The Progressive Wave Is Real: What El-Sayed, Flanagan, Nixon (and Hong) Have in Common
Four DSA-adjacent primary wins or near-wins in 15 days is not a fluke. Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are actively driving the pattern, party leadership is worried, and the question of whether it holds in November is separate from the question of whether it’s reshaping the party for 2028. It is doing both.
Between August 4 and August 18, four Democratic Senate and gubernatorial primaries were decided by margins that would have been unimaginable in the party’s recent past. A progressive physician beat an Obama-administration House member in Michigan with 8-to-1 less money. A lieutenant governor beat a five-term congresswoman in Minnesota by 19 points. A democratic socialist state representative beat a nationally famous impeachment witness in Florida despite being substantially outraised. And in Wisconsin, a democratic socialist state legislator lost the governor primary by 0.4 points — 3,200 votes out of nearly 700,000 cast.
Two months ago, party leadership was privately confident that the establishment candidates would win most of these primaries. They did not. Here is what the pattern actually looks like, why one race was the exception, and what it means for November and 2028.
The pattern
Three wins and a photo-finish loss in fifteen days. All in states with different electorates. All against opponents who started as the establishment favorite. In three of the four cases the losing candidate held office in Congress; in the fourth (Vindman) the losing candidate was a nationally recognized figure with the national donor class behind him. Add the New York City mayoral election last fall, where Zohran Mamdani won and is now serving in office, and the pattern extends beyond the summer.
What the wins have in common
The four races span Alaska’s neighbor to the northwest, the industrial midwest, and the deep south. What connects them is not geography. It’s the mechanics.
1. Open seats
Every progressive win of the summer was in an open-seat primary. El-Sayed won the seat Gary Peters vacated. Flanagan won the seat Tina Smith vacated. Nixon won the Democratic nomination to fill the last two years of Marco Rubio’s term. Hong ran for the seat Tony Evers is vacating. No progressive challenger this cycle has defeated a sitting Democratic senator or governor. Ned Lamont beat back a challenge from his left in Connecticut 68–32 on the same night Hong lost. The pattern that has emerged is not “progressives beat incumbents.” It is “progressives win open primaries against establishment-blessed alternatives.”
2. The opponent was almost always a sitting House member
Stevens (MI). Craig (MN). The consistent pattern is that a progressive outsider or state-level official beats a sitting U.S. House member seeking to move up. Nixon’s primary is an interesting exception — Vindman was not a sitting officeholder, but he was the national-media figure with donor support, which is a functional equivalent. The class of candidate that has repeatedly underperformed in 2026 Democratic primaries is the establishment-preferred candidate with a Washington resume.
3. Late-summer primary calendar
Democratic primary electorates in August are smaller, more attentive, and more ideologically activated than the general-election electorate. Turnout in the MN Senate primary was under 500,000. Turnout in the FL primary was well under a million. When primaries are held on days that require voters to specifically show up, the voters who show up are disproportionately the ones who read political news for fun. That electorate has moved left of the median Democrat, and it’s the electorate that decides these primaries.
4. Economic populism as the message
The affirmative content of every winning progressive campaign this summer has been economic. El-Sayed ran on single-payer healthcare, the cost of living, and “whether or not a candidate, and this party, is willing to stand up against the system.” Flanagan ran on state-level DFL policy wins in child tax credits and Medicaid expansion. Nixon ran on rural hospital funding and corporate consolidation. The framing is not culture-war. It is not about ideological purity. It is about who is willing to fight for working-class economic outcomes. That framing has proven durable across very different state electorates.
5. Sanders and AOC actually campaigned
Bernie Sanders held a “Fighting Oligarchy” rally with El-Sayed in Kalamazoo that drew 2,000 people. He held a similar event with Graham Platner in Maine that drew 6,500 before Platner’s withdrawal. Ocasio-Cortez has campaigned or endorsed in all three winning races. The national infrastructure — Justice Democrats, the Working Families Party, Sunrise Movement, Indian American Impact, Leaders We Deserve — has coordinated behind a shared slate. This is not a scattered set of individual insurgencies. It is a movement with staff, list overlap, and a shared messaging playbook.
Abdul El-Sayed, Sanders rally in Kalamazoo
Wisconsin: the exception that proves the rule
Francesca Hong should have won. She led public polling for most of the closing stretch. She had grassroots infrastructure. Wisconsin’s Democratic primary electorate is not obviously less progressive than Minnesota’s or Michigan’s. And she lost by 3,200 votes to David Crowley, the Milwaukee County executive.
Two things happened. First, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez did not endorse. Their silence in Wisconsin was noticed at the time and became consequential in the final week when late-deciders were choosing between the movement candidate and the party’s consensus alternative. Second, the establishment coalition around Crowley consolidated late. Mandela Barnes withdrew on July 30 with Governor Evers’s endorsement transferring to Crowley within days. Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez’s campaign had already collapsed. By early August the establishment vote was concentrated on one candidate; the progressive vote had nowhere similar to consolidate.
Both factors are exportable. In races where the national progressive infrastructure declines to fully commit, and where the establishment consolidates around one alternative rather than splintering, the pattern breaks. Wisconsin is data, not disproof.
Can they win in November?
This is where the four races diverge sharply. General-election viability depends on the state, not the pattern.
El-Sayed (Michigan Senate)
Cook rates the race a Toss-Up. Michigan voted for Trump in 2024 but Elissa Slotkin held the other Senate seat as a Democrat. El-Sayed is running against former Rep. Mike Rogers, a name-recognition Republican who has run statewide before. El-Sayed’s ability to hold the Peters coalition — suburban whites and Black voters in Detroit, Flint, and the tri-cities — is the entire question of whether the Democratic path to a Senate majority runs through this seat. He is a genuinely competitive general-election candidate. It is also completely plausible he loses. See our path-to-51 analysis.
Flanagan (Minnesota Senate)
Cook rates the race Likely D. Minnesota has not elected a Republican senator since 2002. Kamala Harris carried it by 5+ points in 2024. Flanagan — a member of the White Earth Nation and the lieutenant governor for seven years — has statewide name recognition, a policy record, and the DFL apparatus behind her. Her opponent, former sports broadcaster Michele Tafoya, has been building name identification but has never held elected office. Flanagan should win comfortably. If she doesn’t, something has gone very wrong nationally.
Nixon (Florida Senate)
Cook rates the race Likely R. This is the hardest lift. Trump carried Florida by 13 points in 2024 and Republicans hold every statewide office. Sen. Ashley Moody won her primary with 75.3% and has a resource advantage that will be enormous. Nixon’s DSA membership will feature prominently in Republican advertising. She becomes a competitive candidate only if the DNC and Senate Majority PAC treat her race as real, which they probably will not.
The uncomfortable truth is that the primary movement and the general-election movement are separate. Winning a Democratic primary demonstrates one kind of coalition strength; winning a general in a red state demonstrates a different one. El-Sayed can plausibly do both. Nixon almost certainly cannot.
The Schumer question
Several of the winning candidates have declined to commit to backing Chuck Schumer as Senate leader. El-Sayed has been explicit that he would not. Mallory McMorrow, who lost the Michigan primary to El-Sayed, was even more explicit about wanting new leadership. If Democrats do take back the Senate in November with El-Sayed in the caucus and any of the Tier 3 pickups (Osborn in Nebraska is an independent), Schumer’s hold on leadership is not automatic.
This is a genuine change. In previous cycles, insurgent Senate candidates who won primaries fell in line quickly once they arrived. The 2026 class has been unusually public about the leadership question. That reshapes what the Democratic caucus actually does with the majority if it wins one.
The 2028 tell
The primary pattern is the leading indicator. Winning candidates build lists, staff, and reputational infrastructure that outlasts the cycle. El-Sayed at 40, Flanagan at 46, Nixon at 42, and Hong at 41 are all young enough to be doing this for another decade. Sanders is 84 and Ocasio-Cortez is 36; the succession within the movement is already visible.
Two things follow. First, the 2028 Democratic presidential primary will have a progressive lane. Whether it is filled by Ocasio-Cortez, one of the winning 2026 Senate candidates, or Governor Zohran Mamdani after four years of running New York City is an open question. What is not open is whether the lane exists. It does.
Second, moderate 2028 candidates — Governors Jared Polis, Josh Shapiro, Wes Moore, Andy Beshear — will have to compete against a well-organized progressive infrastructure rather than a scattered set of individual campaigns. That changes their strategic calculus. The moderate candidate who wins a 2028 primary will have to explicitly address the economic-populism framing that the 2026 class rode into office. Ignoring it is no longer available.
Bottom line
The progressive wave is real. It is confined, so far, to open-seat primaries against establishment-preferred alternatives in states with late-summer calendars and low turnout. It has not yet defeated a sitting Democratic senator or governor. It has produced two nominees (El-Sayed, Flanagan) who are favored or competitive in November and two (Hong, Nixon) whose general-election paths were narrow to begin with.
The bigger consequence is not the individual races. It is that the Democratic Party’s internal balance of power has shifted materially in three months. Sanders’s influence at 84 is greater than it has been at any point since the 2020 primary. Ocasio-Cortez’s national coordination role is now institutional. The party leadership question is genuinely open for the first time since 2016. That will shape what a Democratic majority looks like if it happens in November, and it will shape the entire 2028 primary regardless of what happens in November.
The next test comes on September 8 in New Hampshire, where Chris Pappas is favored on the Democratic side and no serious progressive primary challenger has emerged. If Pappas wins comfortably, the pattern holds — no incumbent-adjacent Democratic favorite has fallen to a challenge from the left this cycle. If someone does emerge, the story writes itself.