That’s A Wrap!
And with that, the FiveThirtyEight live blog is hitting the hay. This morning (which seems like eons ago) on our site, I posed four questions that I wanted to see answered tonight. I got much more emphatic answers than I was expecting.
- Can progressive Democrats notch another win against the national party? / Will incumbent Democrats get a scare? A definite yes. If you are a progressive Democrat, tonight was the most satisfying night of 2018 so far. In the upset of the year, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez emphatically defeated Rep. Joe Crowley, the No. 4 Democrat in the U.S. House, in New York’s 14th Congressional District, 58 percent to 42 percent. Two other New York City incumbents, Yvette Clarke and Carolyn Maloney, just barely escaped with wins. Bernie Sanders-endorsed Ben Jealous also triumphed in the Democratic primary for Maryland governor, 40 percent to 29 percent, over his establishment-backed opponent. And in New York’s 24th District, Dana Balter defeated the DCCC’s hand-picked candidate, Juanita Perez Williams. However, don’t run off cherry-picking these results. Establishment Democrats have still won far more primaries overall on the year, and they even defeated progressives in a few high-profile races tonight: in Colorado’s 6th District and Colorado’s 1st District, for example.
- Does a Trump endorsement pack any punch against a Trump-like candidate? It looks like yes again. Everyone thought the New York City primary to watch tonight would be the GOP one in the 11th District, but Rep. Dan Donovan defeated ex-Rep. Michael Grimm 64 percent to 36 percent. Although Grimm is definitely Trumpier, Trump endorsed Donovan, and Staten Island (which fell hard for Trump in 2016) apparently listened. And in the GOP primary for South Carolina governor, Trump ally Gov. Henry McMaster defeated outsider businessman (sound familiar?) John Warren, albeit by a smaller-than-expected 7-point margin.
- Can the Year of the Woman overcome even a multimillion-dollar juggernaut? Nope. Wealthy men defeated strong female candidates in the Democratic primaries for Colorado governor (Jared Polis over Cary Kennedy), Maryland’s 6th District (David Trone over Aruna Miller), and New York’s 1st District (Perry Gershon over Kate Browning).
- Anything else? Mitt Romney won his Republican primary in Utah, sending him on a glide path to the U.S. Senate. Mick Cornett and a Republican To Be Named Later will face off in August in a GOP runoff for Oklahoma governor. Polis will face George W. Bush cousin Walker Stapleton in the Colorado gubernatorial general election. Republican Reps. Doug Lamborn (Colorado’s 5th District) and Markwayne Mullin (Oklahoma’s 2nd) avoided getting Mark Sanford-ed. And Democrats chose Antonio Delgado to be their standard-bearer in the sure-to-be-competitive New York 19th District.
July is fairly devoid of primaries, so the election liveblog will be taking a bit of a summer vacation. We’ll be back with you in August refreshed and with a nice new tan. Thanks for joining us for the final installment of Act I!