The 20 Elections to Watch This February
At stake are the balance of power in two legislative chambers, billions of dollars in school funding, and likely the identity of Mikie Sherrill’s successor in Congress.
Democrats hold the narrowest of majorities in Maine and Pennsylvania’s state Houses. They now need to defend vacant seats to retain their edge in each through the end of the year.
These special elections are among the main events in February, in the final stretch before federal and statewide primaries kick off in March.
Voters are also deciding on billions of dollars for school systems in Washington, and choosing the mayors of Oklahoma City and Leander, Texas. A Democratic primary in New Jersey will all but settle Mikie Sherrill’s successor in the U.S. House, and in Wisconsin a candidate who echoed Donald Trump’s false claims about 2020 wants to hold local office. And there’s plenty more.
Enter Bolts’ guide to the elections to watch in February.
This guide starts on Tuesday, Feb. 3 with a legislative primary in Arkansas, followed by New Jersey’s congressional primary on Thursday, Feb. 5. On Saturday, Feb. 7, there’s a legislative election in Louisiana and a mayoral race in Texas. Then, watch contests in Oklahoma and Washington on Tuesday, Feb. 10, and in Maine, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on Tuesday, Feb. 24.
As always, this guide is just our selection of key races to monitor—not an exhaustive list of all elections in February. There are dozens of smaller school funding referendums in Washington and city council elections in Wisconsin, for instance.
Return on and after each Election Day; we’ll update this page as the results are known. And if you missed our rundown of the key elections from January, you can check on those results here.
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Special election for a congressional seat
Feb. 5: New Jersey
11th Congressional District (DEM Primary)
| Mikie Sherrill resigned from Congress after winning the New Jersey governor’s race, sparking this very crowded race to replace her. It’s a blue-leaning seat, so the Democratic primary is the key contest to watch as it’ll likely decide the district’s next representative. And with a dozen Democrats on this ballot, the winner may only need a modest share of the vote to prevail (there’s no runoff or ranked choice voting, despite some proposals to set that up). |
| Candidates include Brendan Gill, an Essex County commissioner with a lot of support from the party establishment, including outgoing governor Phil Murphy; Analilia Mejia, who used to lead the state’s Working Families Party and has support from left-leaning figures like Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka; Tom Malinowski, a former member of Congress with a more moderate politics; and Tahesha Way, who was the state’s lieutenant governor until last week. The winner will face Republican Joe Hathaway in April. |
| Result: Stay tuned after Feb. 5. |
Special elections for legislative seats
Feb. 3: Arkansas
26th Senate District (GOP primary)
| Championed by Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a proposal to build a new mega prison in rural Arkansas has provoked considerable opposition from local residents, Lauren Gill reported in Bolts last fall. This special election has exposed anger within the governor’s own party over this issue. It’s being held in Franklin County, where the 3,000-bed prison would be built, to replace Republican state Senator Gary Stubblefield, who passed away last September. Both candidates in the GOP primary runoff, Wade Dunn and Brad Simon, strongly oppose the prison. (In March, the winner will face an independent candidate Adam Watson, a local organizer who has fought against the prison project.) Huckabee Sanders tried to keep this seat vacant for a long time, initially scheduling the election for June; that would have left Franklin County residents with no representation throughout the legislature’s 2026 fiscal session. A court forced her to move it up. |
| Result: Stay tuned after Feb. 3. |
Feb. 7: Louisiana
60th House District
| Republicans failed to flip any legislative seat in 2025, and then again in January, but they have another opportunity in February. Governor Jeff Landry appointed Democratic lawmaker Chad Brown to lead a state agency, a decision that has triggered this special election in Brown’s district, which voted for President Trump by double-digits in 2024. Iberville Parish, where the district is located, has a history of voting Democratic in local elections, and Brown ran unopposed here the last time he was on the ballot. But the parish has trended rightward and the vacancy gives the GOP a shot at expanding the supermajority it won in 2023. Chasity Verret Martinez will try to keep the district in Democratic hands on Feb. 7 against Republican Brad Daigle. (There are four other special elections in Louisiana on that day; this is the only one that drew candidates from both major parties.) |
| Result: Stay tuned after Feb. 7. |
Feb. 24: Maine
94th House District
| Democratic control over Maine’s state government could weaken on Feb. 24. Their razor-thin majority in the state House is endangered following Kristen Cloutier’s resignation to become chief of staff to the state Senate president. The special election to replace Cloutier is taking place in a competitive seat; the 94th District sided with Harris by just four points. The GOP has nominated Janet Beaudoin, a member of Lewiston’s school committee (the local equivalent of a school board) who has faced backlash for pushing schools to not display Pride flags; she faces Democrat Scott Harriman, a city councilor also on the school committee. The state House currently has 74 Democrats, 72 Republicans, and three independents, but two seats are vacant: Cloutier’s, and that of Republican Kathy Javner, who passed away this month. If Beaudoin were to flip Cloutier’s seat on Feb. 24, it would narrow Democrats’ margin to just one seat, 74 to 73. Since the GOP is highly likely to retain Javner’s district when a special election is held there this spring, that would then tie the chamber 74 to 74, erasing Democrats’ edge. |
| Result: Stay tuned after Feb. 24. |
Feb. 24: Pennsylvania
22nd House District
| Democrats are defending another very thin majority in the Pennsylvania House, with two special elections for Democratic-held seats in the 22nd and 42nd districts. (There are also vacancies for three GOP-held seats that will be filled later this spring.) Both districts lean strongly Democratic, so it’ll be tough for the GOP to pick up either. But Democrats can’t afford an upset: If Republicans flip one of those seats, they’d likely then gain a majority when the other three vacancies, all for very red seats, are filled. So keep an eye on the 22nd District, anchored around Allentown. It voted for Harris by seventeen points in 2024. The race pits Democrat Ana Tiburcio, a local school board member, against Republican Robert Smith, who used to sit on that board. (Democrats switched their candidate mid-January after their prior choice unexpectedly dropped out.) The 42nd District, in Allegheny County, is even more staunchly blue. Republican Joseph Leckenby, who’ll face Democrat Jennifer Mazzocco, already ran in 2024 and lost by a 2 to 1 margin. |
| Result: Stay tuned after Feb. 24 |
Mayoral elections
Feb. 7: Leander, Texas
| The city of Leander, a suburb of Austin, Texas, is electing a new mayor on Feb. 7 due to Christine DeLisle’s resignation. The contest is ostensibly nonpartisan but the candidates to replace her have partisan attachments. The Travis County Democratic Party has endorsed Na’Cole Thompson, a member of the city council. Two other candidates, Kathryn Pantalion-Parker and Mike Sanders, have both been active in Travis and Williamson counties’ local Republican parties. (If none of the candidates receives 50 percent on Feb. 7, there will be a runoff in March.) |
| Result: Stay tuned after Feb. 7. |
Feb. 10: Oklahoma City
| Oklahoma City is electing its chief executive in February, and that alone warrants a spot on this list: This is the third most populous city with a mayoral election in all of 2026. But the election does not appear to be very competitive. David Holt is running for a third term against Matthew Pallares, a 34-year-old who does not appear to have a campaign website as of publication; in one of his few social media posts, Pallares calls on Holt to do more to stand up to ICE. Holt, who already won very easily in 2022 and 2024, is one of the GOP’s few big-city mayors; he has expressed concerns recently about some ICE activities, including the prospect that the feds may build a major detention center in the city. |
| Result: Stay tuned after Feb. 10. |
Other local elections
Feb. 10: Washington referendums to fund school systems
| Before the storm of federal primaries starts in March, many states have scheduled hyperlocal elections in February to fund their school systems. Districts around the country are asking voters to approve such funding, from Rhode Island’s Warwick on Feb. 3 to Minnesota’s Chisago Lakes on Feb. 10. The key state to watch is Washington, where voters will decide dozens of school bonds or tax measures, with billions of dollars at stake for operating and renovating schools. While residents should consult their county board of elections to learn what they may be voting on, Bolts’ review of local ballots has identified 11 school districts that stand out for the sheer size of their funding requests—defined as measures expected to provide for at least a quarter of a billion dollars. The largest by far is in the Northshore School District, just north of Seattle; voters there will decide three bond and levy measures that together are meant to provide more than $1.1 billion dollars. The ten other districts with requests above that threshold are in King County (Bellevue, Federal Way School, Issaquah, Lake Washington), Snohomish County (Edmonds, Everett, Mukilteo) and Pierce County (Puyallup, Tacoma, University Place). |
| Result: Stay tuned after Feb. 10. |
Feb. 24: Two primaries in Wisconsin’s Green Bay region
| Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election shaped local politics in and around Green Bay for years afterwards, as Bolts has reported. This year, Leanne Cramer, a local candidate who espoused Trump’s Big Lie in a past campaign (previously telling The Green Bay Press-Gazette that we need “to fix 2020”) is running for city council in Green Bay. The Feb. 24 primary between her and two other candidates will determine whether she advances to the “top two” general election in April. A local figure with a similar history, Melinda Eck, is already on the city council in Green Bay, where she previously helped organize a “Stop the Steal” protest on Jan. 6, 2021. Eck also drew scrutiny last fall for opposing restrictions on conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ youth (she told a local TV station she “voted biblically” to explain her position). Eck is sure to remain on Green Bay’s city council as her only challenger was booted from the ballot last week. Separately, Bolts is watching the candidacy of Rachel Maes, a local prosecutor who faced aggressive transphobic attacks when she ran for a judicial seat in 2021; she is now seeking to join the county commission in Brown County (home to Green Bay) but first faces a primary. |
| Result: Stay tuned after Feb. 24. |