Progressive organizations were forced to play defense in the 2024 primaries

Over the last six years, a wave of upstart progressives have slowly chipped away at the old guard of the Democratic Party, toppling more centrist or establishment-aligned incumbents and pushing the party as a whole further to the left. These skirmishes have been one of the defining stories of Democratic primaries since 2018. But newly energized challenges from pro-Israel groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee transformed much of the intraparty divide this year, forcing major progressive organizations to rethink their approach to primary season.

Each cycle since 2018, 538 has tracked congressional and gubernatorial candidates backed by progressive groups and leaders, as the national progressive movement transformed from a scrappy upstart campaign to a bona fide political machine, carefully calculating the most opportune districts and candidates to invest in. And now that over six months of downballot primary action has finally come to an end, we're taking a look at how progressive candidates (and the progressive organizations that supported them) performed in a cycle where they found themselves playing defense more than at any point since at least 2018.

Progressive organizations switched to their defensive playbooks this cycle

This year marked a dramatic change in the progressive movement's strategy. Gone are the days of insurgent left-wing challengers toppling longtime Democratic stalwarts. Now, many of those insurgents are incumbents themselves, and they faced challengers of their own this primary cycle, albeit from a different wing of the party. In response to this, progressive groups as a whole adjusted their strategies in 2024, focusing on protecting the gains they'd already made rather than seeking out new wins.

That's likely one reason many of the progressive individuals and groups that have been influential in past Democratic primaries were conspicuously quiet when it came to endorsements in open primaries this year. Justice Democrats, the organization that roared to life and endorsed dozens of progressive challengers in 2018, had focused its efforts on a smaller set of endorsements in elections since then, but didn't endorse any non-incumbents this cycle. Other groups and individuals that have boosted progressive candidates in open seats and against moderate incumbents in the past, like Indivisible, the Sunrise Movement and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, barely endorsed at all.

While we didn't formally track their endorsements in this cycle, Our Revolution and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, both major players in many past Democratic primaries, also appeared to take big pauses this year, endorsing just a small fraction of the number of non-incumbents they supported in 2022.

At first glance, this change might seem to signal a drop-off in activity or a lack of organization, but it was a conscious strategy by some progressive groups this year. Specifically, the threat of outside spending against progressive incumbents was so strong this year that it sucked progressive organizations' resources away from backing challengers to incumbents or in open races.

"Early on, we made a decision that we knew we were going to have to invest a lot of our resources into incumbent protection and defense against AIPAC," said Usamah Andrabi, a spokesperson for Justice Democrats.

But another factor at play was the fact that progressives have already targeted many of the most obvious districts for these kinds of primary fights — whether they won them or lost enough times that they stopped trying. "We also just didn't necessarily find the right districts with the right candidates," Andrabi said, getting at a perennial challenge for any political group: finding candidates with both a strong enough resume and a realistic shot of winning the district they'd be running in. "Every district is not a district that Justice Democrats is going to get involved in."

It's also possible these groups were reading the currents of public opinion, which are likely less favorable to insurgent progressive challengers than they were in 2018 and 2020. Public opinion tends to move against whichever party is in power, and after four years of a Democratic presidency (including two years of unified Democratic control), public sentiment as a whole has moderated.

Even among Democrats, some of the hunger on the left for change may have been satiated, as President Joe Biden managed to deliver on many progressive priorities with landmark legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act. Perhaps because of this, progressives in Congress have intentionally focused more on fostering unity within the party, hoping to draw a contrast with the bitterly divided Republican caucus. That leaves less space for insurgent challengers to find a foothold in the crowded fight for donations and media exposure.

In light of all of these factors, none of the major progressive groups we tracked endorsed any challenges to an incumbent and, for the first time since 2016, not a single Democratic incumbent lost their seat to a more progressive challenger.

In open races, progressives won some and lost some

Of course, major progressive groups weren't totally out of the endorsement game in 2024. Progressive candidates backed by these groups did run, and win, in some of the many open primary races this cycle that did not feature an incumbent. So, how did these candidates do? Did concentrating endorsements on a smaller group of candidates lead to a higher success rate?

It's complicated.

Some groups had solid track records this cycle, like the Working Families Party and the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC, who saw 59 and 78 percent of their endorsees, respectively, win their primaries.

We should be cautious about extrapolating too much from the data for other groups and individuals, though, since they only endorsed a handful of non-incumbents, and the tiny sample size makes comparisons across cycles and with other groups unreliable and somewhat misleading. Saying that two-thirds of Indivisible's endorsees won their primaries, for example, is less impressive considering that they only endorsed three candidates, and the two winners ran in uncompetitive races (the open primaries for Arizona's and New Jersey's U.S. Senate seats).

And the fact that both of Sanders's endorsees lost their primaries doesn't say all that much about the power of his endorsement in a closely contested race. While one of his endorsees, Susheela Jayapal, was a serious contender in Oregon's 3rd District, another, John H. Morse III, was a heavy underdog who never polled above 3 percent in any publicly released survey of his race in Maryland's 3rd District.

The types of races that progressive candidates won or lost, though, may be more telling of where the progressive movement stands compared to previous cycles. Even more so than in 2022, progressives faced well-funded opposition, particularly from pro-Israel groups. Both Jayapal and Morse, for example, lost out to candidates backed by heavy spending from groups like AIPAC and Democratic Majority for Israel — which also spent huge sums to help defeat incumbent "Squad" members Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, the only two incumbent Democrats in Congress who lost in the 2024 primary cycle.

A look at spending by the Congressional Progressive Caucus PAC and the Working Families Party, the biggest progressive endorsers and spenders in this cycle, shows just how much progressive resources were sucked into races that pitted them against these groups. Most of each group's downballot expenditures this cycle were spent on incumbent protection, along with considerable sums boosting former state Sen. Raquel Terán's unsuccessful primary campaign in Arizona's 3rd District. Terán lost to Yassamin Ansari, a Phoenix city council member and former vice mayor who drew significant support from DMFI along with more moderate and pro-crypto groups.

But overall, more than half of the progressive candidates in open races that we tracked this cycle still won their primaries, similar to 2022. Most of their victories came in uncontested or less competitive races, including some in safe-blue seats like California's 30th District, where Rep. Adam Schiff, a long-serving, establishment-oriented Democrat, is vacating his seat to run for U.S. Senate. While races like this may not have generated as much attention as the blockbuster Squad battles, each one is worth the same prize: a seat in Congress.

Notably, none of those progressive wins came at the expense of candidates backed by the party establishment. Open-seat clashes between progressives and DCCC-backed picks caused high drama in 2018 and 2020, but were effectively nonexistent in 2024. The two wings of the party even endorsed the same candidate in three swing districts currently held by Republicans (New Jersey's 7th, New York's 17th and New York's 19th Districts), signaling a unified front when it comes to targeting key pickup opportunities.

So while it was a tough year for the Squad, the progressive movement as a whole proved that it has staying power when it comes to its place in the Democratic Party. Several of the progressive candidates who won their primaries are almost certain to win their elections in November and play a role in shaping the party's direction.

And while investing more heavily on incumbent defense this cycle may have bogged them down a bit, progressive organizations have no plans to let up anytime soon, said Andrabi: "We're going full steam ahead next cycle."

Mary Radcliffe contributed research.