Trump’s endorsed candidates almost all won 2026 Republican primaries

Midterm Season Cements Trump’s Near-Flawless GOP Endorsement Track Record

Cybersecarmor.com – The 2026 midterm cycle has reinforced what has become one of President Donald Trump’s most frequently cited personal metrics: his ability to convert a public endorsement into an electoral victory among Republican primary voters. Two additional wins on Aug. 25 — in Oklahoma and South Carolina — pushed his cumulative endorsement success rate to roughly 97 percent across more than two decades of Republican primaries, a figure the White House now treats as a core talking point of the administration’s political brand.

The South Carolina result saw Darline Graham, sister of the late Sen. Lindsey Graham who died in July, secure the Republican Senate nomination in a runoff. In Oklahoma, former state Sen. Mike Mazzei captured the GOP gubernatorial primary. Both candidates carried Trump’s explicit backing into the ballot, and both prevailed.

“I supported and ENDORSED two so-called ‘underdogs’ yesterday, one from South Carolina, and the other from Oklahoma, and they BOTH WON,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Aug. 26.

The post followed a pattern the president has maintained throughout the cycle: lengthy celebratory messages on primary night, paired with stylized graphics showing cutout images of Trump alongside the endorsed candidate, overlaid with phrases such as “WINS!” and “ENDORSED BY PRESIDENT TRUMP!” The format has become a recognizable fixture of Republican primary coverage, signaling to the base that the president’s political machinery remains fully engaged even as the administration focuses on governance.

A Decade of Endorsement Data

On Aug. 25, Trump published a multi-year scoreboard on Truth Social, itemizing his endorsement outcomes across the 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024 Republican primary cycles as well as the 2026 races completed to date. The figures he cited were as follows:

In 2018, his endorsed candidates won 35 of 36 contests, a 97 percent rate. By 2020, the tally stood at 117 victories out of 120 endorsements (98 percent). The 2022 midterm produced 179 wins from 187 endorsements (96 percent), and the 2024 general-election-year primaries yielded 175 wins out of 178 races (98 percent). For 2026, a White House official told reporters the running total reached 256 endorsed candidates who had won out of 264 races decided.

An independent review of Ballotpedia data compiled for this story placed the 2026 figure slightly differently: 261 wins among 270 endorsed candidates in congressional and gubernatorial races. The White House did not share the specific list of endorsements underlying its own calculation when asked. The Ballotpedia dataset encompasses 285 total endorsements across Senate, House, and governor races, of which 270 had been tested at the time of review. The gap between the two tallies can be attributed to Ballotpedia’s inclusion of contests not yet held, candidates appearing only in general elections, and early endorsements for individuals who ultimately did not seek office — most notably Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullins, whom Trump backed for Senate reelection from Oklahoma before Mullins joined the administration.

Stripping out state-level executive and judicial endorsements, Trump’s congressional and gubernatorial success rate as of Aug. 26 sits at 96.7 percent. Including every category of state office drops the figure marginally to 95.7 percent.

“President Trump’s endorsement is the most powerful endorsement in the history of American politics,” Allison Schuster, a White House spokesperson, stated. “Anyone claiming otherwise is a complete and utter fool. The President’s record speaks for itself: out of more than 260 endorsements, the President has a 97% success rate.”

Where the Record Holds — and Where It Frays

At the federal level, the endorsement’s pull is nearly absolute. All 24 Trump-backed Senate candidates who faced primaries through Aug. 26 advanced to the general election. One additional Senate endorsement remains untested: a New Hampshire primary scheduled for Sept. 8.

In the House of Representatives, the president has accumulated 218 endorsement victories against just four defeats. Those four losses came from Michigan, Tennessee, and two separate Florida districts — a small but notable cluster that suggests geographic pockets where the base diverged from the president’s preferred slate.

Statewide races outside Washington, D.C., tell a more mixed story. Across governor contests, state executive offices (attorney general, lieutenant governor, commissioner roles), and state legislative races, the endorsement win rate falls to approximately 87 percent. The weakest segment is the governor’s office itself, where Trump’s record stands at 79 percent — 19 wins against five losses. Republican voters in Georgia, Iowa, Minnesota, South Carolina, and Wyoming chose candidates other than the president’s favored picks to carry the party ticket into the general election.

What Remains

Several primaries are still scheduled before November, and each one will either extend the streak or add another data point to the small minority of exceptions. For Trump, the endorsement has evolved from a campaign-season tactic into a permanent fixture of Republican politics — a signal to donors, activists, and voters that alignment with the president’s preferred candidate remains the single most reliable predictor of primary success in the party. Whether that predictive power will survive the handful of contests still on the calendar is the question the remaining weeks of the cycle will answer.