WASHINGTON – Five weeks before Election Day, the primaries for the midterms have proved this: Donald Trump is the unchallenged leader of the Republican Party.

And no one is the leader of the Democratic Party.

The leading edge of the Democratic Party – the non-incumbents who won congressional and gubernatorial primaries – are more likely than ever before to be younger, female and diverse in race and sexual orientation. Liberal challengers scored the most surprising upsets. That said, the emerging Democratic nominees are typically newcomers but not necessarily outsiders; many have elective experience and an establishment cast.

The leading edge of the Republican Party is distinctly Trumpian, overwhelmingly white and mostly male. President Trump’s endorsement propelled some long-shot contenders to win nominations, and almost no successful new GOP congressional candidate criticized the president. They seemed to follow a mother's maxim: If they didn’t have something nice to say about Trump – which a third of them did – they said nothing at all about him.

Both parties find themselves in a state of some flux as they approach an election in November that is likely to have big consequences. A redefined GOP is at risk of losing control of at least one house of Congress, and an energized Democratic Party is setting the stage for a wide-open brawl for the presidential nomination in 2020.

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Trump defines the Republicans – and the Democrats, at least for now.

“Regardless of where you are on the spectrum in the Democratic Party, you oppose Trump; it's a unifying theme,” said Jennifer Duffy of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. “But get down to the nitty-gritty of the party and what it stands for and what it wants to do, there are some very big divisions there.”

In the primaries that ended in September, the ideological divide between the two parties continued to widen, according to an analysis by Stanford political scientist Adam Bonica.

Based on a study of the ideological bent of their donors, he concluded that Democratic congressional candidates are moving left; Republican candidates are moving right. “Both parties are feeding off each other,” Bonica said.

The number in the middle continues to decline, signaling more of the polarization that has made everything from overhauling immigration laws to confirming a Supreme Court justice an increasingly difficult endeavor in Washington.

Trump's takeover

Less than two years after winning the White House in his first bid at elective office, Trump is the face of the GOP. A 54 percent majority of Republicans in a new Ipsos Public Affairs Poll identified him as the leader of the party – an especially impressive number given that the person ranked second, House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is not seeking re-election, was named by just 3 percent. Twenty-three percent said they didn't know.

The online Ipsos survey was taken Sept. 19 of 360 Republicans and 345 Democrats and has a credibility interval of +/-5.9 and 6 percentage points for the respective partisan samples.

Trump interjected himself in the 2018 Republican primaries in a way previous presidents generally haven’t, and the majority of candidates he endorsed ended up winning. He helped propel primary upsets in House races (including in Alabama, New York, South Carolina), Senate races (including Arizona) and gubernatorial races (including Georgia, Minnesota, Kansas).

In Kansas, Trump’s support helped Secretary of State Kris Kobach defeat incumbent Gov. Jeff Colyer for the gubernatorial nomination. In Minnesota, former two-term governor Tim Pawlenty outspent his opponent by about 3-1 but still lost the Republican primary to Hennepin County Commissioner Jeff Johnson, who embraced the president.

“The Republican Party has shifted,” Pawlenty said after the vote. “It is the era of Trump, and I’m just not a Trump-like politician.”

In 2016, Pawlenty called Trump “unhinged and unfit” after an "Access Hollywood" tape recorded him bragging about groping women. “Tim Pawlenty stuck his finger in the wind” by criticizing Trump then, Johnson said in his closing TV ad, which conveyed the final message he wanted voters to remember when they went to the polls: “I won’t panic when it matters.”

An analysis of congressional contenders by the Brookings Institution concluded that a third of the non-incumbent Republicans who won nominations praised Trump on their campaign websites. Slightly more than half didn't mention the president's name. Virtually none of them made clearly critical comments.

Republican orthodoxy – once defined by policies such as fiscal discipline, free trade and internationalism – increasingly reflects Trump’s brand of politics, including an appetite for tariffs as an economic weapon, a desire for tighter borders and less immigration and wariness toward the multinational frameworks that have been built since World War II.

“There are very few remnants of the party that the Tea Party railed against,” Duffy of The Cook Political Report said. “That sort of fiscal conservative, social moderate really doesn’t exist, perhaps outside of (Maine Sen.) Susan Collins, and I don’t think you can be a party of one.”

Trump’s shadow is likely to be more of a mixed blessing in the general election than it was in the GOP primaries, especially in states and districts that aren’t deep red. In Florida, Rep. Ron DeSantis won the Republican nomination for governor with Trump’s support, defeating establishment favorite Adam Putnam. In July, DeSantis aired a TV ad that showed him urging his toddler daughter to "build the wall" with her blocks as his infant son sported a “Make America Great Again” onesie.

But in September, DeSantis distanced himself from Trump when the president asserted that the death toll in Puerto Rico from Hurricane Maria had been inflated – an especially sensitive issue in Florida, where many Puerto Ricans fled, and can vote. DeSantis’ campaign released a statement saying, “He doesn’t believe any loss of life has been inflated.”

Trump was enraged, Politico reported.

Democrats: Undefined

The leader of the Democratic Party?

Don’t ask Democrats. One in three Democrats replied “don’t know” when asked to name the party’s leader, the most frequent response given in the new Ipsos poll, and 13 percent said the party didn’t have a leader.

That’s not unusual for the party that doesn’t hold the White House. It does underscore the wide-open landscape for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. As a result, dozens of prominent Democrats – senators and governors and mayors and business executives and a former vice president, among others – are considering presidential bids. Even the biggest names scored only in single digits as the party's leader: Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders at 5 percent, former Vice President Joe Biden at 3 percent, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren at 1 percent.

In the poll, former President Barack Obama fared best, albeit cited by just 14 percent. The 2016 presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, was named by 6 percent. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was cited by 9 percent and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer by 4 percent. Democratic National Chairman Tom Perez – who actually is the leader of the party, technically speaking – was named by just 1 percent.

That adds up to a party that’s up for grabs and trending left.

There were shock waves when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, a Democratic socialist, ousted 10-term incumbent Joe Crowley for the Democratic nomination in the New York primary. That was followed in short order by a similar upset in the Massachusetts primary, when Ayanna Pressley, 44, defeated another 10-term incumbent, Michael Capuano.

Both victories over long-established congressmen with liberal voting records reflected Democratic urgency and a desire to shake things up. While Trump is president, Pressley told voters, “change can’t wait.” A campaign video for Ocasio-Cortez that went viral was titled "The Courage to Change."

Both women were part of a wave of more diverse Democratic contenders.

Ocasio-Cortez is Puerto Rican, and Ayanna Pressley is African-American; both defeated Anglo men. In Florida, Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum won the Democratic gubernatorial nomination over two better-funded white candidates; he is the first African-American nominated for governor by a major party in Florida. Christine Hallquist became the first openly transgender person to win a gubernatorial nomination, in Vermont. Two Muslim women, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, won primaries in solidly Democratic districts and are poised to be elected to the House next month.

Women won nominations everywhere, mostly as Democrats. Rutgers' Center for American Women and Politics reported that a record 235 women were nominated for the House, a record 22 for the Senate and a record 16 for governor.

In Michigan, Democrats nominated female candidates for governor, secretary of state and attorney general, as well as for the U.S. Senate and in two contested House races. Gretchen Whitmer, a former leader in the state Senate, won the gubernatorial nomination over a candidate endorsed by Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez.

Though liberal challengers scored the biggest upsets, establishment Democrats such as Whitmer fared a bit better in Democratic primaries overall. In swing congressional districts, the Democratic nominee was more likely to be an establishment or moderate Democrat, the Brookings analysis found. A relatively large number of liberal candidates were nominated in solidly Republican districts where winning will be difficult.

Even so, the Democratic primaries signaled a more liberal party ahead.

“The total number of votes cast for progressive candidates in the primaries appears to have increased substantially over previous election cycles," Stanford's Bonica said. “If you have this group of candidates run for office and they’re energized, it’s much more likely that they’re going to try again. It’s very common for politicians really serious about a career in politics to lose their first race before going on to winning.”

That includes Barack Obama, he noted. And George W. Bush.