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

Based on how things are shaping up in Indiana and Ohio tonight, denying the legitimacy of the 2020 election wasn’t a guaranteed election-winner among GOP primaries, but it certainly didn’t hurt. Both Vance and Miller, two candidates who clearly echoed Trump’s claims of election fraud, won their respective nominations. Incumbent Republicans who voted not to certify the election also enjoyed the expected support tonight. And while some of the most extreme Big Lie candidates didn’t gain traction, it likely had more to do with fundraising than voters rejecting this type of rhetoric.

It’s also worth stepping back to recognize how unprecedented it is that we even have to track this trait at all. Think about the fact that calling into question the results of a democratic election more than a year and a half after its conclusion is such a common position among legitimate, primary-winning Republican candidates that I spent the entire night only looking at races where Big Lie candidates were running. And I’ll be spending the rest of the primaries and midterms continuing to track this. It’s just wild to think that we’re even in a place where that’s possible.

Overall, the women competing tonight in both Indiana and Ohio, Democratic and Republican, have done pretty well. But just because a party is nominating more women doesn’t necessarily mean they’re prioritizing gender equality in their ranks.

It’s important to look at whether women will run in “hopeless seats” in November, which are seats where the district strongly favors the other party’s candidate. There’s plenty of evidence that in previous decades, women were more often nominated to hopeless seats than men (especially Republican women). Investment in women happens when parties support women for more competitive (or safe) seats. For the women winning tonight, Democratic and Republican, there’s a mix of both.

And now, out of Trump’s endorsed candidates, the only outstanding one is Madison Gesiotto Gilbert. She’s now doing more poorly than Vance — her lead has shrunk to about 4 percentage points — and the race could narrow further, as just 54 percent of the vote has come in. But even if Gilbert doesn’t make it through, Trump can claim 11 out of 12 of his endorsees won their primaries, including the most contested race for Ohio’s Senate seat.

How Trump’s endorsees are doing tonight