AP Decision Notes: What to expect in the Washington, DC, primary

WASHINGTON (AP) — Washington, D.C., on Tuesday will hold a districtwide primary for federal and local offices that will be unlike any election the nation’s capital has previously held.

The primary takes place against a uniquely complex backdrop. Residents are contending with an unprecedented level of ongoing federal intervention by President Donald Trump in how the district looks and functions. A rare combination of open seats in top offices has caused a ripple effect down the ballot. And local election officials are rolling out a new ranked choice voting system.

The competitive Democratic primary field for mayor includes Ward 4 Councilwoman Janeese Lewis George, former At-Large Councilman Kenyan McDuffie and five others. Their key endorsements suggest the fault lines that have formed between the party’s establishment and its more progressive wing.

Lewis George has endorsements from four of her fellow council members, including at-large member Robert White, who is running for U.S. delegate to Congress. She also has the backing of several progressive organizations including the Working Families Party, the Metro D.C. Democratic Socialists of America and Our Revolution, a political committee affiliated with allies of independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats.

McDuffie’s endorsements include former Mayors Sharon Pratt and Anthony Williams, outgoing At-Large Councilwoman Anita Bonds, former longtime Councilwomen Charlene Drew Jarvis and Linda Cropp, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and former Democratic National Committee Chairmen Tom Perez and Jaime Harrison.

Although retiring three-term Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser hasn’t made an official endorsement in the race, she has made her preferences clear. In 2025, she said at an Economic Club event that “if you like me, you’re going to love Kenyon, wink, wink,” according to NBC4 Washington. And at a June Axios Live event, she said, “I support Kenyon McDuffie, and I have always supported Kenyon McDuffie,” although she added she was not making an endorsement.

Bowser has walked a political tightrope since Trump’s return to office in 2025, balancing her role as the elected leader of a heavily Democratic city with only limited ability to self-govern. Her measured approach has drawn criticism from progressives who advocate for a more vigorous response to Trump's Republican administration. On the campaign trail, Lewis George has made veiled barbs against unnamed leaders for “complying in advance” and who “shrink in the face of injustice.”

Trump weighed in on the race on Thursday, saying he would consider a federal takeover of the District of Columbia if Lewis George becomes the next mayor, a variation of a threat he has made since the early days of his second term.

In the race for D.C.’s non-voting seat in Congress, White, Ward 2 Councilwoman Brooke Pinto and three others are competing to replace retiring 18-term Democratic U.S. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton.

Norton’s and Bowser's retirements mark the first time since 1990 that both the mayor’s office and the congressional seat are open in the same year. Their decisions triggered a chain reaction of open seats as incumbent district council members and others jockey for higher office.

Washington is overwhelmingly Democratic. The city has almost 15 times more Democrats than Republicans and has never gone for a Republican presidential candidate since it gained the vote in 1964.

But the general election landslides tend to obscure fairly wide socio-economic gulfs within the district’s boundaries. For example, Ward 3 in the affluent upper Northwest has the city’s largest white majority, the highest median income and the lowest poverty rate. Ward 8 in Southeast has the city’s largest Black majority, the lowest median income and the highest poverty rate.

When Bowser first won the Democratic mayoral primary in 2014, she carried the five westernmost wards, while incumbent Mayor Vincent Gray carried Wards 5, 7 and 8 to the east.

White’s only competitive council primary in 2016 also showed an east-west divide. He carried Wards 1, 2, 3 and 6 to the west and ran almost even in Ward 4 to the north. When he challenged Bowser for mayor in 2022, he carried only Ward 1, which is in the center of the district and includes the neighborhoods of Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights and Mount Pleasant and the U Street Corridor.

In McDuffie’s successful 2022 council race, when he won the second of two at-large seats at stake, his strongest performances were in the northwesternmost parts of Wards 3 and 4.

The primary marks the first time the city will use a ranked choice voting system, in which voters rank the candidates in order of preference. If no candidate receives a majority of first-choice votes, the candidate in last place is dropped, and votes cast for that candidate are reallocated among the rest of the field according to the preferences of the dropped candidate’s voters. This process repeats until one candidate emerges with a majority of votes.

Here are some of the key facts about the election and data points the AP Decision Team will monitor as the votes are tallied:

Polls close at 8 p.m. ET.

The Associated Press will provide vote results and declare winners in contested primaries for U.S. Delegate to Congress, mayor, attorney general and district council. There is also a special election to fill a vacant at-large council seat.

Voters registered with a political party may participate only in their own party’s primary. Democrats may not vote in the Republican primary or vice versa. Independent or unaffiliated voters may not participate in either primary.

As of May 31, there were about 481,000 registered voters in Washington, D.C. More than three-quarters of them, about 363,000, were registered Democrats. Roughly 25,000, or 5%, were registered Republicans, and about 18%, or roughly 86,000, were not affiliated with any party.

About 127,000 Democrats voted in the 2022 mayoral primary, or roughly 26% of registered voters. About 92,000 Democrats voted in the 2024 primary for U.S. delegate.

About 78% of all voters in the 2024 primary cast their ballots early in-person or by mail. That was slightly higher than the 76% who used the same methods in the 2022 primary.

As of Wednesday, about 35,000 ballots had already been cast in Tuesday’s election.

Results from early in-person and mail voting are usually released throughout the night along with results from in-person Election Day voting.

Election night results will not include totals from mail ballots received on Election Day by mail or by ballot drop boxes or from mail ballots received after Election Day with the necessary postmark.

In the 2022 primary election, the AP first reported results at 8:30 p.m. ET, or 30 minutes after polls closed. The last vote update of the night was at 11:59 p.m. ET, with about 69% of total votes counted.

In contests in which the ranked choice voting process is triggered, only the results of voters’ first choices will be reported on election night. Results from subsequent rounds of vote-counting are expected by June 21 and June 24, with final round-by-round results expected on or after June 26. The certification of the election is expected on July 17.

The AP does not make projections and will declare a winner only when it’s determined there is no scenario that would allow a trailing candidate to close the gap. If a race has not been called, the AP will continue to cover any newsworthy developments, such as candidate concessions or declarations of victory. In doing so, the AP will make clear that it has not yet declared a winner and explain why.

Recounts are automatic in D.C. elections for federal offices, mayor, attorney general and district council, among others, if the margin is less than 1% of the total vote. Candidates may also request and pay for a recount regardless of the vote margin. The AP may declare a winner in a race that is subject to a recount if it can determine the lead is too large for a recount or legal challenge to change the outcome.

As of Tuesday, there will be 140 days until the 2026 midterm elections.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2026 election at https://apnews.com/projects/elections-2026/.

Campaign signs are posted on lamp post, Sunday, June 7, 2026, in Washington, ahead of the city’s primary election. (AP Photo/Tallulah Brown Van Zee)

Campaign signs are posted on a lamp posts in the Logan Circle neighborhood of Washington, Sunday, June 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Tallulah Brown Van Zee)

Campaign signs are posted in the U Street Corridor of Washington, Sunday, June 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Tallulah Brown Van Zee)

A hand-made campaign sign is posted outside the Lincoln Theatre and Ben’s Chili Bowl in the U Street Corridor of Washington, Sunday, June 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Tallulah Brown Van Zee)

NEW YORK (AP) — Stock markets are rallying worldwide Monday, and oil prices are easing after the United States and Iran reached a tentative deal to extend their ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz to get the global flow of crude going again.

The S&P 500 rose 1.9% on hopes that this time, the announcement of an Iran-U.S. agreement will mean a long-term fix to a conflict that has worsened inflation around the world. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 705 points, or 1.4%, as of 1:32 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 3% higher.

Stocks got a lift after the price for a barrel of Brent crude oil fell 4.8% to $83.14, back to where it was in early March. While that’s still higher than its price of roughly $70 from before the war more than three months ago, it’s lower than the $100 plus it cost just a few weeks ago. The hope is that lower oil prices will take pressure off households and businesses, which have had to pay higher prices for everything from food to fuel to fertilizer because of the war with Iran.

Iran confirmed the agreement but signaled its implementation would not start until it’s signed, which Pakistan said would happen Friday in Switzerland. Broader negotiations on issues like Iran’s nuclear program are expected to continue over the next 60 days. That leaves opportunity for hiccups that could derail the agreement. And even if the deal does reopen the Strait of Hormuz, it will take months for the energy industry to get back to full speed.

For now, though, relief swept through financial markets worldwide.

On Wall Street, stocks of companies with big fuel bills were instant winners. United Airlines flew 4.7% higher, American Airlines climbed 3.3% and cruise operator Carnival rose 3.6%.

Stocks of companies enmeshed in the artificial-intelligence industry also jumped. These stocks have yo-yoed sharply in recent weeks, going from roaring to records to suddenly turning lower. The big concern is whether such stocks shot too high, too fast because of AI mania, and their careening moves have sometimes reversed direction by the hour.

Micron Technology rallied 9.8%, and Advanced Micro Devices rose 7.2%. Nvidia’s climb of 3.6% was the strongest force pushing the S&P 500 upward because the AI chip company is Wall Street’s most valuable company, giving it more weight on the index than any other.

SpaceX, Elon Musk’s rocket company that also owns the AI company xAI, rose 14.2% in its second day of trading on Wall Street. Its successful debut on the Nasdaq suggested plenty of demand still exists among investors for AI. The market has given SpaceX a total value of more than $2.1 trillion, making it bigger than Exxon Mobil, Bank of America and Coca-Cola combined.

In the bond market, Treasury yields eased on hopes that lower oil prices will remove pressure on central banks worldwide to raise interest rates.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.47% from 4.48% late Friday.

Europe’s central bank last week became the first major one in the world to raise interest rates to combat high inflation. High interest rates can keep a lid on inflation, but they also slow economies and undercut prices for all kinds of investments, including stocks and cryptocurrencies. They hit investments seen as the most expensive in particular, and some critics are calling the AI industry a bubble where investment inflated too far.

The Fed will announce its latest decision on interest rates later this week, which will be the first under its new chair, Kevin Warsh. President Donald Trump nominated Warsh to the position, and Trump has been loudly calling for lower interest rates.

But traders see it as a near certainty that the Fed will leave its main interest rate steady after its two-day meeting ends Wednesday. Traders had been raising bets that the Fed may actually have to raise interest rates this year because of how high inflation has gotten and how solid the U.S. job market remains.

But the tentative deal between the United States and Iran means traders are now betting on only a 58% chance of a hike this year, down from 71% a week ago, according to data from CME Group.

Elsewhere on Wall Street, Roku fell 0.9% after the company announced that Fox Corp. is buying the streaming pioneer in a cash-and-stock deal valued at approximately $22 billion.

Roku's stock had already soared 20% Friday, when early media reports emerged about a deal, which will give Fox access to the Roku channel, first-party data and more than 100 million global streaming households. Fox's stock fell 16.1%.

In stock markets abroad, indexes climbed in Asia and Europe. Japan’s Nikkei 225 jumped 5% for one of the world’s biggest gains and finished at a record.

“This is great news,” said Takashi Hiroki, chief strategist at Monex. “Buying by foreign investors is leading the market with expectations of easing tensions around the situation in the Middle East.”

South Korea’s Kospi surged even more, 5.2%, thanks in part to continued rallies for AI winners like Samsung Electronics.

London's FTSE 100 was an outlier and slipped 0.4%.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach and Senior Producer Mayuko Ono contributed to this report.

Options trader, and New York Knicks fan Ousama Fayek works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, June 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Options trader, and New York Knicks fan Ousama Fayek works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, June 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Trader Daniel Kryger, left, works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, June 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Trader Patrick Casey works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, June 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Specialist Gregg Maloney works at his post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Richard Drew)

Currency traders watch monitors at the foreign exchange dealing room of the Hana Bank headquarters in Seoul, South Korea, Friday, June 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Ahn Young-joon)

A dealer walks past a screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, June 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)