The primary season continues Tuesday as voters go to the polls in Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont, and Wisconsin. We also have a special election on the tap in Minnesota’s 1st Congressional District to succeed Republican Rep. Jim Hagedorn, who died in February.
Below you'll find our guide to all of the top contests, arranged chronologically by each state’s poll closing times. When it’s available, we'll tell you about any reliable polling that exists for each race, but if we don't mention any numbers, it means no recent surveys have been made public.
And of course, because this is a redistricting year, every state on the docket has a brand-new congressional map. To help you follow along, you can find interactive maps from Dave's Redistricting App for Connecticut, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. (Vermont has had just one congressional district since 1933.)
Note that the presidential results we include after each district reflect how the 2020 race would have gone under the new lines in place for this fall except in the special for Minnesota’s 1st, which is being conducted using the existing boundaries. (The regularly scheduled election for the 1st is taking place under the new map.) And if you'd like to know how much of the population in each new district comes from each old district, please check out our redistribution tables.
Our live coverage will begin at 9 PM ET when polls close in Minnesota and Wisconsin, which are home to the bulk of Tuesday’s big races. You can also follow us on Twitter for blow-by-blow updates, and you’ll want to bookmark our primary calendar, which includes the dates for primaries in all 50 states.
Vermont
Polls close at 7 PM ET.
• VT-AL (D) (66-31 Biden): Four Democrats are on the ballot to succeed Rep. Peter Welch, who is the favorite to succeed retiring Sen. Pat Leahy, but only two of them are running serious campaigns. Both Lt. Gov. Molly Gray and state Senate President Pro Tem Becca Balint would end Vermont’s status as the only state in America that has not elected a woman to Congress, while Balint would also be the Green Mountain State’s first gay representative.
While both Gray and Balint have raised similar amounts of money, outside groups led by the LGBTQ Victory Fund have spent $1.3 million for Balint. Balint, who has Sen. Bernie Sanders’ endorsement, posted huge leads in two late July polls. Gray, meanwhile, has Leahy’s support.
Connecticut
Polls close at 8 PM ET.
• CT-Sen (R) (59-39 Biden): Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal is a long-shot GOP target, and three Republicans are competing to take him on.
The state GOP has endorsed former state House Minority Leader Themis Klarides, who has long been talked about as a rising star. Donald Trump, though, delivered an endorsement just days before the primary to former Ambassador to Chile Leora Levy, a self-funder who has spread election conspiracy theories about Klarides. Also on the ballot is attorney Peter Lumaj, who lost the 2014 general election for secretary of state 53-47 but dropped out of the 2018 governor's race after faring poorly at the state convention.
Minnesota
Polls close at 9 PM ET/8 PM local time.
• MN-01 (special) (54-44 Trump): Republican Brad Finstad is facing off against Democrat Jeff Ettinger in a special election to succeed Rep. Jim Hagedorn, a Republican who died of cancer in February, in a contest that will take place under the old congressional map.
Ettinger, who is former CEO of the food processing giant Hormel, has been campaigning as a moderate in a once-swingy southern Minnesota constituency that trended hard to the right, and he decisively outspent Finstad in the final weeks of the race. However, a recent poll showed Finstad, who is a former Department of Agriculture official, with a wide 46-38 lead, and major outside groups aren’t treating this contest as competitive either.
• MN-01 (R) (53-44 Trump): Finstad and Ettinger will also be seeking their respective parties’ nominations for a regular two-year term in the new version of this seat, but Finstad unexpectedly will need to get past a familiar opponent.
Finstad won the special election primary 38-37 against state Rep. Jeremy Munson in May, and while Munson filed to run for a full term days later, it initially looked like he was just raising money to pay back a $200,000 campaign loan. In late July, though, Munson announced that he would indeed try once more to beat Finstad, whom he argued was not “the conservative to fight inflation.”
About 90% of the residents of the new 1st District live in the old version of that seat, so Munson will need to convince a significant number of Republicans to vote against Finstad even as they’re backing him in the special election. Ettinger, for his part, only faces minor intraparty opposition.
• MN-04 (D) (68-30 Biden): Longtime Rep. Betty McCollum faces a well-funded primary challenge from Amane Badhasso, a party operative who would be the first Ethiopian American to serve in Congress. Both candidates are running as ardent progressives, though Badhasso has argued that the incumbent represents “complacent status quo, out-of-touch politics.” One other little-known Democrat is also running for this St. Paul-based seat, which barely changed under the new map.
• MN-05 (D) (80-17 Biden): Rep. Ilhan Omar, who is one of the most vocal progressives in Congress, faces an intraparty opposition from former Minneapolis City Council member Don Samuels in the 5th District, which is almost identical under the old and new maps. Three other candidates are competing in the primary, but none have attracted much attention.
The two frontrunners last year came down on opposite sides of an unsuccessful ballot measure that would have replaced the Minneapolis Police Department with a new department of public safety, with Samuels faulting Omar for supporting the effort. Samuels earned an endorsement in the final days of the contest from Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who has also come into conflict with the congresswoman in the past. Omar has enjoyed a considerable financial advantage, though a newly formed super PAC spent $350,000 to aid Samuels in the final days.
• MN-AG (R) (52-45 Biden): The GOP primary to face Democratic Attorney General Keith Ellison is a duel between 2018 nominee Doug Wardlow, who lost that campaign 49-45, and attorney Jim Schultz.
Schultz earned the state party’s endorsement in May, but Wardlow decided to continue on to the primary after throwing out evidence-free insinuations that his "opponents brokered a backroom deal to wrest away the endorsement." The state GOP fired back by blasting Wardlow's "empty promise" to drop out if he lost at the convention, and all three of the state’s Republican members of Congress went on to endorse Schultz.
Other Minnesota races to watch: Hennepin County, Minnesota, attorney
Wisconsin
Polls close at 9 PM ET/8 PM local time.
• WI-Gov (R) (49.4-48.8 Biden): Two Republicans are waging serious campaigns to take on Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, who won this post four years ago by narrowly unseating Republican Scott Walker. The early frontrunner was former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, who was Walker’s running mate in each of his campaigns and has his backing for the top job. However, things unexpectedly changed in April when businessman Tim Michels, who badly lost the 2004 Senate race to Democrat Russ Feingold, jumped in and immediately used his wealth to reintroduce himself to voters.
Michels went on to earn Trump’s endorsement in June; the GOP's leader reportedly was infuriated about a 2019 picture of Kleefisch's daughter going to her high school prom with the son of Brian Hagedorn, a conservative state Supreme Court justice who sided against Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election. State Rep. Timothy Ramthun, who has been one of the loudest Big Lie promoters in the state, is also in, but he’s brought in little money.
Michels has decisively outspent Kleefisch, but the former lieutenant governor began airing attack ads in early July. While the anti-tax Club for Growth launched its own spots going after Kleefisch, Michels spent weeks insisting he wouldn’t go negative, declaring at one point, “When politicians are shocked to find themselves losing, they go negative out of desperation.” Michels, though, reversed court in the final days of the race and began running commercials slamming the former lieutenant governor.
• WI-03 (D) (51-47 Trump): Longtime Rep. Ron Kind is retiring from a southwestern Wisconsin constituency that trended hard to the right in the Trump era, and four fellow Democrats are competing to replace him. The winner will go up against 2020 Republican nominee Derrick Van Orden, who lost to Kind 51-49 in the closest race of the congressman’s career.
Kind is supporting state Sen. Brad Pfaff, who is his former chief of staff and has outraised his intraparty opponents. The field also includes Deb McGrath, a former CIA agent who released an attention-grabbing ad that showed her skydiving, and businesswoman Rebecca Cooke. The final candidate, Mark Neumann, lost the 2020 primary to Kind 81-19.
• WI-AG (R) (49.4-48.8 Biden): Three Republicans are competing to take on Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul, who won his post in a tight 2018 contest. The best-funded contender is former state Rep. Adam Jarchow, who unexpectedly lost a 2019 special election for a red state Senate seat.
The one current elected official is Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney, but he earned some negative press in the final days when two-year old text messages about the pandemic surfaced in which he wrote, “I'm highly confident this pathetic response put the nail in coffin on any chance I'd vote for Dumb dumb Donald with Joe on the other side.” The final contender is Karen Mueller, who founded a conservative legal organization and has declared that “the 2020 presidential election results must be decertified to restore the integrity and transparency of Wisconsin’s future elections.” Mueller, though, has struggled to bring in cash.
• WI State Assembly (R): Robin Vos has served as the powerful speaker of the state Assembly since 2013, but Trump is hoping to end his tenure by defeating him in his primary in the 63rd Assembly District. Vos last month said that Trump had recently called him and urged him to retroactively decertify Joe Biden's victory in the state—a move the speaker said was legally impossible. Trump retaliated in the final week by endorsing his previously little-known opponent, Adam Steen. No Democrats are running for this Racine-area seat.