Three states are holding major primaries on Tuesday, headlined by Virginia, where Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy are both working to punish the chair of the Freedom Caucus for his disloyalty. Oklahoma is also on tap, while Georgia is holding runoffs in contests where no one earned a majority of the vote in the first round of voting on May 21.
Below, you'll find our guide to all of the top races to watch, 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.
To help you follow along, you can find interactive maps from Dave's Redistricting App for Georgia, Oklahoma, and Virginia. You can find Daily Kos Elections' 2020 presidential results for each congressional district here, as well as our geographic descriptions for each seat. You’ll also want to bookmark our primary calendar, which includes the dates for primaries in all 50 states.
We'll be liveblogging all of these races at Daily Kos Elections on Tuesday night, starting when the first polls close at 7:00 PM ET. Join us for our complete coverage!
Georgia
Polls close at 7 PM ET.
• GA-03 (R) (64-34 Trump): Brian Jack, a former Donald Trump aide who has his old boss' endorsement, outpaced former state Sen. Mike Dugan 47-25 in the first round, making him the favorite to succeed retiring Republican Rep. Drew Ferguson in this seat in Atlanta's southwestern exurbs.
Jack consolidated his position by earning the backing of the third- and fourth-place finishers, Mike Crane and Philip Singleton, who took a combined 23% of the vote in the first round. Outside groups, including the crypto-aligned Defend American Jobs, have also deployed over $800,000 to help Jack in the runoff, while there's been no serious spending for Dugan.
Virginia
Polls close at 7 PM ET.
• VA-02 (D) (50-48 Biden): Two Democrats vying to take on Republican Rep. Jen Kiggans, who flipped a swing district based in Virginia Beach last cycle and will likely be a top Democratic target this year.
Navy veteran Missy Cotter Smasal, who lost a competitive race for the state Senate in 2019, has the support of the DCCC and all six members of Virginia's Democratic House delegation. Her rival is Jake Denton, an attorney whose late grandfather, Jeremiah Denton, represented Alabama in the Senate as a Republican in the 1980s.
Smasal has decisively outraised Denton, and there's been no outside spending in the primary.
• VA-05 (R) (53-45 Trump): Rep. Bob Good has spent his tenure as chair of the far-right House Freedom Caucus antagonizing GOP leaders and rank-and-file Republicans alike. Now, thanks to all the grief he's caused, the two-term congressman faces an uphill primary against state Sen. John McGuire for the right to keep representing this conservative district in central and southwest Virginia.
Good knows all about bitter intra-party battles: He first got to Congress by wresting the GOP nomination from then-Rep. Denver Riggleman at a Republican convention in 2020. But now a similar fate looms for him. Good infuriated Trump last year by endorsing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' doomed presidential campaign, prompting Trump to exact his revenge last month by endorsing McGuire.
Good also was one of eight House Republicans who last fall voted to end the speakership of Kevin McCarthy, who's now looking to get even. On top of that, several conservative megadonors close to the party's current leadership are tired of Good's antics and want him gone. All of this has led outside groups to throw down close to $6 million to attack Good and promote McGuire.
But Good's allies, including the hardline Club for Growth and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's Protect Freedom PAC, haven't given up. They've spent almost $5 million on messaging arguing that Good, unlike McGuire, is an ardent conservative.
• VA-07 (D & R) (53-46 Biden): Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger decided not to seek reelection so she could focus on her 2025 bid for governor, spurring busy primaries on both sides for her district based in the southern exurbs of Washington, D.C.
The frontrunner in the seven-way Democratic contest is former National Security Council adviser Eugene Vindman, who, along with his identical twin brother, Alexander, was at the center of the scandal that led to Donald Trump's first impeachment in 2019.
Thanks to the siblings' high profile during that affair, Vindman has been one of the strongest fundraisers among House candidates in the nation. Vindman has also benefited from about $1.3 million in outside spending from a pair of super PACs: VoteVets, which promotes Democratic veterans, and Protect Progress, a group with ties to the crypto industry. The Washington Post, which has a large readership in Northern Virginia, is supporting him as well.
Vindman faces four current and former elected officials who have faulted him for not being active in politics in what's long been a competitive region and for sometimes displaying a lack of knowledge about local matters. However, the members of this quartet—Prince William County Supervisors Andrea Bailey and Margaret Franklin, Del. Briana Sewell, and Elizabeth Guzman—have each raised just a fraction of the money Vindman has at his disposal.
The only other third-party spending of note has come from a super PAC called Casa In Action, which has deployed $200,000 to promote Guzman, who would be the first Hispanic person to represent Virginia in Congress.
A late May internal poll for Vindman showed him beating Bailey 43-10, with his rivals taking single-digit support. No one has released any data to contradict the idea that Vindman is well-positioned to triumph in a contest where none of his many opponents have established themselves as the clear alternative.
Republicans, meanwhile, are hoping that Spanberger's absence will give them a chance to flip this seat. The main contender in the five-candidate field appears to be Green Beret veteran Derrick Anderson, who lost a close primary for this seat in 2022 and has House Speaker Mike Johnson's endorsement for his second try.
The other notable Republican is former Navy SEAL Cameron Hamilton, who has the support of much of the Freedom Caucus. Both veterans have been attacking the other from the right, and their allies have spent well over $1 million on behalf of each man. Anderson's main support has come from the American Patriots PAC, which is funded by Republican megadonors Ken Griffin and Paul Singer, while Rand Paul's network is supporting Hamilton.
• VA-10 (D) (58-40 Biden): A dozen Democrats are campaigning to replace retiring Rep. Jennifer Wexton in a district based in the southwestern suburbs and exurbs of Washington, D.C.
Wexton is backing state Sen. Suhas Subramanyam, who would be both Virginia's first Indian American and Hindu member of the House. Subramanyam has raised more money than most of his many opponents and has also gotten more than $500,000 in support from the Indian American Impact Fund.
Del. Dan Helmer, though, still enjoys a huge financial advantage over Subramanyam and the rest of this busy field. Helmer, an Army veteran and the top fundraiser in the race, has been the beneficiary of well over $5 million in outside spending. His largest ally is the crypto-aligned Protect Progress, while VoteVets is also spending to help him. In addition, the Washington Post has endorsed Helmer.
However, few of Helmer's current constituents live in the congressional district he wants to represent, though he may have more serious concerns to worry about.
Four current and former officials in the Loudoun County Democratic Committee put out a statement during the final week of the race publicly accusing Helmer of engaging in "inappropriate behavior" with one of their number in 2018. One signatory told NOTUS that the committee's sexual harassment policy was adopted as a "direct result" of his actions. The candidate responded by denying what he called "baseless claims."
The race also includes four other current and former members of the state legislature: state Sen. Jennifer Boysko, Dels. Michelle Maldonado and David Reid, and former state House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn. But while Filler-Corn has raised considerably more than the rest of this foursome, her old legislative seat doesn't overlap with Wexton's district at all. Boysko has the same problem, while Maldonado and Reid have struggled to raise money.
Two other names to watch are defense contractor Krystle Kaul, who has self-funded much of her campaign, and former state Education Secretary Atif Qarni. Kaul would be the state's first Indian American or Sikh member of Congress, while Qarni would be both its first Pakistani American and Muslim representative.
The only survey we've seen here in recent weeks was a Qarni internal poll from mid-May that showed Helmer edging out Subramanyam 17-16, with Qarni and Filler-Corn respectively at 12% and 9%. That survey, however, was conducted with almost a month left to go before the primary.
Oklahoma
Polls close at 8 PM ET/7 PM local time. An Aug. 27 runoff would take place in any races where no candidate wins a majority of the vote.
• OK-04 (R) (65-33 Trump): Rep. Tom Cole faces an unexpectedly expensive primary battle thanks to the arrival of businessman Paul Bondar, who has spent over $5 million of his own money to portray the appropriations chairman as an insider who "voted with Democrats for billions in new deficit spending."
The 11-term incumbent, though, has benefited from almost $4 million in support from third-party groups. Those include the American Action Network, a nonprofit with ties to the House GOP leadership, which has been airing TV ads on the congressman's behalf. Cole and his allies have spent the campaign both touting his support from Trump and reminding voters that Bondar did not register to vote in Oklahoma until April—a month after he cast a ballot in the Texas primaries.
Three little-known candidates are also on the ballot, so it's possible that neither Cole nor Bondar will capture a majority of the vote on Tuesday. Bondar has been airing ads featuring that trio saying they'd back him in a hypothetical runoff.