The Democrats taking the fight to Republican strongholds

In Florida, Kansas, Iowa and Texas, Democratic candidates are outperforming the predictions, but both parties may struggle to consolidate gains This was originally published in The Stakes 2026, a newsletter about the midterm elections.

Sign up to get it in your inbox The most valuable education I received for becoming a political editor was growing up in Florida.

During the entirety of the 18 years I lived there, it was a purple state that voted for Barack Obama twice, and while I would not say my community was diverse, the spectrum of political ideology was vast.

I had a close friend who kept a life-sized cutout of George W Bush in her bedroom, and another who helped organize Amnesty International fundraisers against landmines.

When the state turned deeply Republican in 2016, and remained that way, I continued to harbor a suspicion that it wasn’t the whole story.

Even so, nothing could prepare me for the sheer surprise when Angie Nixon – the state legislator who joined the Democratic Socialists of America running against Alex Vindman, a centrist with national name recognition – won the Democratic primary for Senate in Florida.

That shock has continued in the months after, as we see the Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Jolly running neck-and-neck with Republican Byron Donalds, who seemed like a shoo-in just weeks ago.

And while Nixon is polling behind her Republican opponent, Ashley Moody, the race is much closer than anyone following Florida politics expected.

So much so that the senior progressive senator Bernie Sanders has newly poured millions of dollars from his campaign funds into the state, and the popular congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went to campaign with Nixon last month.

Here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not our enemy.

We need to end this tariff war now.

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