Primaries in Florida, Alaska, and Wyoming on Tuesday, August 18, set some of the last major matchups of the 2026 midterms — and extended two of the season’s defining patterns. In Florida’s Democratic Senate primary, state Representative Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist outspent roughly sixteen to one, defeated Alex Vindman, the retired Army lieutenant colonel and first-impeachment witness, 56 percent to 44 percent. In the Republican governor’s primary, Trump-endorsed Congressman Byron Donalds won as expected but finished under 50 percent against a divided field, a result one Republican fundraiser told CNN the campaign needs to study. And Trump’s endorsement failed in two more races outright: his pick to succeed Donalds in Florida’s 19th District lost to a political newcomer, and his pick for governor of Wyoming lost to a state senator. Voters in Florida also removed Congressman Cory Mills, who faces House Ethics Committee investigations on multiple fronts, by thirteen points.
Florida’s Governor Race Is Set: Donalds vs. Jolly
With Governor Ron DeSantis term-limited, Republicans nominated Byron Donalds, the four-term congressman Trump endorsed more than a year ago. Donalds took 47.8 percent to 25.1 percent for Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins, with conservative influencer James Fishback at 10.5 percent and former state House Speaker Paul Renner at 8.5 percent. Democrats nominated former Congressman David Jolly, who represented a Tampa-area district as a Republican, left the party in 2018, and formally became a Democrat last year. Donalds enters the general election with more than $100 million raised during the primary and a state where registered Republicans outnumber Democrats by 1.5 million. But his failure to clear 50 percent after a year of campaigning with Trump’s endorsement and most of the state party establishment behind him registered as a warning sign inside his own party. “We were all a bit surprised he didn’t get there,” one Republican fundraiser told CNN, adding: “Is it Trump’s approval rating hurt him? They have to figure that out.” A longtime Florida Republican operative told CNN the general election is “going to be more of a race, at least at the start, than most people wanted to believe a few months ago.” DeSantis declined to endorse anyone in the primary — including his own lieutenant governor — while publicly raising questions about Donalds’ candidacy throughout.
The Nixon Upset
The night’s biggest surprise came in the Democratic Senate primary. Vindman entered as the establishment favorite and the overwhelming financial leader: he raised $16 million to Nixon’s roughly $1 million and held more than $7 million in the bank for the closing weeks against her $265,000. Nixon, a state representative from Jacksonville who recently joined the Democratic Socialists of America, won 56.1 percent to 43.9 percent. She ran on Medicare for All, free child care, a national rent freeze, and her legislative record on early childhood education and corporate price gouging — and on her opposition to the DeSantis-era redrawing of congressional lines, which included her arrest in May at a sit-in at the governor’s office. Her criticism of U.S. military support for Israel’s war in Gaza, a growing fault line with Democratic primary voters, was central to the contest; Vindman’s loss despite his resistance-hero profile is the latest evidence of that shift. Nixon’s win extends the progressive wing’s primary streak — Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Peggy Flanagan in Minnesota — though the pattern has limits: the moderate David Crowley won Wisconsin’s governor primary last week, and Democratic Representatives Jared Moskowitz and Debbie Wasserman Schultz both comfortably defeated challenges from the left on Tuesday. In November, Nixon faces Republican Senator Ashley Moody, who is the clear favorite in a state Trump has carried three times; CNN notes Democrats’ realistic Senate targets run through Alaska, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas rather than Florida.
The Endorsement Scoreboard Grows
Trump’s endorsement — still the most coveted asset in Republican primaries — kept losing races on Tuesday. In Florida’s 19th District, the Southwest Florida seat Donalds is vacating, Trump endorsed former Commerce Department official Catalina Lauf; she lost to Jim Schwartzel, a local broadcasting executive and political newcomer, 29.1 percent to 22 percent, in a field CNN described as a “clown show” of carpetbaggers that included former Congressmen Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and Chris Collins of New York, neither of whom cracked double digits. In Wyoming, Republican voters chose state Senator Eric Barlow over Trump-endorsed Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder for the nomination to succeed term-limited Governor Mark Gordon. By CNN’s accounting, Trump-endorsed candidates have now lost governor’s-race primaries in Iowa, Minnesota, Georgia, and South Carolina as well. The endorsement still delivered elsewhere: Congresswoman Harriet Hageman, who unseated Liz Cheney in 2022 and carried Trump’s backing, easily won Wyoming’s Senate primary for retiring Senator Cynthia Lummis’ seat, and Donalds himself won his race. The pattern is not that the endorsement has stopped working; it is that Republican primary voters have stopped treating it as binding.
An Ethics-Probed Incumbent Loses by 13
Florida Republicans also removed one of their own. Congressman Cory Mills, a two-term incumbent, lost his 7th District primary to former news anchor Ryan Elijah, 47.3 percent to 34.1 percent. Mills is under House Ethics Committee investigation on several fronts — potential campaign finance violations, an accusation of a revenge porn threat, and an assault allegation — and has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. The party apparatus abandoned him in stages: Trump endorsed Mills in February but left him off a list of Florida endorsements posted earlier this month; two Republican colleagues in the state’s delegation, Anna Paulina Luna and Mike Haridopolos, endorsed Elijah; and DeSantis said last week he did not support Mills. Comeback attempts fared no better than scandal-plagued incumbency: former Democratic Congresswoman Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who resigned in April ahead of a possible Ethics Committee expulsion vote and faces criminal charges to which she has pleaded not guilty, lost to Wasserman Schultz in the 20th District, and progressive former Congressman Alan Grayson finished a distant third in the 7th District Democratic primary, his latest failed return bid in a decade of them.
Alaska: Two Dan Sullivans on One Ballot
Alaska held its top-four primary for the Senate seat Democrats consider among their few realistic pickup opportunities. With roughly 80 percent of the expected vote counted early Wednesday, Democratic former Congresswoman Mary Peltola led the field at 48 percent, with incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan at 42.8 percent; both advance to November’s ranked-choice general election. The remaining question is a genuine ballot oddity: a second candidate named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr., a former teacher who also filed as a Republican, sat at 2.4 percent and in position to claim one of the four general-election slots. Republicans tried and failed to remove him from the ballot; Trump urged voters Tuesday to back the “real” Dan Sullivan and called the other an “imposter,” though the second Sullivan says his campaign is legitimate. The name confusion is not expected to matter in the primary but could in a close general election. Peltola — the first Alaska Native elected to Congress, who won the at-large House seat in 2022 and lost it in 2024 — is running on protecting Alaska’s fisheries under the slogan “fish, family, freedom,” courting the independent and right-leaning voters who have made her competitive statewide before.
What It Means for November
Tuesday set the last major pieces of the fall map. Florida: Donalds versus Jolly for governor, Moody versus Nixon for Senate. Wyoming: Barlow versus the Democratic nominee for governor, with Hageman heavily favored for Senate. Alaska: a ranked-choice Senate contest, likely with two Dan Sullivans and Mary Peltola on the same ballot, in one of the four-or-more states Democrats need to break through to flip the Senate. The through-lines of the primary season are now well established: Trump’s endorsement wins most contested Republican primaries but has lost repeatedly at the top of the ticket; the Democratic progressive wing keeps winning Senate primaries against far better-funded establishment candidates in some states while losing House and governor primaries in others; and voters in both parties have shown a willingness to remove incumbents under ethics clouds. The general election is November 3, seventy-six days away.