On March 3, voters went to the polls for the first primary elections of the 2026 midterm election cycle.
The elections in Texas and North Carolina had the highest stakes for the control of Congress in 2027.
Though most of the results aligned with expectations ahead of the election, the night saw at least one major electoral surprise.
Here are the things to know about the primaries.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton will advance to a runoff in the Texas Republican Senate primary race after neither candidate managed to achieve 50 percent of the vote.
The runoff will be held on May 26.
A third hopeful, Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas), claimed 12.9 percent, knocking him out of contention.
At his election night party in Dallas, Paxton compared himself to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). Cruz finished second in the 2012 Republican Senate primary before winning the runoff against Texas Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst.
“The same thing is going to happen here,” he predicted.
Republican spending was dominated by almost $70 million in support of Cornyn, a former member of Senate leadership who has been in the chamber for over two decades.
Texas State Rep. James Talarico has defeated Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) in a nationally-watched contest for the Democratic Senate nomination.
Talarico’s victory marks the culmination of an expensive and contentious race that has pitted different factions of the Democratic Party against each other.
Though the race has been called, Crockett has indicated that she plans to file a lawsuit challenging the results due to confusion among some voters in Dallas County about where they were supposed to vote.
Speaking to her supporters Tuesday night, Crockett said that because of that confusion, “people have been disenfranchised.”
Crockett said the outcome of the race wouldn’t be known until Dallas County’s votes are counted. She left her watch party before 10 p.m., telling supporters she would not speak again that night.
Ahead of midterms that could prove challenging to Republicans, many Democrats in the Lone Star State dream of sending one of their own to the Senate for the first time in decades.
In polling, some head-to-head matchups have suggested Talarico could be competitive against.
In perhaps the biggest surprise of the night, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) was defeated in his primary bid for the GOP nomination for Texas’s 2nd Congressional District, losing to a challenger from the right.
Toth, a member of the Texas House of Representatives, has run to the right of Crenshaw, describing the lawmaker as a “neocon”—a term colloquially understood to describe an individual favoring U.S. military involvement internationally.
Crenshaw was the only House Republican in Texas whom President Donald Trump did not endorse. He has at times split with the president, including over the 2020 election results. He voted for the 2024 bipartisan border bill, which received criticism from some Republicans and Trump.
According to the “About” section on his website, Toth is an ordained minister and small business owner. Toth, who was backed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), has championed his conservative track record while serving in the state Legislature.
The Senate matchup for the general election in North Carolina has been set, with former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley and former Gov. Roy Cooper set to face off in November in a race that could determine which party controls the upper congressional chamber.
Whatley won the GOP primary, while Cooper won the Democratic primary, with both easily defeating challengers.
Endorsed by Trump, Whatley ran on getting North Carolina “back on track,” helping families make ends meet, creating jobs, and improving public safety.
During his campaign, Cooper talked about affordability and a ban on congressional stock trading.
Voters also cast votes for candidates in districts that have had their boundaries altered by the mid-decade redistricting push undertaken nationwide since Texas redrew its maps in mid 2025.
In North Carolina’s First Congressional District, Republicans selected Laurie Buckhout as their nominee on March 3, setting up a November rematch against incumbent Rep. Don Davis (D-N.C.).
The district was altered to favor Republicans, though analysts still consider the seat competitive.
In Texas’s 28th Congressional District, Democratic incumbent Rep. Henry Cuellar will face Republican Webb County Judge Tano Tijerina in a district that Republicans hope to flip this year.
The competitive South Texas congressional district is one of five in the state that Texas Republicans redrew in hopes of bolstering their party’s chances of maintaining control of Congress.
Tijerina, a former Major League Baseball player who has been endorsed by President Donald Trump and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, is seen as a promising challenger in the redrawn district, which is almost 90 percent Hispanic.
In Texas’s 34th Congressional District, Trump-endorsed candidate Eric Flores defeated former Rep. Mayra Flores, setting up a match with incumbent Rep. Vicente Gonzalez (D-Texas).
In 2022, Mayra Flores made headlines with a special election win in District 34 before the map was redrawn. Republicans pointed to her success as a sign of their growing strength among conservative Hispanic voters.
But after she lost to Gonzalez in 2022 and again in 2024, the party shifted toward a fresh start with a new candidate. Her opponent, Eric Flores, has gained the support of Trump and other Republican leaders.
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—Stacy Robinson
