2025-2026 election thread for Senate, House, State and cities

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Poll Shows Mills Attack Ad Left Platner With 2-to-1 Lead in Maine Senate Primary Race
By Julia Conley
March 26, 2026

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) Days after Maine Gov. Janet Mills released her first attack ad against her rival in the Democratic Senate primary, Graham Platner, focusing on comments he made about sexual assault victims online 13 years ago, Emerson College Polling conducted the latest survey of likely primary voters regarding their support for the two candidates.

Between March 21-23, the polling group surveyed 1,075 Maine Democrats and found that 55% expressed support for Platner, while just 28% supported Mills—giving the first-time political candidate, oyster farmer, and combat veteran nearly a 2-to-1 advantage.

When asked about a hypothetical general election matchup with Republican Sen. Susan Collins, respondents gave both Democratic candidates an edge over her, but Platner had a more comfortable lead.

Forty-eight percent supported him over Collins, while 41% backed Collins and 12% said they were undecided or supported another candidate. Mills had the backing of 46% of voters compared to Collins’ 43%, and 11% were undecided

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/plat ... lls-poll

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Here is some background on the immediate post-election realization that Brian Nathan had won and on how that win was made possible:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... 55d2&ei=29

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Lauren Boebert Faces New Democratic Challenger after Trisha Calvarese Abandons Re-election Fight
By Rey Harris
April 2 , 2026

Introduction:

(Tag24News) Highlands Ranch, Colorado – MAGA Congresswoman Lauren Boebert is facing a new challenger in her re-election bid after Democrat Trisha Calvarese dropped out of the race.

On Tuesday, Calvarese shared an X post in which she praised her campaign for never "compromising fundamental values," but apologized for the fact that it "fell short."

This was the second time Calvarese was running against Boebert, who defeated her by 12 points in 2024.

The decision to withdraw from this race came as Eileen Laubacher – Calvarese's challenger in the 4th District's Democratic primary – managed to raise more money than any candidate in all congressional races across the state.

In her post, Calvarese congratulated Laubacher, who will likely win the primary in June and go on to face Boebert in November.

Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politic ... 71&ei=108

caltrek’s comment: I enjoy following Boebert’s political career. She can be a staunch defender of Trump one day, and fierce critic the next. She is also batshit crazy.

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GOP in Disarray as Senate Seat Pick-up Appears to Slip Away
By Tom Boggioni
April 2, 2026

Introduction:

(Raw Story) The Republican Party's dysfunction in Georgia is turning what should have been a winnable Senate seat into a likely Democratic victory. The culprit: Donald Trump and Gov. Brian Kemp can't get along, leaving the GOP field fractured and Sen. Jon Ossoff (D) sitting pretty.

According to Politico, Republicans expected to flip this Senate seat and strengthen their grip on the chamber. Instead, they're watching Ossoff cruise toward re-election with $24 million in the bank, a massive name-ID advantage, and zero Democratic competition in his primary.

Meanwhile, the GOP is descending into chaos. The May 19 primary will almost certainly trigger an expensive, brutal mid-June runoff as Republicans batter each other over the nomination.

Rep. Mike Collins (R-GA), a Trump ally, leads in polling. Rep. Buddy Carter and Kemp-endorsed former football coach Derek Dooley are fighting for second. But a large share of voters remain undecided, revealing how chaotic the race truly is.

"If Ossoff could write a playbook for how he wants this primary to go, this is exactly it," said one GOP operative. "Georgia is like a 'red-headed stepchild' not getting any attention from Washington."

Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politic ... 244&ei=51

caltrek’s comment: That the Republican party faces a contentious primary is bad for their general election chances is a conventional way of looking at the situation. Personally, I think such high drama can help energize a party, thus increasing their chances in the general election.

A couple of things helping Ossoff are his fundraising success and a general trend in which Democrats are overperforming in comparison to past elections.

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Taylor, liberals take 5-2 SCOWIS majority with fourth straight state Supreme Court win

Source: CBS 58 Madison, Wi

In a state known for razon-thin elections, liberals once again won a Wisconsin Supreme Court election by a resounding margin. Chris Taylor's victory Tuesday marked the fourth consecutive state Supreme Court victory for a liberal-backed candidate.

Decision Desk HQ called the race for Taylor at 8:30 p.m.

Taylor's win over the conservative-backed Maria Lazar gave liberals a 5-2 majority on Wisconsin's high court. The results also ensure liberals will have a state Supreme Court majority until at least 2030.

While Wisconsin's judicial races are nonpartisan on paper, they are far from that in reality.

Read more: https://www.cbs58.com/news/taylor-liber ... -court-win

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Trump-endorsed Republican Clay Fuller wins Marjorie Taylor Greene’s former House seat in Georgia

https://apnews.com/article/georgia-cong ... 92280967b8

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The Federal Database That Could Upend the Midterm Elections
By Judd Legum and Rebecca Crosby
April 9, 2026

Introduction:

(Mother Jones) President Donald Trump and the election conspiracy theorists he surrounds himself with are determined to exclude people from voting in the 2026 election based on one database: the Department of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) system.

Why?

SAVE is an incomplete and flawed database that has been shown to produce a massive number of false positives, incorrectly identifying American citizens as aliens. Thus, using SAVE to exclude voters buttresses the lie that a significant number of undocumented immigrants vote in elections.

Trump’s latest effort came last week when he signed an executive order directing DHS to use SAVE and other databases to create, for each state, “a list of individuals confirmed to be United States citizens who will be above the age of 18 at the time of an upcoming Federal election and who maintain a residence in the subject State.” Trump’s executive order then directs the Department of Justice (DOJ) to prosecute “individuals and public or private entities engaged in, or aiding and abetting, the printing, production, shipment, or distribution of ballots” to anyone not on the list.

The order, in effect, confirms that the administration aims to exclude purportedly ineligible voters by creating a national voter registration list. It is an effort to coerce states to use the SAVE database to purge voters or risk criminal charges. But SAVE, as its full name suggests, was designed to determine eligibility for government benefits—not citizenship. And, crucially, as NPR noted, “Not all of the data is necessarily up to date.”

Read more here: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2 ... lections/

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How Journalists Can Cover the Midterms to Help Protect Their Legitimacy
By Arnold Isaacs
April 10, 2026

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) A few weeks before the 2020 presidential election, I wrote “An Open Letter to My Old Tribe,” urging “every reporter who is covering this election at any level” to focus on a crucial question—whether the public would trust the election procedure and the losing candidate would accept the result as legitimate. “It does not seem an exaggeration,” I wrote then, “to say that the future of American democracy, perhaps its very survival, depends on the answer.”

More than five years later, with less than seven months to go before the midterm elections, that question is before us again, but in far starker terms than I could have imagined in 2020. So, here’s an updated letter to the media tribe I once belonged to, with suggestions broadly similar to those I made five years ago, but with a far sharper sense of urgency, even fear.

Here’s my first suggestion: Reporters in 2026 need to pay more attention to and offer more forceful coverage of President Donald Trump’s continuing insistence that Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was fraudulent and that year’s election illegitimate. (As recently as March 15, he tweeted this completely false allegation: “With time, it [the 2020 election] has been conclusively proven to be stolen.”)

While Trump keeps repeating that long-discredited claim, journalists should not treat his falsehoods as “old news” that no longer requires detailed coverage anymore. They should instead consider it an important and newsworthy story right now. Instead of briefly repeating a shorthand conclusion (“false” or “without evidence”) after a quote from the president, they should take a few more lines of type or minutes of air time to remind readers or listeners of the facts that show irrefutably why they should never believe his words. After all, Trump’s “rigged election” claims haven’t been validated in a single one of 64 court cases—that’s right, 64!—challenging the election results, or in any official investigation or recount.

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/j ... -midterms

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The Liberty Pear endorsements:

https://thelibertypear.com/endorsements-series/

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Trump's Anti-incumbent Endorsement in Louisiana Falls Flat, Catching White House by Surprise
By Tom Boggioni
April 10, 2026

Introduction:

(Raw Story) Donald Trump’s attempt to rid himself of Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) for being a thorn in his side is not going according to plan, Politico is reporting.

Trump's endorsement has failed to deliver the knockout punch he expected after he endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA). "The Trump endorsement has not had a close-out move. Cassidy was ready for her," said GOP state Rep. Mike Bayham. "They defined her before she introduced herself."

Letlow is underwater on every metric. She's been massively outspent by Cassidy on the airwaves, has low name ID compared to her opponents, and faces State Treasurer John Fleming — another candidate with MAGA appeal and his own political network. Running her first statewide campaign under a compressed timeline, she's unable to capitalize on Trump's endorsement or rally the base behind her.

Mark Harris, a Cassidy aide, highlighted the strategic failure: "We're in the middle of a dogfight. Everyone's expectation is that she would shoot to a large lead and that we'd all be running from behind. But frankly I think they just weren't ready for this race."

Letlow's campaign strategy has been catastrophically flawed. Her ads have almost exclusively focused on her Trump endorsement rather than attacking Cassidy or defining herself to voters. Meanwhile, Cassidy has gone hard after her on the airwaves.

Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us?ocid=BingHp0 ... 9fba98b2d

caltrek’s comment: The implications of this are huge. If Republican incumbents come to understand that they can win in primaries despite Trump endorsement of opponents, and that identifying too closely with Trump can cost them their seats in the general election, they are much more likely to act in an independent manner. A razor thin Republican control in both the House and the Senate means that even a handful of defections on any number of issues can hand victories to the Democrats.

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'Likely Republican' Doesn't Mean a Safe Seat for Miami Congresswoman
By Mary Anna Mancuso
April 10, 2026

Introduction:

(Miami Herald) When I was a political consultant, the best advice I would give any candidate was to run like you’re 10 points behind.

I’m thinking about that because this week, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report changed U.S. Rep. Maria Salazar’s congressional district in Miami-Dade County from “solid Republican” to “likely Republican.”

That’s a modest shift. Salazar remains the clear favorite in District 27, which includes downtown Miami, Coral Gables and Pinecrest. But incumbents who don’t take modest shifts seriously end up writing concession speeches.

Salazar has reason to feel good about her chances of reelection this November. In 2022, she beat Democratic state Sen. Annette Taddeo by 15 points. And in 2024, Salazar won by 20 points over former Miami-Dade School Board member Lucia Baez-Geller, a Democrat, in a district President Donald Trump carried by only 15 points.

Comfortable margins of victory like that usually buy breathing room, but not in today’s political climate.

Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politic ... 41&ei=205

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Swalwell’s Gubernatorial Campaign Implodes Amid Bombshell Sexual Assault Allegation
By Brett Wilkins
April 11, 2026

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) Calls for Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell to drop out of the California gubernatorial race mounted Saturday as prominent supporters rescinded their endorsements and staffers fled his imploding campaign after more—and more serious—sexual misconduct allegations against him emerged.

Multiple women had already accused Swalwell, 45, of unwanted touching and kissing, and sending them unsolicited explicit images and messages. On Friday, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that a woman who had worked for the Swalwell said he sexually assault her twice while she was too intoxicated to consent. The woman’s identity was concealed.

Hours later, CNN aired a report in which a former Swalwell staffer—who is apparently the same woman interviewed by the Chronicle—said the East Bay and Central Valley congressman raped her while she was drunk, leaving her bruised and bleeding. CNN also interviewed three other women who alleged various types of sexual misconduct they said was committed by Swalwell.

Swalwell categorically denied the claims, saying that “these allegations are false and come on the eve of an election against the frontrunner for governor.”

“For nearly 20 years, I have served the public—as a prosecutor and a congressman—and have always protected women,” he added. “I will defend myself with the facts and where necessary bring legal action. My focus in the coming days is to be with my wife and children and defend our decades of service against these lies.”

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/news/swal ... -assault