An unprecedented number of candidates in this year’s midterms are running outside of the two-party system. What’s more, a lot of them could win.
“Our republic has become a political industry dominated by two major corporations, the Republican and Democratic parties,” says South Dakota US Senate candidate Brian Bengs, a retired Air Force officer who has gained considerable traction as an independent challenger to Mike Rounds, a two-term Republican incumbent in one of the reddest states in the country.
Bengs isn’t alone in his frustration with the two-party system. A record number of US voters currently identify as independents: 45 percent, up from 34 percent in 2006, according to a Gallup analysis. Nor is Bengs alone in his bet that rejecting the two big parties is a route to electoral success. An unprecedented number of major candidates are running as independents in the 2026 midterms. Independent Voter News, the tribune of outside-the-box politics, reports that “2026 is seeing one of the largest surges of interest in independent candidates in recent memory.”
This creates a challenge for Democrats, but not as much as it does for the GOP—because most of these contenders have Donald Trump’s increasingly unpopular agenda, and the Republicans who back it without question, squarely in their sights.
America has always had its share of independent and third-party candidates coming from the left, center, and right. But longtime observers say that what’s happening this year feels different. Independents, often with antiestablishment critiques that echo those of US Senator Bernie Sanders, are securing ballot lines from Idaho to Mississippi and beyond.
Why now? Look no further than the bitter experience of Democrats in vast stretches of the West and the Deep South, where competitive statewide elections are increasingly rare. You can drive from the Mississippi River to Oregon, or trace a line from the Canadian to the Mexican border, without passing through a state with a Democratic senator. Some states haven’t elected a Senate Democrat in a generation or more—20 years in Nebraska, 52 years in Idaho, 56 years in Wyoming. That political stagnation has national consequences. A small minority of senators can block constitutional amendments to end gerrymandering or get big money out of politics. Senators from 21 states can band together to sustain a filibuster against popular legislation to feed hungry children or expand the reach of organized labor. And in a year when control of the Senate could be decided by the narrowest of margins, one state could determine whether Trump can add another right-wing judicial activist to the Supreme Court or maintain his war with Iran. If advocates for fairness and accountability cannot compete in whole swaths of the country simply because the Democratic Party’s “brand” has lost its flavor, then the project of upending Trumpism faces high hurdles.
Sanders, the longest-serving independent senator in US history, notes that “there are probably 10, 15 states where the Democratic Party virtually doesn’t exist—despite the fact that there are great progressive activists out there, great working-class activists out there, great trade unionists out there, people who are fighting for justice in every state in this country. And they largely have been ignored” by national Democratic Party donors and leaders. But it also runs deeper than that. In many states, the Democratic “brand” has been so battered that, even with resources and good ideas, the party’s candidates struggle to get their campaigns off the ground.
This is the challenge that Bengs faced in his first Senate bid in 2022, when the lifelong independent decided to run as a Democrat against future Republican Senate majority leader John Thune. Bengs tried to focus on issues where voters were dissatisfied with the GOP. But even when he had a positive encounter, he’d run into the same hurdle. “I’d say, ‘Can I count on your vote in November?’ And the first words out of their mouth were generally, ‘So what are ya?’ And then I would respond, ‘Well, I’m a lifelong independent, but I’m running as a Democrat,’” Bengs recalls. For a reply, “I would get ‘I’ll never vote for a Democrat’—sometimes with an expletive in there as well. And that was it.” Bengs lost by 43 points, carrying just three of South Dakota’s 66 counties. That wipeout was pretty typical in a state that has not elected a Democratic governor since 1974 and where, this year, Democrats have filed to run for just 46 of 105 legislative seats.
The experience convinced Bengs that “I would never do again what I did in 2022. That was just draining and soul-sucking and just beating my head against the wall.” So the lawyer and former college professor struck out on his own, to the vexation of the South Dakota Democratic Party. Now Bengs says he will not caucus with either major party if he’s elected, arguing that “party politics is responsible for our broken government.” Instead, he promises to fight for systemic change to a “zero-sum, winner-take-all political system…where defeating the other party is what matters most.”
The Supreme Court’s destruction of campaign-finance regulations and the rise of unaccountable super-PAC spending has only made it more difficult for outsider candidates to break through. “The Big Money interests funding this partisan warfare are happy with the current political system and its insatiable demand for more of their money, which gives them greater control of elected officials and thus the government,” Bengs states on his campaign website. “Big Money uses this corrupting influence to protect and increase wealth and power for themselves by undermining the political relevance of regular voters.”
That kind of talk is being heard all over the Western United States this year. Many of the independent candidates—including the most prominent, former union leader Dan Osborn, who came close to winning Nebraska’s Senate race in 2024 and is running again in 2026—have been motivated by their deeply rooted nonpartisan convictions. Others are former Democrats. The National Republican Senatorial Committee calls candidates like Osborn “fake Independents who would push liberal Democratic policies in the Senate.”
But many of these independent candidates have taken a tougher line on immigration and gun rights than Democrats in coastal states. Some run to the left of Democrats and Republicans on economics, while others sample from the left, right, and center—often with a dash of libertarianism thrown in. What unites the independents is a recognition that dropping the “D” label makes it easier to build prairie-populist coalitions and defeat the GOP. They are also generally more sympathetic to term limits and much more critical of Democratic leaders such as Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer.
Following Osborn’s dramatically stronger-than-expected finish in 2024, Sanders argued that his campaign was a model for future candidates. “He took on both political parties. He took on the corporate world. He ran as a strong trade unionist. Without party support, getting heavily outspent, he got through to working-class people all over Nebraska,” Sanders said.
After Democrats suffered severe setbacks in the 2024 election, Sanders told The Nation that it was time for the party and progressives to recognize that “where it is more advantageous to run as an independent, outside of the Democratic primary process, we should do that.”
That’s easier said than done. While some Democrats have accepted the notion, others reject it. Osborn is well positioned in Nebraska, where his bid has been embraced by the state Democratic Party. Party chair Jane Kleeb said on X, “We believe a coalition of Dems, Indys and Republicans can beat [GOP incumbent Pete] Ricketts and break up the one-party rule. We like the odds of a mechanic vs a billionaire.” In July, Nebraska Democratic Senate nominee Cindy Burbank dropped out to clear the way for Osborn, just as Alaska Democratic House candidate Matt Schultz quit and endorsed independent Bill Hill. But in South Dakota, Democrats are actively supporting their own candidate, former state trooper Julian Beaudion, against Bengs. This is also the case with the Montana independent Seth Bodnar, who is backed by several prominent Democrats but still faces a Democratic rival as well as a Trump-backed Republican in November.
