What Went Down In The June 12 Primary Elections

Friends, the moment has come for this live blog to bid you farewell. If you, like me, want to relive the fun again and again, you can read all our posts about elections and which state is the best below. Or you can just read this summary of tonight’s contests (and check out Nate's thoughts just below this post):

• In Virginia, unapologetic Trumpist Corey Stewart narrowly won the Republican nomination for Senate. This is pretty bad news for the national GOP, which is worried that a controversial nominee like Stewart could drag down the party brand statewide, where they have up to four vulnerable House seats. In one of those House seats, the 10th District, Democrats nominated establishment favorite Jennifer Wexton, while incumbent Rep. Barbara Comstock beat back a conservative primary challenger by just 22 percentage points -- a weaker than expected showing.
• In South Carolina, Mark Sanford has conceded (basically) his Republican primary in the 1st District to state Rep. Katie Arrington, who accused Sanford of being too critical of President Trump. He’s the second Republican member of Congress to lose a primary so far this cycle. In the Republican primary for governor, there will be a runoff in two weeks between incumbent Henry McMaster and conservative businessman John Warren.
• Nothing is officially over yet in Maine, but ranked-choice voting is probably here to stay. Question 1, a referendum to keep the new form of vote-counting, is currently passing by double digits. It doesn’t look like ranked-choice voting will even factor into the Republican primary for governor or Democratic primary for the 2nd Congressional District, in which Shawn Moody and Jared Golden, respectively, appear to have captured outright majorities. But we’ll get to see ranked-choice voting in action in the Democratic primary for governor next week, when the secretary of state counts and reallocates all the second-, third-, etc. place votes.
• And in Nevada, Attorney General Adam Laxalt easily won the Republican nomination for governor. He’ll probably face moderate Democrat Steve Sisolak, who is well ahead of progressive Chris Giunchigliani as of 11:30 p.m. Eastern -- a rare high-profile loss for a Democratic woman. Republicans in the competitive 3rd District look like they nominated Danny Tarkanian again, which probably wasn’t the smartest play: Tarkanian is a perennial candidate who lost a winnable race here in 2016. Finally, the 4th District looks like it’ll be a rematch of the 2014 election between two former representatives, Democrat Steven Horsford and Republican Cresent Hardy.

Thanks for watching it all with us!