The Forward Party has released an end-of-year recap detailing its electoral activity, ballot access map, and overall organizational growth during 2025, providing a snapshot of where the party stands heading into the new year.
In a December 23 email to supporters, the party thanked volunteers and organizers while including a breakdown of its operations nationwide. The party reported 76 Forward-aligned elected officials serving across 24 states. Forward-aligned officials include those members of the Forward Affiliate program, which is for officeholders who may have been elected on another party’s ballot line or who continue to affiliate with another party while also openly identifying with the Forward Party.
The party said it received 371 candidate applications since January 1 and endorsed 70 total candidates during the year. Of those endorsed candidates, 26 ultimately won election. While the party did not release a full list of winners, Independent Political Report previously reported that 18 Forward-endorsed candidates were elected on the November ballot, the majority of them in Pennsylvania.
“2025 was the year Forward refined and scaled the model,” the email stated. “We didn’t just grow, we built real infrastructure: state leadership, ballot access, organizing capacity, and a candidate pipeline that proves independent-minded leadership isn’t a niche idea.”
As part of that growth, the party said its ballot access presence expanded to several new states. It reported new access in Arizona through its partnership with the Arizona Independent Party, as well as in Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, South Carolina, Utah, and Minnesota, with the latter two states seeing Forward affiliates merge with pre-existing political parties during the year. The party also said it holds some form of recognized political body or party status in California, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, and Texas.
The party identified Maryland, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Virginia as its strongest states in terms of leadership development and organizing capacity. It also pointed to several early 2026 cycle candidate endorsements as part of its recap, including independent gubernatorial candidates Rick Bennett in Maine and Lauren Pinkston in Tennessee. Among its recent winners, the party praised Jay Doyle for winning his mayoral race in Georgetown, South Carolina, on the Forward Party ballot line, and Danny Ceisler for his election as sheriff of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, also on the Forward line.
Beyond electoral activity, the party reported additional organizing metrics, including 250,232 total supporters nationwide, 26,566 volunteer sign-ups, and 1,572 unique donors since the start of 2025. The party did not specify how these figures were calculated, meaning the data is likely based on internal tracking.
The email also discussed growth within the party’s various internal committees, which it said now include “nearly 1,000 active members” across veterans and military families, women, young members, Black voters, and Hispanic and Latino voters. College chapters expanded to campuses including Rutgers University, Brigham Young University, Cornell University, Duke University, and others. The party added that new Asian American and Pacific Islander and Native American initiatives are also expected to launch in 2026.
“We’re entering the new year with clarity, confidence, and momentum,” the email continued. “There is more work to do — more candidates to recruit, more voters to reach, more barriers to break down — but we are stronger because of what we built together this year.”
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