What Went Down During The May 24 Primary Elections

Nate, I take what you’re saying about pro-democracy candidates, but I don’t know if that’s the trend line tonight. It might also be that it’s really hard to beat incumbents. Paxton is a big time 2020 election denier and he had a very viable challenger in Texas Land Commissioner George P. Bush. That race isn’t remotely close, though.

I want to digest things a bit more, but if the role of the press is to “root for democracy” (I could write a long critique about what is and isn’t implied by that phrase) then I think it’s important to note that a lot of the more anti-democratic candidates didn’t perform well tonight, and that’s probably more important than the horse-race implications. As for Trump, I think there’s an argument to be made that his influence is waning, but I think a candidate like DeSantis is more likely to be the beneficiary of that than one like Pence.

All right, we’ve got some results from the GOP primary for Senate in Alabama worth reporting on now. With 13 percent of the expected vote in so far, Britt leads with 44 percent, not that far from the 50 percent threshold a candidate needs to avoid a runoff. And perhaps back from the dead, Brooks is in 2nd with 29 percent, followed by Durant with 24 percent. However, it does look like we have a fair bit of the vote in from Madison County in northern Alabama (home to Huntsville), which is Brooks’s turf in the House, so that might be overselling his strength at this point.