What 2026 Primary Turnout Means for Campaign Strategy This Fall

Organization

By the Murmuration Campaigns Team

The 2026 primary results have offered an early look at an electorate that may be different from the one campaigns are accustomed to planning for in a midterm year. Across a number of states, voters who are not traditional midterm super-voters are turning out in significant numbers this year but who’s showing up is different from state to state and race to race.

In Texas, for example, Voto Latino found that Democratic primary participation in majority-Latino counties increased 149 percent compared with the 2022 midterm primary. Michigan’s primary drew a record 2.6 million voters, with voters under 40 accounting for their largest share of the primary electorate in nearly three decades. In Georgia, preliminary analysis from Murmuration found roughly 223,000 more voters participated in the 2026 primary than in 2022, with particularly significant growth among Black, Hispanic, and AAPI voters. Black voters increased from 28 percent to 35 percent of the primary electorate, while Hispanic turnout nearly doubled.

There is still a lot we do not know about what the November electorate will look like, and whether or not the turnout trend from the primaries will translate to higher enthusiasm and turnout for the general election. But the primaries point toward two trends campaigns should be considering in this final stretch:

Don’t let the traditional voter universe become a ceiling

Campaigns have good reason to rely on voter history and turnout models. But when significant numbers of less frequent voters are participating for the first time in a long time, relying on past national trends isn’t enough.

The challenge is that there is no universal profile of the marginal 2026 voter. Campaign strategy needs to center understanding around what is happening in their own electorate, review local models scores like those available through Organizer, rather than simply applying only a national turnout story to a local race.

Research should be the starting point.

Polling early, when budgets allow for it, can help campaigns understand both the potential electorate and the issues motivating different groups within it. Voter-file analysis can identify where participation is changing and local voter models help. Community surveys, phone banking and organizing conversations can add another layer, helping campaigns understand who is newly engaged and why.

That information should then influence paid communications to reach the right people with the right message. Highly targeted communications are valuable when campaigns have confidence about who their voters are. But, beware - targeting too narrowly in a high-energy environment runs the risk of excluding voters who do not fit the traditional model but may participate if engaged.

We often support partners to use a blended targeting approach for paid media account for the fluidity of an expanding electorate. One-to-one CTV targeting and other voter-file-based tactics can efficiently reach known audiences, while broader platforms such as YouTube can extend communications to all voters within a particular zip code, essentially replacing broadcast TV for a fraction of the cost.

"Affordability" is a starting point, not a message

If there is a defining issue of this election cycle, it’s affordability - an umbrella term that captures everything from inflation, rising grocery and gas prices, housing and healthcare costs, property taxes, and more. But that ubiquity creates a challenge: simply saying a candidate is going to address “affordability” does not tell voters much about what a campaign believes, what it would do, or why the election matters to their lives. Even when voters across the country share a broad concern about the cost of living, the specific pressures they feel - and the solutions they want from the government- can vary substantially.

Campaigns have to define what affordability means to their voters and in their specific context.

In one community, it may be property taxes. In another, it may be housing costs, groceries, utility bills or child care. The resulting message needs to acknowledge that things are expensive and then explain what is getting harder for people in that community, what the candidate believes is contributing to the problem, and what they would actually do about it.

For an expanded electorate, a campaign message needs to be broad and current enough to connect with voters who may not follow politics closely, but specific enough to give them a reason to care about the choice in front of them.

Final Thoughts

Campaigns need to think more expansively about who might vote while becoming more specific about why those voters should care.

The early primary results suggest that significant numbers of voters are willing to participate even if their voting history would not have made them an obvious part of a traditional midterm universe. Reaching those voters requires strategies and tactics that extend beyond the usual suspects, and engaging them requires a message grounded in the specific pressures they are experiencing and a concrete explanation of how the campaign understands and will tackle them.

In a midterm election where every vote is up for grabs, winning campaigns will go beyond expanding their and will deliver a message so clear and urgent that disengaged voters have no choice but to show up.