What Went Down During Ohio’s And Indiana’s Primary Elections

You know, Monica reminded me earlier tonight to take a look at the Senate vote and how it lines up with FiveThirtyEight’s urbanization index. And maybe Vance’s supposed hillbilly ways helped him just a tad — he did slightly better in more rural parts of the state. However, that’s not to make too much of this — there wasn’t that strong a relationship between how densely populated a county was and how well he did. I think this is the story: It was a crowded race with a handful of tenable Republican candidates, and the former president picked one, and that was enough to get him over the line. If Trump endorses Mandel, I suspect Mandel wins. If Trump endorses Gibbons, I suspect Gibbons wins.

While Mandel was the most vocal Big Lie candidate in Ohio’s GOP Senate primary, J.D. Vance didn’t shy away from Trumpian claims either. He’s called Biden a “crazy, fake president” and said at a debate last month that he believed the 2020 election was stolen.

One guy who has to be pretty happy tonight is Peter Thiel, the billionaire Silicon Valley entrepreneur who bankrolled Vance’s run in Ohio to the tune of $13.5 million. That’s about five times what Vance’s campaign spent. Thiel is making some big plays in politics lately, and he has another candidate, Blake Masters, in the Arizona Senate primary. Trump hasn’t endorsed in that primary yet, but he recently made a virtual appearance at a Masters event. Tonight’s big win by Vance could work in Masters’s favor, but that primary isn’t until August.