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

Interesting, Geoffrey. You really think Trump’s endorsement of Vance explains his victory? There’s obviously a strong argument to be made that that was, in fact, responsible for his last-minute rise in the polls.

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.