House members keep losing their bids for higher office
This year’s primary features an unusually high percentage of competitive House members running for other offices, and their track record is not very good
We’re about halfway through the primary calendar for 2026 (27 states have held their primaries thus far), and a curious pattern has emerged. Twenty-nine sitting members of the House of Representatives are running for other offices — a historically high number — but of the 18 that have already faced election, just five of them have won nomination. Republican Reps. Ashley Hinson, Andy Barr, and Kevin Hern won the primaries for open U.S. Senate seats in Iowa, Kentucky, and Oklahoma, respectively, while Republican Reps. Mike Collins and Barry Moore won runoffs for Senate seats in Alabama and Georgia. One other member has also advanced to a runoff, while everyone else has either withdrawn before their primary began or lost their primary.
This amounts to a failure rate of about 67 percent for sitting House members seeking another office, a historically abysmal record. From 1990 through 2024, we identified 279 House members who resigned to run for another office. Of these, just 83 failed to earn their party’s nomination, for a failure rate of around 30 percent. No individual cycle since 1990 has seen House members lose in primaries as frequently as 2026; the previous record was 50 percent, achieved in 2020.
It’s no secret that Americans are frustrated with Congress, which means being a member of Congress may be as much of a liability as a selling point for those seeking another office. Congressional approval in most polls is even lower than approval of President Donald Trump. In a poll from RMG Research/Napolitan News Service earlier this month, 68 percent of Americans said they would vote to replace the entire Congress if it was possible to do so. And 54 percent said a randomly chosen group of American citizens would do a better job than the current Congress, while just 19 percent said they wouldn’t do a better job.
However, this public distaste for Congress isn’t all that new — according to YouGov/Economist polling, approval of Congress hasn’t been above water in at least 17 years — so there’s probably something deeper underlying the poor track record from sitting House members running for other offices this year.
Of course, this record can and will shift by the end of the primary season. Several candidates that we anticipate winning their primaries have yet to face the voters, like Republican Rep. Byron Donalds in Florida’s gubernatorial primary and Republican Rep. Tom Tiffany in Wisconsin’s. But neither of these primary contests is particularly competitive, as GOP support has largely coalesced around each of them. Historically, that’s been a more typical path for House members running for other offices, but not this cycle. The number of House members running in competitive primary contests is especially high this year, and seems to be a major factor driving the high rate of primary losses this year.
More House members are running for other offices, even if their path to victory is unclear
This year’s primary season features 29 sitting House members running for another office, a record in the years since 1990. From 1990 through 2024, an average of just 16 House members have run for other offices each cycle, with the previous record being 23 candidates in 2018.
Of course, election watchers have observed that politicians are retiring from Congress at a particularly high rate this year. In fact, one factor contributing to House members seeking other offices is a high number of open Senate seats, as the Senate has more members leaving office this year than it has in over a decade. But while House members seeking Senate seats is nothing new in Congress, leaving the House to run for a different elected office — even if their odds of winning aren’t particularly strong — can also be a way out that allows a candidate to save face with the public, rather than simply retiring.
Just look at Rep. Chip Roy, who lost the Republican primary for Texas attorney general, or Reps. Nancy Mace and Ralph Norman, who both ran and lost in the same Republican primary for South Carolina governor. All three of them had found themselves at odds with President Trump while serving in the House — a factor that certainly complicated their relationships with the rest of their party, and their paths to seeking other offices.
That goes to show that it’s not just that more sitting House members are running for other offices than in previous cycles; they are also running more often than ever in races that are highly competitive. We classified candidates as competitive or noncompetitive in their primary races based on the gap between the two leading candidates in pre-election polling (when available) and primary election results (if the election has already happened). Candidates were classified as competitive in their primaries if they trailed or led in polling within a month of the primary election by less than 15 percent, or if they won or lost the nomination by less than 15 percent (see below for detailed methodology).
Halfway through the primary season, 2026 already features 12 House members who have run in primary contests where they’re in close competition with other candidates, more than in any other year in the last 18 even-year election cycles.
If we look at all House candidates running for other offices this year, we also see a historically high percentage in competitive races. As of June 17, over half of House members running for other offices in 2026 have faced or are facing a competitive race, with 16 of 29 candidates meeting our definition. That’s the first time this has been the case in the period we looked at since 1990; the previous high was in 2010, when 47 percent of sitting House members seeking higher office were in competitive primary races, and the average from 1990 to 2024 was 31 percent. Contributing to the abysmal track record of House candidates at this point in the cycle: Of the 18 candidates who have already had their primary, 12 of these were in competitive races, and most of them lost. (Meanwhile, three more candidates lost or withdrew from races in which they were not competitive.)
Now, House members have always had a pretty spotty record in competitive primaries; in the 87 competitive primaries we looked at that featured a sitting House member between 1990 and 2024, House members won 43 of them and lost 44 of them, almost perfectly tied. But that isn’t what we’re seeing so far this year. Of the 12 competitive races that have already happened, sitting House members have lost nine of them outright, while two went on to win in a competitive runoff and the last, Rep. Julia Letlow, who is running for Senate in Louisiana, will face a runoff later this month. That’s the worst record for House members in competitive races for other offices in any cycle since 1990, when all 3 House members in competitive races lost.
House members are jumping into races that already have strong candidates
Another unusual feature of this slate of competitive primaries is a high number of House members running for other offices against sitting incumbents or running against each other. Four races in our dataset this cycle feature two sitting House members (which guarantees at least four House members will lose), and another four feature a House member challenging an incumbent. Of the 12 House members either running against each other or an incumbent, nine are in competitive races, seven have already lost their primaries, one is facing a runoff, and only Collins has won.
That’s historically rare. In election cycles since 1990, only one pair of House members on average has run against each other for another office; seven out of the 18 cycles we looked at have no House-on-House matchups. And primarying an incumbent is also quite rare; in only four cycles since 1990 has more than one House member challenged a sitting incumbent, most of them recent: 2006, 2020, 2022, and 2026.
Of the four sitting House members challenging an incumbent this year, two are Republicans who challenged senators that had gotten on Trump’s bad side: Republican Rep. Wesley Hunt in Texas and Letlow. Neither of these was able to win their primary outright; Hunt failed to make the primary runoff, and Letlow is facing a primary runoff on June 27.
A third Republican challenging an incumbent governor, Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, may have thought the incumbent would be weaker because he had been elevated from lieutenant governor rather than directly elected to the position; Johnson failed to make the runoff in a tight four-way contest in which all four candidates received between 21 and 31 percent of the vote. The lone Democrat challenging a Senate incumbent, Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, is doing so more for political reasons than ideological ones, campaigning on the message that Sen. Ed Markey is too old to continue to serve.
In addition to more candidates running against each other or against incumbents, this cycle features no House members running unopposed for other offices — the only other time that’s happened in the years we looked at was in 2022. Since 1990, on average three House members have run unopposed for other offices each cycle, with the most coming in 1990 (6 ran unopposed), followed by 1994, 2014, and 2024 (5 each).
Members of Congress have long viewed the House as a stepping stone to other offices, and more than ever are leaving the chamber this year and setting their sights elsewhere. But while most are aiming for the usual targets — Senate seats or governor’s mansions — many of them are falling short, failing even to win their own party’s nomination as they wade into crowded primary fields.
Primaries are one of the main ways that parties determine their future direction and leadership, but as both parties undergo generational and ideological changes, an unusually large number of House members are betting their careers on competitive races they might not win. Whether driven by frustration with Congress, intraparty feuds, or ambitions for higher office, so far most of those bets have come up short. The path forward for both parties is still taking shape in this primary season, but in many cases, it doesn’t seem to run through the House.
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Many thanks to Tia Yang for her support making this article possible, and once it was possible, making it better.
Methodology
In cycles where it was available, the House Press Gallery Departing Member List (previously called the “Casualty List”) was used to identify members who resigned to seek other offices. In other cycles, a variety of sources were used to identify House members who sought other offices. As a result, the data may not be fully comprehensive for older cycles; all members who ran for higher office, such as Senate, governor, or president are included here, but some who ran for lower office may not have been identified.
To determine a candidate’s competitiveness in a race, we first considered election results for each race. In a partisan primary, if a candidate either won or lost by less than 15 percentage points, that candidate is considered competitive. In nonpartisan jungle primaries, if a candidate either won or lost by less than 7.5 percentage points when compared only to other candidates of the same party, that candidate is considered competitive. For presidential elections, any candidate receiving at least 200 delegates at the national convention is considered competitive (none of the candidates in this dataset met that threshold).
For any candidate not considered competitive based on election results, or in races where the primary has not yet occurred, we relied on polls to determine competitiveness. Polls were sourced from a variety of aggregators, including FiftyPlusOne, RealClearPolitics, FiveThirtyEight archives, and Wikipedia. If a candidate led or trailed in pre-election polling by less than 15 percentage points in the most recent polling average produced by a reputable aggregator, that candidate is considered competitive. If no such polling average exists, we take the average of the most recent poll from each pollster conducted within the last month of the campaign. If no such polls exist, we relied exclusively on election results to determine competitiveness.
For jungle primaries, both of the top two performing candidates are considered to have won the primary, regardless of whether a runoff was required. A candidate who failed to advance to a runoff but got the most votes out of any member of their party does not count as a primary loser, since in a traditional primary system that candidate would likely have advanced to the general election. These candidates are instead categorized as “best in primary” and counted among primary winners where relevant.
To request access to the data used in this article, please reach out to data@fiftyplusone.news.