May22

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Voters in Five States Cast Ballots

Two states had full primary slates yesterday, including president. Two more states had partial slates, and a fifth had a runoff. Here are the most notable results:

• President: This is the first set of primary results in a while where Nikki Haley did not have a decent showing, although that comes with a bit of an asterisk. Trump took 84.9% of the vote in Kentucky, which is very red in presidential elections, to 6.4% for Haley. And Haley was not on the ballot in Oregon, so Trump won by default there.
  
  As to Joe Biden, he got 71.3% of the vote in Kentucky, as compared to 17.9% for uncommitted, 6.1% for Marianne Williamson and 4.8% for Dean Phillips. And in Oregon, he got 88.4% of the vote, as compared to 6.8% for Williamson and 4.7% for write-in candidates. We don't know exactly who was voting for all those other options in Kentucky, but the type of folks Kentucky Democrats tend to be (i.e., centrists) are voters Biden really needs. So, while he's never going to win Kentucky, the result there is a little concerning for him.
  
  
• GA-02: There were 28 House seats on yesterday's ballots (29 if you count the runoff in California). Of those, only 4 seats are actually competitive. And the only competitive seat from yesterday that is NOT in Oregon is the D+3 GA-02. There, Rep. Sanford Bishop (D-GA) will have to wait for a runoff to see which Republican between Wayne Johnson (44.4% of the vote) and Chuck Hand (32.1%) he will face. Johnson is running a more polished campaign, and is a bit Trumpier. Hand is running a blue-collar, bargain-basement campaign, and is also plenty Trumpy. Anyhow, we will learn on June 18 what happens when the GOP picks between their Johnson and their Hand. Either way, Bishop has been winning elections here since 1992 (15 in total), so he'll be the overwhelming favorite, despite the competitive nature of the district.
  
  
• OR-04: Rep. Val Hoyle (D-OR) had a long career in Oregon state politics (and activism) before winning this D+4 seat back in 2022. Her opponent will be Monique DeSpain, whose main issue is border security. After all, it's only about 200 miles from the Canadian border to Oregon; we assume those hordes of maple-syrup-carrying 'Nades are what she's on about. Her website also lists 16 other priorities, none of which has anything to do with abortion access. We therefore have a pretty good guess as to what issue Hoyle will campaign on, and we also don't think that this seat is particularly in danger.
  
  
• OR-05: This race, by contrast, will be a battle royale. OR-05 is D+2, and it's currently held by Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who first won it in 2022 and who was unopposed yesterday. The Democratic establishment really, really wanted state Rep. Janelle Bynum, who is Black and moderate, and they got her over the more progressive Jamie McLeod-Skinner, who lost to Chavez-DeRemer in 2022. The final tally was 69.8% for Bynum to 30.2% for McLeod-Skinner.
  
  For reasons we cannot quite discern, virtually every story about this race notes, often in the headline, that in addition to her public service, Bynum owns four McDonald's locations. We guess that means she has something in common with Donald Trump, namely that they are both fans of Big Macs. Of course, there's also one big difference between them, too—Bynum's business actually makes money.
  
  
• OR-06: The last competitive seat is the D+4 OR-06, currently held by Rep. Andrea Salinas (D-OR), who cruised to victory with 88% of the vote. Like the holders of the other competitive Oregon seats, she first won in 2022. She will be opposed by Mike Erickson, who won the Republican primary easily, with 75% of the vote. He lost this seat by 2.5 points in 2022, and he lost two other runs for the House before that.
  
  Erickson is also basing his campaign around border control, and while we joked about Canadians above, the fact is that Oregon has a serious fentanyl problem. If a person buys the largely dishonest argument (which both Erickson and DeSpain are making) that the fentanyl is being smuggled across the border by undocumented immigrants, then Oregon does indeed have a border security problem. But the truth is that 86% of fentanyl is smuggled by U.S. citizens, and 96% comes through legal border entry points. The image of a brown-skinned man sprinting across the Sonoran Desert with a backpack full of fentanyl might make for good propaganda, but it has virtually nothing to do with reality. Still, there are plenty of reality-challenged people out there, aided by the Foxes and Newsmaxes of the world, so this one could end up being competitive, as it was 2 years ago.
  
  
• CA-20: CA-20, by contrast, is R+16, and is not competitive at all. In fact, because of the way California does things, it was a Republican vs. Republican runoff for the seat that had been held by Kevin McCarthy. As expected, McCarthy's preferred candidate Vince Fong won in a walk, with 60.1% of the vote to 39.9% for Mike Boudreaux. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will have a majority of 5 (218-213) once Fong is sworn in.
  
  
• Fulton County DA: It would seem that the Democratic voters of Fulton County have no concerns about DA Fani Willis, as they handed her a crushing victory in her primary over progressive challenger Christian Wise Smith, 87% to 13%. Given how blue the voter base is, she will win a second term easily.
  
  
• Georgia Superior Court: Similarly, Judge Scott McAfee won a full 4-year term yesterday, dispatching Robert Patillo, 83% to 17%. The election was ostensibly nonpartisan, but it is no secret that McAfee is a moderate Republican and Patillo is a fairly liberal Democrat. In any case, if McAfee's handling of the Trump election fraud case was being affected in any way by political concerns, then those are now in abeyance.

That's it for now. The next big night on the election calendar is June 4, when Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico and South Dakota will have full-blown primaries, while Iowans will vote for U.S. House candidates and D.C. will hold its Democratic presidential primary. (Z)