FiveThirtyEight
Sarah Frostenson Nathaniel Rakich Alex Samuels

Tonight was a mixed bag for former President Donald Trump’s endorsement record. Two of his preferred candidates lost their House races in Georgia, while his other two picks this evening prevailed: Rep. Ben Cline in Virginia’s 6th District easily cruised to renomination, and former Business Council of Alabama President Katie Britt won in the Alabama Senate primary runoff against Rep. Mo Brooks.

Overall, though, 94 percent of Trump’s endorsed candidates for Senate, House and governor have won their races — or put another way, 110 Trump-backed candidates out of 117 have won their primaries. But, as Zoha noted on the live blog, that win rate does drop among nonincumbents candidates. With this group, Trump is batting a 75 percent average since just 18 out of 24 nonincumbent candidates have prevailed.

Most notably, though, regardless of whether Trump’s candidates won or lost, Republicans who backed his fraudulent claims about the 2020 election have prevailed. According to our research, 52 percent of Republican nominees who have questioned the 2020 election or who say it was fraudulent have won their primaries so far, as Kaleigh noted earlier on the live blog.

At this point, there is just one key race where ABC News cannot report a winner at this time — Georgia’s 2nd District. In this district, it looks like Chris West is on track to defeat Jeremy Hunt, some national Republicans’ favored recruit. With about 70 percent of the expected vote in, West currently leads Hunt 52 percent to 48 percent. If West wins tonight, he will go on to face Democratic incumbent Rep. Sanford Bishop in November. And the general election will likely be one of Georgia’s most closely watched congressional races since redistricting made the district more competitive. As Nathaniel mentioned earlier on the live blog, though, West, who is white, might have a harder time making inroads with the district’s significantly Black voter base.


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