Republican state legislators lost re-election in this year’s primaries at twice the rate of Democrats. Of the 2,737 Republicans who ran for re-election, 126 (4.6%) lost primaries. Of the 2,314 Democrats who ran, 54 (2.3%) did.
The partisan split follows a pattern we reported in the June 22 Daily Brew that incumbents had more primary challengers than usual this year, mostly in Republican-controlled states. There was a 5.5 percentage point increase in the average number of incumbents who ran in contested primaries in states with Republican trifectas from 2010 through 2024. There was a 0.9% increase in the average number of incumbents who ran in contested primaries in states with Democratic trifectas from 2010 through 2024.
