A tumultuous congressional primary season closes with record departures and defeats

The U.S. Capitol is pictured on Monday. Allison Robbert/AP hide caption

Nearly one in five lawmakers who started the 119th Congress will not return to their seats next year, driven by an historic level of retirements, resignations and runs for other office.

According to NPR's congressional retirement tracker, at the end of the 2026 primary season there are 99 seats — 83 in the House and 16 in the Senate — guaranteed to have a different member from the start of 2025. (Louisiana's House primaries were delayed to Nov. 3 , after congressional redistricting.)

That number is likely to rise as dozens of incumbents are locked in competitive races and could lose in November's general election. Another two senators whose seats are not up this year — Minnesota's Amy Klobuchar and Tennessee's Marsha Blackburn — are presumptive favorites to become their states' governors, at which point they would resign from Congress.

In all, 13 senators and 60 House representatives have announced their plans to retire or are running for a different office, 16 total across the two chambers died or resigned from office, and 13 incumbents were defeated in their primaries.

The 2026 midterm election has seen a record number of retirement announcements come earlier than ever in the cycle, driven in part by the incumbent Trump administration's unpopularity with voters and concerted push for younger lawmakers by Democratic voters.

That includes retirements announced by longtime leaders like California Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell and a slew of politicians looking to flee Washington, D.C., for state or local offices.

An unusually high number of lawmakers have run for Senate, governor and other races — and many of them lost in the primaries, too. Of the more than 30 members of Congress seeking a different job, just over half won their primaries.