May06

electoral-vote.com

Dem 47

   

GOP 53

A Good Night for Trump?

There were a bunch of primaries yesterday. Here are the most important results:

• Indiana state Senate: There were seven Republicans in the Indiana state Senate who dashed Donald Trump's redistricting dreams, and Trump vowed to take revenge against them. He was largely successful; five of his targets were defeated, one race is too close to call, and only one target definitely survived. The five losers were defeated by 52, 30, 24, 18 and 18 points. The uncalled race is split right down the middle, 50-50. And the one survivor won by 17.
  
  So, big win for Trump, right? Yes, in the sense that he went (at least) 5-1, and the 5 were all blowouts. This, in turn, will send the message to other Republicans that they cross him at their own peril. That said, Trump and his allies threw millions of dollars at races that would often involve spending in the five, or maybe six, figures. That is not going to be replicable at scale, say in November, when there are thousands of races at various levels. And if Trump & Co. were convinced that his endorsement/dis-endorsement was enough, they would not have lavished all those millions on a bunch of relatively small and not terribly important races.
  
  
• Michigan state Senate: It's not too often that we start these election roundups with two state Senate items in a row, but that's where the news was last night. While the Republicans—or, at least, Trump—got good news in Indiana, they got bad news in Michigan. Rep. Kristen McDonald Rivet (D) won the state Senate seat that she previously occupied (SD-35) by 6 points in 2024, while Kamala Harris won the district by one point. Yesterday, in the special election to replace Rivet, Chedrick Greene (D) crushed Jason Tunney (R) by 20 points, 59% to 39%. That's obviously a swing of 14 points from the previous state Senate election and a swing of 19 points from the presidential election. So, the Democrats continue their general trend of overperforming in special elections. Meanwhile, the victory means that the blue team remains the majority party in the upper chamber of the Michigan legislature, 19-18.
  
  
• IN-01: At D+1, this is Indiana's only competitive House district (for comparison purposes, the next most competitive is the R+8 IN-05, and all the others are double-digit red, except for the one that's double-digit blue). Rep. Frank Mrvan (D), who is in his third term, will face off again Porter County Commissioner Barb Regnitz (R). Mrvan seems to be a good fit for the district; despite its near-even partisan lean, he's won the district (under its current boundaries) by 6 and 8 points. Regnitz is pretty Trumpy; all her platform planks are present in the form of "Make America/Americans __________ Again," such as "Make Americans Educated Again" and "Make America Armed Again." That, by contrast, seems a poor fit for a D+1 district.
  
  
• OH-01: Rep. Greg Landsman (D) has represented this district for two terms. Unfortunately for him, redistricting took the district from one that Trump lost by 6 points to one that he would have won by 2.5. The Republican who will try to knock Landsman off is Eric Conroy, a former Air Force and CIA officer who is MAGA-ish, but not as fanatical about it as some. Given the benefits of incumbency, as well as the current political milieu, Landsman is the favorite.
  
  
• OH-07: This R+5 district, represented by Max Miller (R), is right on the edge of "swing" territory. Miller, who is one of only two Jewish Republicans in Congress (Rep. David Kustoff of Tennessee is the other), won his first two elections in this district by 11, and then 15, points. That seems a tough hill to climb, blue wave or not. The person who will try it is union ironworker Brian Poindexter, who won a three-way primary by taking 37% of the vote.
  
  
• OH-09: Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D) was unopposed, but she found out yesterday that she'll face off in November against former state Rep. Derek Merrin (R). On one hand, the district is R+3 and Kaptur eked out a 1-point win in 2024, when the relatively moderate Merrin was also her opponent. On the other hand, there were presidential coattails in 2024, whereas this year is looking like a blue wave year. Perhaps even more importantly, Kaptur's demise has been predicted many times before, and yet she's been winning House elections in this part of Ohio since 1982. So while Cook has this as a "toss up," we think she's a pretty clear favorite.
  
  
• OH-10: Rep. Mike Turner (R) is serving his eleventh term in Congress, and his sixth representing this R+3 district, which he won by 19, 23 and 16 points in his last three elections. He's got some baggage, namely accusations of self-dealing and a habit of avoiding town halls entirely. The person who will try to make hay out of that baggage is Kristina Knickerbocker (D), a nurse practitioner and Air Force veteran who has built her campaign around kitchen table and women's health issues. She triumphed yesterday in a 6-way field with 33% of the vote.
  
  
• OH-13: Rep. Emilia Sykes (D) has been representing this EVEN district since 2023. She won a close one in 2024, by 2 points, and a slightly less close on in 2022, by 5 points. She'll face Carey Coleman; he is a former weatherman who now hosts a right-wing radio show. She is Black, and he (and 75% of the district) is white, so forgive us for predicting there will be more than a few dog whistles deployed during this campaign.
  
  
• OH-15: Rep. Mike Carey (R) is a prodigious fundraiser and, by virtue of the demographics of his district, is Congress #1 cheerleader for... Albanians. He might well have John Belushi's vote, if Belushi hadn't been dead for 40+ years. Carey will try to defend his R+4 district against Don Leonard (D), who took 52.9% of the vote in a head-to-head primary. Leonard stepped down from a professorship at Ohio State University to run for this seat, and is running a blue-collar, "I was raised by a single mother" campaign. Carey won by 13 in 2024, but by 6 in the last midterm, so he might be vulnerable in a wave election.
  
  
• The Big Offices: There were some important offices up last night, but relatively little drama, because the field was either effectively clear, or actually clear, for the favorites. Still, we will note that the Ohio governor's race is now officially Vivek Ramaswamy (R) vs. Amy Acton (D) and the Ohio U.S. Senate race is now officially Sen. Jon Husted (R) vs. Sherrod Brown (D).

Next week, it's Nebraska, where there is one interesting race (NE-02) and West Virginia, where there are zero interesting races. Things don't really get cooking again until May 19, when there are a whole bunch of states voting, and a long list of key races to be decided. (Z)