Dem
47
GOP
53
Today, voters in California, Iowa, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota will head to the polls to vote in those states' primaries. Yesterday, we previewed the races for governor, U.S. Senate and Mayor of Los Angeles. Today, we'll take a look at the many House races that are of interest:
CA-03: Cook has not released PVIs for the new map adopted after California passed Proposition 50, but this seat definitely went from "leans Republican" to "safe Democratic." In the game of musical chairs that resulted, Rep. Kevin Kiley (I, formerly R) fled the district, while Rep. Ami Bera (D) relocated to it. Bera faces two serious challengers—Army veteran Chris Bennett and Nevada County Supervisor Heidi Hall—who are both running to the Representative's left.
CA-04: Another safe blue district; this one is a potential "throw the bums out" situation. Rep. Mike Thompson (D) is seeking a 15th term, and will face one of the most serious challengers of his career in the person of the younger, leftier and better-funded former venture capitalist Eric Jones.
CA-06: This is the district that Bera left and Kiley relocated to. Keeping in mind that California has a top-two system, the biggest question is whether the now "independent" Kiley will survive to the runoff, and will retain some hope of continuing his career. Note that he still caucuses with the Republicans, so it's not clear how many Democrats will be persuaded he's a viable option for them in this, yet another safe Democratic district.
CA-07: Rep. Doris Matsui (D) is 81, is seeking an 11th term, and is known for bringing home the pork. Mai Vang is 40, and is running to Matsui's left on a platform of "we need new ideas." They will likely both advance, but it will be interesting to see how much of the vote each candidate claims.
CA-11: This is the very blue district that Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is retiring from. The primary has become a standoff between three (or maybe four) lefty contenders, only two of whom will be left standing by this time tomorrow: state Sen. Scott Wiener (D), wealthy entrepreneur Saikat Chakrabarti (D), San Francisco Supervisor Connie Chan (D) and (maybe) moderate former Republican Marie Hurabiell (D). Weiner has the best polling, Chakrabarti has the most money and Chan has Pelosi's endorsement.
We wrote a pretty detailed analysis of this race, using the insight we have, which is that we know generally how American politics works. You might want to click back and do a quick review, for comparison's sake, to this analysis, which is written from the vantage point of someone who actually knows the district. It's from reader L.O.-R. in San Francisco, CA:
As someone who used to be in the thick of San Francisco politics and still follows things pretty closely, but no longer as an insider, I wanted to add just a little bit more to your description of the CA-11 congressional race to replace Speaker Emerita Pelosi.
First, San Francisco has two "parties": the progressive Democrats and the moderate Democrats. The issues separating the two are not at all the same as those separating liberals/progressives and conservatives nationally. Everyone is pretty much in the same ideological place around civil rights, defending democracy, and immigration. Differences are around criminal justice, working with business (or not), and tax policy. The issue screwing up a nice separation between the two camps is housing policy, which is the hottest topic in town: There is no agreement among progressives or among moderates around making it easier to build housing vs. protecting current neighborhood character.
In local parlance, Scott Wiener is firmly ensconced in the moderate camp—he is not a progressive. Connie Chan is firmly progressive. Saikat Chakrabarti has positioned himself to the left of the progressives and, if he gets into the runoff (even if he doesn't win the seat), he will be positioned as the new leader of the progressives. That said, he doesn't really differ much from Chan ideologically.
Weiner won his state Senate seat by consolidating the moderate vote (at a time when progressives were in the ascendancy) and the adding some progressives, especially gay progressives (there was some identity politics at play and also a lot of excellent retail politics, which he is great at). Holding that coalition will be harder for him to accomplish in a runoff because he has led pro-housing efforts in Sacramento and many moderates will hold that against him—and the progressive base will not cross the aisle to support him. Chan, on the other hand, has signaled modest support for the anti-housing crowd (and opposed the new Sunset Dunes park in the Sunset District, which is a very hot issue for many moderates in that neighborhood) and could peel some of Wiener's base from him on that basis.
Also, identity politics has waned dramatically in San Francisco in the past couple of decades (my comments about Wiener gaining progressive gay votes notwithstanding... that was a decade ago). Wiener earned a huge lead over Chan among Chinese voters in the best poll released showing that breakdown, probably because the majority of Chinese voters are in the moderate camp and also because of his outstanding retail politics, including in the Chinese community. Chan has surely increased her share of the Chinese vote over the past several weeks, but I'd expect the two of them to split the Chinese vote in the end.
All this leads to the question of: Why did Pelosi endorse? Her endorsement is meaningful, but won't sway too many voters; San Franciscans routinely ignore popular endorsers. (I live in Supervisorial District 5 and in the last election we narrowly voted out the Chakrabarti-style progressive incumbent, who enjoyed Pelosi's surprise endorsement in favor of a moderate.) But Chakrabarti and Chan were running neck-to-neck, and tipping even a few votes to Chan would likely make the difference in the race to be #2. I fully believe Pelosi endorsed because she wanted to end any chance for Chakrabarti to move forward and become the progressive standard-bearer, due to bad blood he engendered in D.C. when he was working on the staff of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). Pelosi's sending Chakrabarti a big raspberry!
In sum: Wiener will lose a portion of his moderate base over housing issues, making an almost-certain election uncertain (but still likely). Chan has to earn every Chinese vote she gets because identity politics is dissipating here and Wiener has built a strong base of support in the community. Pelosi chose to endorse to exact revenge on someone nobody in D.C. liked.Thanks, L.O.-R.!
CA-22: This is one of the Golden State districts that will actually be competitive; gerrymandering does have its limits, after all. The incumbent is David Valadao (R), who is a moderate, and is the last House Republican still standing who voted to impeach Donald Trump. He'll likely advance to the general, where he will either face off against state Assemblywoman Jasmeet Bains (D), who is a moderate, or Visalia School Board member Randy Villegas (D), who is a progressive.
CA-48: This is another competitive district, one that moved from "Solid Republican" to "Leans Democratic." Rep. Darrell Issa (R) decided he didn't like his chances, and announced his retirement. San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond (R), who had been running in CA-49, promptly jumped over to this district, and will probably advance. He will face off against San Diego Councilmember Marni von Wilpert (D) or former Obama administration official Ammar Campa-Najjar (D), with Campa-Najjar the leftier of the two.
IA-02: And now, let us yield the microphone to reader M.D.H. in Coralville, IA:
I'm in Iowa, where the 2026 election looks far more interesting than I would have expected a year ago.
You probably know how badly farmers here are being hammered by Donald Trump's blunders. They can't find enough workers due to his immigration policies, they are losing sales to his trade war, and now they face huge price increases for fertilizer and diesel fuel due to the Iran War. Most Iowa farmers will probably still vote GOP in November IF they show up, but some might stay home.
But do you know that many Iowans are being asked not to water their lawns right now because their water utilities have limited nitrate-filtering capacity and are struggling to keep nitrates below the legal limit? And that the science shows the legal limit should be even lower because nitrates in water are likely the main reason Iowa's cancer rates exceed the U.S. national average?
I have seen almost nothing about Iowa's nitrate problem in the national media, but it could be THE big sleeper issue for 2026 here. The response of Gov. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) to calls for tougher rules about nitrate runoff from farms has basically been, "Ask the farmers nicely to clean up their act." MAGA/MAHA Moms especially are likely to feel torn between "DEMS are evil Socialists" and "protect my kids."
The nitrate issue, on top of the economic mess, might torpedo the GOP here. The Economist's model estimates Trump's net approval in Iowa is currently negative 20 points, only slightly better than their current national estimate of negative 24 points. However, their model uses standard demographic factors to generate state-level estimates from national polling, so it probably doesn't capture the Iowa Nitrate Effect.
A poll dropped last week putting farmer Zach Lahn (R) ahead of Rep. Randy Feenstra (R), who has been seen as the GOP frontrunner in the race for Governor. I'm not sure whether I believe this poll: I pay fairly close attention to Iowa politics, and had you asked me "who is Zach Lahn?" before last week, I would not have known the answer. But I think either Lahn or Feenstra would have a tough race against Rob Sand, whose anti-corruption message, combined with the national and local trends mentioned above, should be pretty powerful. Sand has been our only statewide elected Democrat for a while, and he has used his role as Auditor to call out serious corruption.
Pundits and the various betting sites still think the GOP has better-than-even odds of holding the U.S. Senate seat, despite Sen. Joni Ernst (R) having melted down; my gut feeling is either state Rep. Josh Turek (D) or state Sen. Zach Wahls (D) would have a pretty good chance against either former state Sen. Jim Carlin (R) or Rep. Ashley Hinson (R), but since Ann Selzer quit polling Iowan voters after blowing it in 2024, we mostly have relatively unknown pollsters operating here now.
Three of the four Republican House incumbents are in serious danger, including Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R), who represents my district and just barely won last time around.
If you want to learn more about local politics here in Iowa, see here and here.Thanks, M.D.H.!
There is no question that, as M.D.H. points out, three of Iowa's four House districts will be in play in November: the R+4 IA-01, represented by Miller-Meeks, the R+4 IA-02, represented by Hinson, and the R+2 IA-03, represented by Rep. Zach Nunn (R). However, the IA-01 race has attracted only one serious Republican (Miller-Meeks) and one serious Democrat (former state Rep. Christina Bohannan), so we're not going to learn anything today. And the IA-03 race has only attracted one Republican of any sort (Nunn) and one Democrat of any sort (state Sen. Sarah Trone Garriott), so we're not going to learn anything there today, either.
That leaves IA-02, which is open due to Hinson running for the U.S. Senate. On the Republican side, it's state Sen. Charlie McClintock against former state Rep. Joe Mitchell. Both are outspokenly MAGA, but Mitchell is the one who has Trump's endorsement, so he's the heavy favorite to advance. On the Democratic side, there are four candidates, two of them serious: state Rep. Lindsay James and nonprofit founder Clint Twedt-Ball. James is more moderate, is the establishment candidate, and is favored to advance. She also has the endorsement of Capt. Janeway from Star Trek: Voyager, which should really resolve any doubts about her candidacy. Weird though, because it's actually Capt. Kirk who is from Iowa. Janeway is a Hoosier, by virtue of having been born in Bloomington on May 20, 2336.
MT-01: We got a little help with this one from reader J.S.C. in Missoula, MT. This R+5 district is open due to the retirement of Rep. Ryan Zinke (R). The Republican side of the contest has three serious candidates, all of them Trumpy: veteran and radio host Aaron Flint, Secretary of State of Montana Christi Jacobsen and former state Sen. and perennial candidate Albert Olszewski. Flint has Trump's endorsement, and so will likely be the one who advances. Flint and Zinke engaged in a conspiracy similar to what happened in the Senate race, with Zinke dropping out and Flint filing just before the deadline, so that could be a problem in the general.
On the Democratic side, there are four contenders. Author and businessman Ryan Busse has name recognition by virtue of having run for governor in 2024, and is the establishment candidate. Smokejumper Sam Forstag is something of a Graham Platner clone, a young, blue-collar guy running as a left-wing populist. Educator Russell Cleveland is running on a platform of healthcare reform and good governance. Rancher Matt Rains is a West Point graduate and Army veteran who is running as a Blue Dog, and who says he's the only "real" Montanan in the race because his family has been in the state since the Civil War. There's been one poll of the race, and it was released at the start of April, so take it with a few grains of salt, but it says Busse will advance easily.
NJ-02: This R+5 district is going to be a top Democratic target. That said, the blue team has been trying to send Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R) into retirement for several cycles now, and hasn't succeeded thus far. There are two serious candidates on the Democratic side; Mayor Zack Mullock (Cape May) is the only one with experience in elective office and is hewing toward the center; former USAID official Bayly Winder is more lefty and is running on a "Donald Trump is corrupt and I oughta know" platform.
NJ-03: At D+5, this is technically a swing district. However, in a likely blue-wave year, with incumbent Rep. Herb Conaway (D) running, and with the three not-too-serious Republicans—contractor and perennial candidate Justin Barbera, salesman and perennial candidate Jason Cullen, and former Marine Michael McGuire—it's clearly "Safe Democratic."
NJ-05: Another swing district, at D+2. Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D) was ready to jump ship for the governorship, but when he lost that contest, he filed for reelection. He is unchallenged, and will face corporate consultant Sean Kirrane (R), who is also unchallenged.
NJ-06: At D+5. technically swingy. However, Rep. Frank Pallone (D) will crush two unknowns today, and then will face off against civil servant Hillary Herzig (R) in November, who he will also crush.
NJ-07: This EVEN district might be the Democrats' #1 target in the whole country. That is not only because of its PVI, but because incumbent Rep. Thomas Kean Jr. (R) has done an even better job of vanishing into thin air than D.B. Cooper. For that matter... has anyone ever actually seen Kean and Cooper in the same room? Hmmmm... To the (likely) regret of the GOP, nobody filed to run against Kean, so they're stuck with him in the general. If he drops out, a replacement will be chosen by the state's GOP county committee leaders.
As to the Democrat who will win the right to challenge Kean, we'll let J.N. in Summit, NJ, lay it out:
Rebecca Bennett, a former Navy helicopter pilot, health care consultant, and mother of young children is the favorite, having raised the most money by a fair margin. She is leading by double digits in polls. One of the candidates, Dr. Tina Shah, an ICU doctor, has decided to torch her reputation by going all-in on misleading and false attacks on Bennett. A Republican super PAC or two have gone all-in on false attacks on Bennett as well. If the Republicans are ratfu**ing in this way then it is pretty clear they don't want to see Bennett in the general election.
There are two other candidates in the race, Michael Roth, the former interim Small Business Administration head in the Biden administration (for a short period) and CEO of a small company, and Brian Varela, a businessman. I would be surprised if Bennett loses, but in the recent NJ-11 special election primary, a negative campaign by AIPAC managed to derail Tom Malinowski, former NJ-7 congressman, who was narrowly beaten by now-Rep. Analilia Mejia. She is much less Israel-friendly than Malinowski would have been—too bad for AIPAC.
Thanks, J.N.!
NJ-09: At D+2, technically swingy, so we feel duty-bound to mention it. But Rep. Nellie Pou (R) is running for reelection, and has drawn weak competition—her opponent will be Clifton City Councilor Rosie Pino or attorney Tiffany Burress. The latter is trying to get mileage out of the fact that she's married to former New York Giant and New York Jet Plaxico Burress; a player whose main claim to fame is that he once accidentally shot himself in a nightclub.
NJ-11: This D+5 district is the one referred to by J.N.; it was left open when Gov. Mike Sherrill (D) vacated it, with Analilia Mejia winning the special election to finish off the term. Now, Mejia is running for a term in her own right, and is facing Chatham Borough councilmember Justin Strickland, engineer Joseph Lewis, and former Morristown mayor and perennial candidate Donald Cresitello. Mejia has been in office for about 6 weeks; hard to imagine that's enough time for buyer's remorse to take hold, but we suppose you never know. There's only one Republican running, Randolph Township Council member Joe Hathaway, who was already defeated by Mejia in the special election.
NJ-12: This one is D+13, and is not going to be competitive in November. However, Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (R) announced her retirement, and Democrats came out of the woodwork for the chance to replace her. We're going to yield the stage one last time, to S.D. in Somerset, NJ:
I suppose you could call this Hillary vs. Bernie, Part 322, but in this case both sides are split. The district extends across four counties, and the Democratic organizations (i.e., the establishment) in each county are supporting their local "favored sons/daughters." On the progressive side, you have the Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and AOC-endorsed Adam Hamawy (the Army surgeon who saved Sen. Duckworth's life), and Sue Altman, who narrowly lost to representative-in-hiding Tom Kean Jr. in a neighboring district the last time around.
Electoral-Vote.com readers may be interested that Princeton Gerrymandering Project founder Sam Wang is also in the race, along with a handful of lesser-known candidates. According to the most recent poll (from nearly a month ago), Hamawy has the edge, although he sponsored the poll himself. We also have a shadowy PAC in the mix, which has been flooding my mailbox with anti-Altman mailers. This is a very blue district, so the winner is all-but-certain to win in November. All in all, this might be the district most in need of ranked-choice voting this cycle.Thanks, S.D.!
New Mexico: If you squint really hard, then all three New Mexico House districts could potentially be in play—the D+7 NM-01, the EVEN NM-02, and the D+3 NM-03. However, there won't be anything of interest today, since there is exactly one contender on each side of each contest (to wit, Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D, vs. pharmacist Didi Okpareke, R, in NM-01; Rep. Gabe Vasquez, D, vs. retired policeman and perennial candidate Greg Cunningham, R, in NM-02; and Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D, vs. state Rep. Martin Zamora, R, in NM-03).
And, let's be honest. With three Democratic incumbents running in three non-red districts in a likely wave year, there probably won't be anything of interest in November, either.
SD-AL: And finally, bringing up the rear is South Dakota's at-large district, which is open due to Rep. Dusty Johnson (R) deciding to run for governor. It's another case of MAGA Republicans fighting tooth-and-nail for Trump's endorsement; small business owner James Bialota Jr. got it, state AG Marty Jackley did not. Jackley has a 5-to-1 cash advantage, so... that might be survivable. Whichever Republican advances will crush former USDA official Nikki Gronli (D) in the general, as the district is R+15.
And there you have it. Let the games begin! (Z)