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By Anna Rahmanan
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Francesca Hong’s razor-thin loss in Wisconsin looks like a setback for the Democratic left—that is, until Tuesday’s other primary results are placed beside it. Voters in three states repeatedly rewarded candidates who could plausibly cast somebody else as the political establishment, even when the insurgents had little ideologically in common.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley defeated Hong, a democratic socialist state representative, in Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary. With 98 percent counted, Crowley led by less than half a percentage point.
Taken alone, the result could be read as Democratic voters rejecting a move left, but the wider primary map complicates that explanation.
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In Minnesota, progressive Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan defeated centrist Representative Angie Craig for the Democratic Senate nomination. Minnesota Republicans, meanwhile, chose state House Speaker Lisa Demuth over Mike Lindell, despite President Donald Trump’s endorsement of the MyPillow founder. In Connecticut, former Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin ousted 14-term Representative John Larson in the Democratic primary for the 1st Congressional District.
The common thread is difficult to locate on a left-right spectrum but becomes easier to see when the question changes from: What ideology did voters choose? to whom were they trying to dislodge?
The Establishment Keeps Changing Sides
For Rebekah Schilling, a 35-year-old project administrator from Granby who voted for Bronin in Connecticut, the desire for change was explicit, but it was not a rejection of policy substance.
“The generational change factor is huge,” Schilling told Newsweek. She said she broadly agreed with Bronin on policy and wanted representatives focused on issues including campaign finance reform, public investment, health care and tax policy.
Larson’s tenure weighed heavily on her decision.
“He’s been the 01 rep for most of my life,” Schilling said. She credited Larson’s record on socially liberal causes and opposition to Trump, but said younger voters increasingly want representatives “that we can relate to as opposed to more of the same septuagenarians.”
Nick Gasser, a paralegal from Bristol who voted for Ruth Fortune, arrived at the desire for change from a different direction. For him, the primary still presented a meaningful ideological choice.
“My main issue was that I wanted a real progressive candidate,” Gasser told Newsweek. He said Fortune's working-class background and campaign convinced him she was more closely aligned with the politics he wanted represented in Washington.
Yet Gasser also described dissatisfaction with the Democratic establishment itself, which he said was “way too committed to wealthy donors, corporate interests, and the consultant class.” His complaint was ideological and institutional at once. He wanted a different kind of Democrat, rather than simply a different face.
Schilling’s reasoning also complicates the neatest version of the anti-establishment thesis. Schilling said she regarded Larson as an establishment candidate, but argued Bronin could plausibly carry the same label.
“I don’t think anti-establishment is as big of a draw here as it may be in other places,” she said.
What mattered more, she said, was the direction of the campaign. Larson’s emphasis on his record felt “very rear-view as opposed to forward-looking,” while Bronin’s pitch struck her as more focused on what came next.
That distinction helps explain why the revolt is not reliably socialist, moderate or MAGA. The target moves, and sometimes voters are reacting less against ideology than against political stasis.
The Data Point To Disaffection, Not A New Ideology
National opinion data give that interpretation some support, though political scientists caution against treating dissatisfaction with parties as a substitute for ideology.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted in April found remarkably similar public judgments of the parties.
Fifty-nine percent of Americans viewed the Democratic Party unfavorably and 58 percent viewed the Republican Party unfavorably. Twenty-six percent held unfavorable opinions of both.
Gallup found an even more striking measure of political detachment.
A record 45 percent of Americans identified as independents in 2025, while Democrats and Republicans each accounted for 27 percent. Gallup cautioned that many independents still lean toward one party, meaning the number should not be mistaken for a giant bloc of ideological centrists.
Samara Klar, the Melody S. Robidoux Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona, said disillusionment with parties and elites is real, but its electoral effect has limits.
“A growing percent of Americans say they dislike both parties,” Klar told Newsweek, pointing to the Pew figure. She said Americans have also grown more negative toward political elites, including, in some cases, leaders of their own party.
Yet most voters still prefer one party to the other, she said, and usually vote accordingly. Disliking the establishment, after all, is not the same as abandoning ideology.
“Views toward the parties are not the same as ideological preferences,” Klar said. Americans can hold strongly liberal or conservative views without feeling particularly attached to the party representing them.
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Gasser's vote provides a ground-level example of Klar's distinction: he wanted to upend the existing Democratic order, but only in a particular ideological direction. “I do want a change in the current political establishment,” he said, while also describing the race as a meaningful contest between centrism and progressivism.
Wisconsin polling before Tuesday offered another warning against equating dissatisfaction with moderation. A July Marquette Law School Poll found 51 percent of registered voters considered Wisconsin Republicans too conservative while 52 percent considered Wisconsin Democrats too liberal. Yet Hong nearly won the Democratic nomination anyway.
Primary electorates may therefore be sorting candidates along another dimension: distance from the people and institutions they believe already control politics.
Incumbency Still Has Its Uses
There is an obvious problem with pushing the anti-establishment reading too far, which is that plenty of establishment politicians won.
Democratic Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont easily defeated progressive challenger Josh Elliott, for example, while Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Crowley himself prevailed after receiving Evers’ endorsement.
Schilling pointed to the same contradiction inside Connecticut. She said Bronin represented a “safe” challenge to Larson, while less-established candidates failed to generate comparable support.
That suggests voters may want disruption with guardrails—change from a candidate they still view as credible, familiar or capable of governing.
Gasser reached a similar conclusion despite having preferred a candidate further to Bronin's left. He described Bronin as “a step in the right direction” and said Larson's defeat reflected a desire for “a new generation to take over in Washington and in Connecticut.”
The Connecticut result, in other words, may have rewarded the candidate who could offer change without asking most Democratic primary voters to make a larger ideological leap.
Klar offers an even stronger challenge to the thesis. If anti-establishment sentiment were truly overtaking ideology, she said, voters should be willing to back outsider candidates whose policy views do not match their own.
Generally, she said, that is not what happens.
“When it’s time to pick a representative, people prioritize the policies that matter the most and choose the candidate who best represents that position,” Klar said.
Those results make Tuesday something less than an anti-incumbent wave. Voters are still willing to choose experience, electability or familiar leadership. The better test of the anti-establishment theory is whether candidates perceived as institutional favorites consistently underperform what their money, endorsements and resumes would normally predict.
Hong's defeat fits that more limited interpretation: her candidacy did not prove Wisconsin Democrats had become socialists. Her near-victory showed that an explicitly socialist challenger could bring an establishment-backed rival to within half a point in one of America's most closely divided states.
What November Will Test
General elections will impose a different discipline because of the very nature of the procedure. Primary voters choose among candidates inside political coalitions, while November voters decide which coalition gets power. Electability, partisan loyalty and attitudes toward Trump could overwhelm the anti-establishment impulses visible in August.
Tuesday, nevertheless, offers campaigns a warning: calling an opponent "extreme" may carry less force when voters are dissatisfied with the institutions doing the labeling and calling someone an establishment candidate can work against a progressive in one race, a centrist in another and a Trump-backed Republican somewhere else.
Will the pattern survive beyond primaries? We will find out in November whether voters are merely venting in primaries or rewriting the rules of who gets to call themselves the outsider.
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