislature is a great result. Showing the farthest right crazies that nobody likes them even in one of the most conservative states is a way to stop and turn back the rightward slide of the public over the past decade
Yes, it's important if the Republican Party is ever to be revived as even a slightly legitimate organization. I'd prefer for it to be disbanded as a subversive organization that injured national security, like the Nazi Party was officially disbanded in Germany after the war, but that won't happen.
Even as someone who is more Moderate, I'm glad that Nixon won. I love the triumph of good old-fashioned shoe leather over millions raised and a national profile and I don't think it particularly hurts our odds of an upset, which were always long. Hopefully this is a lesson to the party establishment that if they want to get their candidates over the finish line they need to connect with actual voters.
Also, this injects some life into what would have been an incredibly bland and virtually Republican-lite top of the ticket. Nixon will create some enthusiasm among younger and black voters that would otherwise not have been there.
A lesson they are slow in learning.
Too many Dems bash their base voters and run to big donors when it should be the other way around.
I think this helps turns out POC, especially Black folks, and progressives who would otherwise sit out the election due to the top of the ticket being a former Republican and a carpetbagger moderate. It can help Jolly if his election is close.
I know some folks were hoping Cory Mills would win the primary to make FL-7 a potential flip for us, but honestly I’m glad that a despicable person like that is going to be out of Congress entirely. While going against worse candidates is an advantage (see Ken Paxton), in my opinion having straight up evil deplorable people in elected positions of power spewing and normalizing hate speech is one of the biggest reasons we are in the position we are today in this country.
Most the folks on this site probably agree that GOP politicians mostly all have bad positions and hold some disgusting views, but the MAGA types that project xenophobia and transphobia all over social media and normalize that to millions of people are the worst culprits and need to be taken out of the public eye whenever possible in my view. Even if he is a better candidate for us to flip the district it’s not worth the risk of having Cory Mills in Congress for two more years
I'd say the same thing about Andy Ogles, because with the new district there was no way Molder was going to win.
I am genuinely surprised that Angie Nixon won the FL-Sen Democratic primary, and I'm even more surprised that Nixon carried Miami-Dade County, which is definitely not the first place anyone thinks of being receptive to voting for a democratic socialist. I like to say that a socialist couldn't win a socialist primary in Miami-Dade, yet a democratic socialist won Miami-Dade in a Democratic primary!
I genuinely don't think Nixon will come close to winning the Florida U.S. Senate race unless the bottom completely falls out for the GOP very late in the campaign, and I would have said the same thing if Vindman won the primary.
But credit Ms. Nixon, a union organizer, for knowing how to harness the enthusiasm of grass-roots Democrats and volunteers — and deftly using social media — to inform them about her candidacy.
A final weekend push in South Florida, home to many Democratic voters even as much of the region has trended toward Republicans, appears to have paid off: Ms. Nixon, who is from Jacksonville, defeated Mr. Vindman in Miami-Dade County, the state’s most populous, and in neighboring Broward County, where he lives.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/19/us/politics/florida-primaries-takeaways.html?emc=edit_ufn_20260819&nl=from-the-times&segment_id=225005
Cory Mills looks like Temu Joel McHale.
I'm thinking more Temu Matt Damon
Mills' douchiness mirrors the smug bros Joel McHale tends to play.
McHale himself is a great guy.
That's an insult to Matt Damon.
I'm thinking more Temu Shea Whigham in Death by Lightning.
That's slander against Joel McHale and, to a lesser extent, Temu
Peltola at 48% and +5% caught my eye, along with the win in the PA special +18 Trump district.
Has there been a correlation between primary/general spread/result in her previous races? Winning by +5 and then losing?
It's hard to say if there's a trend because this system was only used in 2022 and 2024, and in 2022 she only took 37% in the primary because nobody knew her yet, so that's not a useful data point. But in 2024 her vote share actually went down from the primary. She took 51% in the primary, but in the general election she took 46% in the first round and 49% in the final post-RCV round
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/18/us/politics/dan-sullivan-alaska-senate-primary.html
AK-Sen: Though maintaining he is not a Democratic plant, Dan J. Sullivan (not the incumbent, the fisherman from Petersburg) admits he voted for Democratic presidential nominees as well as Mary Peltola, who he's now running against in November. He also voted for the senator's independent opponent in 2020 as well as his Republican colleague Lisa Murkowski in 2022.
For the Miami Ballot item: not clear how the election in 2033 is for a 3-year term if the elections move to even-numbered years in 2034. Isn't that 1 year?
I assume they mean that the change takes effect in 2034, but the next election won't be until 2036.
Based on primary turnout between the parties (not a perfect barometer, I know) I’d say Moskowitz is the clear favorite in FL-25. It’s been a little under the radar, but hope the DCCC isn’t sleeping on Rodriguez in FL-27; Dems there nearly matched the vote total of Salazar and her opponent. And since she was uncontested I didn’t see any vote totals for Castor in FL-14, but the Republicans added up to 56k, which seems high (although I still think she has an outside shot).
Dem turnout in FL-25 was probably pumped up by Larkin's candidacy. Not clear if those voters will vote for Moskowitz in the fall. I'd continue to call it a tossup.
Context of what makes up State House PA-12: The anchor of the district is Cranberry Township, a town at the junction of I-76 (PA Turnpike) & I-79, came to prominence in the mid-90s when businesses started leaving Pittsburgh (25 miles SSE) & Allegheny County to avoid city & county taxes. Upper middle class soon followed in the late 90s/early 00s but is still slowly growing & becoming richer with high end apartments, condos & planned communities (and the Pittsburgh Penguins practice facility) being built throughout the 2010s. This district will be a tough hold in November but not impossible.
Glad to see Markey is ahead in the polls in Massachusetts. I donated to Vindman but can only guess he ran a terrible campaign. Although Nixon has a tough road ahead but I wouldn't give up on her yet- she must be a great campaigner. I read where Vindman and his wife made attacks against Nixon- terrible strategy, Dems in primaries don't like attacks on fellow Democrats. His support of Israel must have really hurt in Miami, it surely never helped with Jewish voters, even when he was Jewish. Glad to see Dems in Penn's land win the special election. Also glad to see Miami voters combine the municipal elections with the even year elections- it will save millions of tax dollars and boost voter turnout, and result in more women and MORE MINORITIES being elected to local offices. Hopefully all blue states and blue local governments will follow suit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Indiana's_3rd_congressional_district_special_election
FL-7: Interesting piece of trivia - this is not the first time Ryan Elijah, who convincingly defeated Rep. Cory Mills in last night's Republican primary, has run for Congress.
When Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) resigned from Indiana's 3rd in 2010, Elijah ran and placed 4th behind Fort Wayne councilor Liz Brown (now a state senator), state Rep. Randy Borror, and state Sen. Marlin Stutzman, who has continued to hold the seat in different time periods to this day. Elijah got 11%.
Elijah also claims he has lived in Florida for 20 years. 2010, believe it or not, was not 20 years ago.
Nothing to really complain about from the results. Some observations:
-Tom Begich needs to drop out so we can have just the top Dem, JTK, as the sole Dem against 3 Republicans who will probably exhaust a lot of votes.
-Peltola is doing amazing. It’s great that Dan J. Sullivan landed third.
-PA is going to be an absolute bloodbath, as will probably many places in the country
-Angie Nixon saved us from wasting tens of millions more on a lost cause
Why would Begich drop out? He’s only 1.7 points out of first place, that’s a small enough gap that he’s still competitive for the win in November. Someone in that strong of a position dropping out to slightly increase our overall odds doesn’t strike me as something any candidate would do.
For the good of the party to have only one Dem in the race. I long said whichever Dem came in first should have the field to themselves so that votes aren’t exhausted in RCV. Dahlstrom did that after just narrowly getting beaten out by Nick Begich in 2024.
I don’t think Democratic candidates should drop out just to make it easier for us to game the system. I like ranked choice voting based on its own merits - because it allows for multiple talented candidates to compete without forcing everyone to drop out to just consolidate around one candidate that’s polling the best. If the only reason for Alaska to have ranked choice voting is so that more people waste their votes, that’s antidemocratic and defeats the entire point of the system.
Well like it or not, RCV has been gamed by both the GOP and even our party since its 2022 implementation. Votes will inevitably be exhausted if there’s no singular candidate from the party. It’s folly to assume voters will rank their second-choice Dem when this basically acting as an extension of the jungle primary. Some might be bitter, and some might just not know to rank. Either way, we have to look at the reality of what Alaska’s RCV system incentivizes. It incentivizes consolidation. We are not the favorites here if the field consists of two Dems and two Republicans.
I don’t really care - I’d rather have a slightly worse chance of winning the Alaska governor’s race than subvert the will of the voters there. If the only purpose of ranked choice voting is to allow for cheating, Alaska shouldn’t have it, and as someone who really would prefer to have ranked choice voting nationwide, I don’t think that discrediting it by turning it into something that’s just a partisan trick is a good way to show that it works.
Alaska’s RCV system is highly flawed in allowing the top 4 to drop out in the first place. It incentivizes gaming and consolidation. RCV works better when there’s just one nominee of each of the major parties running against indies and third parties. That prevents a Paul LePage situation.
I've said this last night, but I was REALLY heartened by the special House race results in Pennsylvania. It definitely gives me hope for breaking the gerrymandered GOP supermajority in the NC legislature this fall.
"-Angie Nixon saved us from wasting tens of millions more on a lost cause"
Let's just hope National Dems don't get too attached to David Jolly. Unless we start seeing independent, high quality polls showing that the race is competitive, any dollar sent to his campaign instead of downballot Dems is a wasted dollar
It’s wild how far Bill Walker has fallen - he was governor of Alaska less than a decade ago and now can’t even get 5% of the vote for governor anymore.
Sarah Palin was also quite the meteoric rise and fall, electorally at least. Ousting an incumbent governor then placing third in a congressional primary 16 years later.
To be fair to Palin she came in second in the congressional primary. And inadvertently set off a chain of events that led to an Alaska senate seat being a pickup opportunity. I can see the senate majority from my house!
MI Sen Susquehanna:
El Sayed 46-39.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/docs/2026/Toplines-Michigan-Statewide-August2026.pdf
A- pollster according to the silver bulletin. Not bad at all
To answer my own question, Peltola got 50.9% in the 2024 primary, and lost in November.
I do think this year is different. And low info and late deciders much more likely to break against the GOP.
Under 11 weeks until E-day.