Campaigns

Welcome to At the Races! Each week we bring you news and analysis from the CQ Roll Call campaign team. Know someone who’d like to get this newsletter? They can subscribe here. By Daniela Altimari and Mary Ellen McIntire  Democrats are sounding the alarm on mystery super PACs with ties to Republicans that are meddling in Democratic primaries. […]

South Dakota Rep. Dusty Johnson was the early favorite in the state’s gubernatorial race, but in the run-up to Tuesday’s primary, a poll found his edge eroding. The four-term Republican wound up finishing third, behind Gov. Larry Rhoden, who filled the vacancy left by former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and businessman Toby Doeden, a […]

ANALYSIS —After Donald Trump’s election in 2016, there was a narrative that the typical rules about elections were extinct. But Texas Sen. John Cornyn’s recent fate has proved that many of the political laws of gravity still apply.  Last fall, national Republicans were excited that Cornyn had closed the initial gap between himself and state […]

Democrat Rebecca Bennett will face New Jersey Rep. Thomas H. Kean Jr. this fall in a closely watched battleground race that could help determine which party wins control of the House.  Bennett won the Democratic primary for the 7th District on Tuesday, securing 47.8 percent of the vote when The Associated Press called the race […]

Iowa state Rep. Josh Turek, a two-time Paralympic gold medalist who bills himself as a “commonsense prairie populist,” won the Democratic nomination for the state’s open Senate seat Tuesday. Turek beat state Sen. Zach Wahls in a contest that symbolized some of the party’s ideological divisions. Wahls ran as an anti-establishment outsider who rejected Senate […]

The Supreme Court allowed Alabama to move forward with its new congressional map in a decision issued Tuesday evening, pausing a lower-court ruling that the map was likely unconstitutional. The unsigned order from the court’s conservative majority allowed the state to use its preferred map, one first adopted in 2023 and twice blocked by a […]

Democrats say the path to winning the House majority wends through the backroads and farmlands of rural America. To that end, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee launched its first rural voter engagement program last year. And on Monday, it kicked off its “On the Dirt Road Again” summit in western North Carolina, where farmer Jamie […]

Welcome to a special edition of At the Races! Throughout the 2026 primary season, watch for these updates from the CQ Roll Call campaign team on what you need to know for Election Day. Know someone who’d like to get this newsletter? They can subscribe here. Tuesday brings the busiest primary day of the midterm election […]

For the first time in four decades, California Rep. Nancy Pelosi won’t be on the ballot in November, but she’s lending her political clout and prodigious fundraising skills to dozens of Democrats who will. Pelosi, who concludes her barrier-breaking tenure in the House early next year, has offered up a string of endorsements to incumbents […]

Louisiana lawmakers have approved a congressional map that would give Republicans another pickup opportunity, sending it to Gov. Jeff Landry for final approval. The Louisiana state Senate approved the new lines on Friday, a day after the state House did so. The newly drawn map would favor Republicans in five out of six House districts, […]