Main Takeaways From March 3rd Primaries

By: Sam Massey

March 3rd was a big night for Democrats and Republicans alike, and not just because of the results. The primaries across Texas and North Carolina reveal some early takeaways about the current state of each party’s voter base and what messages are actually working. Now that we have a good idea of where most races stand, whether with a clear winner or with candidates runoff-bound, here are my five key takeaways from last night.

1. There are real attempts at voter suppression unfolding in Texas.

Throughout Election Day in Dallas and Williamson Counties, voters were being turned away from the polls. The issue seemed to stem from Texas implementing non-joint primaries in select counties, requiring voters to cast ballots at precinct-specific locations separated by party. In theory, this sounds manageable. In practice, voters were being directed to incorrect polling locations by the Secretary of State’s own website (when it was even working correctly) and in some cases, sent to Republican polling sites when they showed up to vote in the Democratic primary. Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins ultimately extended Democratic voting hours to 9 p.m., with votes cast after 7 p.m. counted as provisional ballots. The extension wasn’t offered to Republicans, because Republicans didn’t ask for one. The Dallas County GOP declined to comment. Make of that what you will.

The Crockett campaign rightfully called out the acts of voter suppression by Republicans onto communities with predominantly Black voters in a short speech last night. While originally it sounded as though she would hold out for those votes to come in, she would concede the election to Talarico the next morning. The blocking of these votes is among some of the most blatant attempts by Republicans to interfere with the will of Democratic voters. Whether you supported Crockett or Talarico, that should be recognizable here.

While Talarico would have won the primary election either way, it should be alarming to anyone covering the election on the reality of the situation. Voter suppression doesn’t have to change an outcome to be worth taking seriously, right? The fact that it happened in a Democratic primary, engineered by Republican-controlled election infrastructure and ultimately blocked by guidance from Attorney Ken Paxton (himself a candidate in that same race), and was met largely without deep analysis from national media, is itself a story. The Republicans’ proto-fascist machinery was tested. It might have worked. That is not good.

2. Populism is a winning formula for Democrats.

What I dislike most about Democrats’ intra-party fighting is the de facto creation of factions of both politicians and supporters who could be classified into establishment Democrats and leftist Democrats. The supporters of the establishment, still filled with K-Hive and defenders of Democratic leaders like Schumer and Jeffries, are increasingly losing ground. More Democrats are becoming in favor of socialism, at the same time where the party leadership is at record lows in terms of their own nationwide popularity. Mainstream leftist support has been growing since the 2016 election with Bernie Sanders (although there were many before him), whose policy proposals were so ambitious that it would likely have been the most sweeping agenda since FDR.

The media has become disillusioned with the idea that Talarico was, in fact, the moderate and that Crockett was, in fact, the progressive. This could not be further from the truth. To me, this is a mischaracterization of their policy differences at best, and a racialized stereotype at worst. That said, the key here is that among both establishment and leftist candidates (specifically in the Senate races), there is a pattern: the candidates who are hanging strong leads in primary polling, and now win their primary races, often take the bottom-up, anti-billionaire, populist message. Yes, Talarico did not support Medicare For All. Maybe he isn’t Norman Finkelstein on Palestine. But he took the populist message instead, while Jasmine Crockett’s campaign undoubtedly focused more on identity and her own name recognition.

Juliana Stratton, Mallory McMorrow, and Graham Platner are in great position to win their respective primaries compared to their establishment counterparts. They all vary in levels, but all deliver on populist messaging. And, in Michigan’s case, both McMorrow and El-Sayed are leaps and bounds more respected candidates than the establishment’s choice, Haley Stevens. So not only is there one candidate beating out the establishment pick, but two who are hitting above her in the polls. This signals to me that more important than inherently “leftist” or “establishment” policies are “populist” policies.

In terms of house races, it’s a more complicated story. While there are 100 Senate seats, there are 435 House seats. Automatically, one could assume one’s easier to “buy” than the other. And that’s because House races operate in smaller, more localized media markets, meaning organic press coverage that could amplify an outsider’s message simply doesn’t exist the way it does in a statewide Senate race. Money fills that vacuum incredibly well under our current system.

An incumbent who’s held a seat for years has built relational capital in that district (the union halls, the community meetings, the neighborhood relationships) that a challenger can’t replicate overnight regardless of how strong their message is. That brings us to NC-4, where the incumbent Democrat Valerie Foushee in a leaked video stated “Yes, I take corporate money. Yes, I work for corporations in the fourth district.” There was massive turnout in Wake and Durham Counties for Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam, who ran to the left of her on an anti-corporate and anti-Israel message.

And, in a gerrymandered district pitting two incumbent representatives to one district, a face-off with between two leftists, Rep. Al Green and more Rep. Christian Menefee, ended in a runoff, only divided by around 2% with Menefee leading. This is a race that, on paper, serves as a test between populist messaging (offered by Green) and softer messaging (offered by Menefee).

While North Carolina’s 4th congressional district is still too close to call as of writing (within ~1,000 votes), and Allam is requesting a recount of ballots, Foushee is narrowly leading in the primary and is more likely to win. The vote is incredibly close, and that should be motivating for leftists more than anything than that they can put real pressure on the establishment. I’ll talk in a later takeaway about how to do so.

Overall, the primaries might signal a shift to where populism is the dominant electoral language of the Democratic Party. Not as an ideological label per se (nor should it be), but as the practical vocabulary that actually moves voters to get out to the polls. If that holds through to November, the establishment’s grip on the party isn’t just weakening. It’s being replaced.

3. Policy matters over identity politics. Substance matters over sound bites.

The Texas Senate race was, at its core, a stress test for two very different theories of how Democrats win. Jasmine Crockett came in with significant name recognition, a national media profile as a fighter against the Trump administration, and a base of support built heavily around her identity as a Black woman willing to go toe-to-toe with Republicans live on television.

That has genuine value, but as I’ve written in previous blog posts on Crockett, it isn’t really a tangible campaign message for the right now. It might have been maybe 6-8 years ago, but the needs of Democrats have changed over time. Her messaging leaned heavily on anti-Trump rhetoric and personal brand, with little in the way of a coherent governing vision for Texas specifically. Not to mention, she only posted her campaign platform about 3 weeks before the actual primary. When pressed on policy, the answers were thin or repetitions of Democrat establishment talking points. When the race got competitive, there was no second gear.

Talarico ran a different kind of campaign. He showed up in communities that Democrats don’t always bother with, spoke in specific terms about housing, healthcare costs, and economic anxiety, and built a coalition that cut across lines Crockett’s campaign assumed were hers by default. He won counties and voter blocs that, on paper, should have been contested at best. The type of voters he brought out, like Hispanics, were not expected to go so far into his favor. That’s not a fluke. That is what happens when a candidate treats voters as people with material concerns rather than as an audience for performance. The lesson isn’t that identity doesn’t matter. It’s that identity without substance is a floor, not a ceiling.

4. Republicans are more disjointed than previously thought.

The clearest evidence of this is John Cornyn. He is a four-term incumbent, the former Senate Majority Whip, and he spent close to $59 million (part of what became the most expensive Senate primary in state history) and still couldn’t clear 50% against Ken Paxton, a man who was impeached by his own party’s legislature, acquitted under dubious circumstances, and is currently going through a very public divorce. Paxton finished within a percentage point of him. The runoff is May 26th, and by most assessments, Paxton enters it as the favorite with Hunt now out of the race. Runoffs favor hardcore primary voters, and that is likely to be Republicans sick and tired of Cornyn. The fact that Cornyn’s war chest couldn’t win this outright yesterday is a real signal about where the Republican establishment actually stands with its own voters in Texas.

Cornyn isn’t the only one. Dan Crenshaw, a four-term congressman and one of the best-known Republicans in the House, lost his primary to state Rep. Steve Toth by ~15 points. Crenshaw was the only incumbent House Republican in Tuesday’s primaries without Trump’s endorsement, and it showed. Toth got a late boost from Ted Cruz and the House Freedom Caucus’s political arm, and he ran away with it. Then there’s Tony Gonzales, who had Trump’s endorsement this cycle (something he didn’t have in 2024, when he nearly lost to the same challenger, pro-gun activist Brandon Herrera) and still got pushed into a runoff again. This time, an extramarital affair allegation involving a staffer who later died by suicide resurfaced during early voting, triggering a House Ethics investigation announced the morning after the primary. Even with Trump’s backing, Gonzales couldn’t close it out. We covered more about Gonzales, too.

The through-line across all three of these races is the same: institutional Republican credibility, money, and even Trump endorsements are not a firewall anymore. The MAGA base is picking its own winners, and when they do, they’re not looking for credentials but loyalty tests.

As a footnote worth watching: in North Carolina, former RNC chair Michael Whatley won the Republican Senate primary, but he enters the general against Roy Cooper, a two-term former governor who has never lost an election in nearly 50 years as a candidate, with less than $2.5 million cash on hand (compared to Cooper’s $14 million). Whatley is a political operative, a Washington insider, whose entire pitch is being a Trump ally. In a state that went for Trump by 3 points in 2024 but elected Josh Stein governor the same night, that is not a comfortable position to be in. He is not a strong candidate, and Cooper is heavily favored to win the seat.

5. Leftist candidates need endorsements from movement leaders, especially when challenging incumbents.

This isn’t just about optics or validation. Endorsements from movement leaders, whether that’s Bernie Sanders, AOC, the DSA, Working Families Party, or the Justice Democrats, etc., unlock real infrastructure: donor lists, volunteer networks, earned media. For a challenger going up against an incumbent who has spent years building relational capital in a district, those resources aren’t optional.

They’re the only viable path to building something long-term. NC-4 might as well be the clearest example of this from Tuesday. Nida Allam ran a strong, well-defined campaign against Valerie Foushee on an anti-corporate, anti-war message, and drove massive turnout in Wake and Durham Counties. The race is still not officially called. But Allam entered the race without the kind of early institutional support that could have closed the resource gap before it became insurmountable.

The margin between her and Foushee tells you the message landed. The outcome, if it holds, tells you the message alone wasn’t enough. Progressive infrastructure has to identify these winnable targets earlier in the cycle before the name recognition gap becomes a wall that no amount of late momentum can clear. AOC needs to begin endorsing Democratic primary opponents, and so do other members of the elected left.

Night Overview

The through-line across all of this is rather clear and can be delivered straightforwardly: the old playbook isn’t working anymore, for either party. Democrats who run on populist, material concerns are winning or coming close in races they were never supposed to be competitive in. Republicans who thought their incumbency and donor base were enough to offset pressure from the MAGA-verse are now heading into runoffs or losing outright. The 2026 cycle is still early, but Tuesday gave us a real preview of what the terrain looks like (and it’s really exciting). The question now is whether the left builds on it or lets the moment pass.