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

And with that, the beginning of the heart of primary season is pretty much done and dusted, with most high-profile races called in Indiana and Ohio. In the day’s marquee contest, J.D. Vance won the Republican primary for Senate in Ohio, leading Josh Mandel by about 8 points as of 10:15 p.m. Eastern. Vance had struggled to some extent throughout the primary campaign until former President Donald Trump endorsed him about two and a half weeks before the election. But with that boost in support, Vance managed to get out ahead of his rivals in a sizable candidate field that featured five notable contenders. Now Vance will be favored in the general election against Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan. But that wasn’t the only race we were watching!

In Ohio’s 11th District, Rep. Shontel Brown maintains a strong lead over Nina Turner, a prominent Bernie Sanders surrogate in 2016 and 2020. So far, Brown leads with roughly 65 percent of the vote, compared with Turner’s 35 percent. This district leans heavily Democratic too, so whoever wins here will be a clear favorite in November.

And in Ohio’s 13th District, Republican Madison Gesiotto Gilbert still maintains a small lead over her primary opponents. While the race hasn’t been called yet, ABC News has Gilbert leading with about 28 percent of the vote; she’s followed closely by attorney and accountant Greg Wheeler, who’s netted 24 percent of the vote. The winner of the GOP primary will face state Rep. Emilia Sykes, who stepped down from her position as minority leader to run for Congress this fall. The district in its current form is more favorable to Democrats than previous iterations but still leans Republican.

Over in Ohio’s 7th District Republican primary, Trump-backed Max Miller easily won the GOP nomination with around 70 percent of the vote. He might’ve faced Republican Rep. Bob Gibbs here, but Gibbs withdrew from the race just as early voting was starting. Instead, Miller is now positioned to win the general election in this red-leaning seat.

In Ohio’s 9th District, Republicans have a great shot at ousting longtime Democrat Marcy Kaptur, whose seat was redrawn into one that would have narrowly voted for Trump. But GOP primary voters may have given Kaptur a much-needed break. The Republican currently clinging to a narrow lead in the primary is J.R. Majewksi, an Air Force veteran most known for painting his lawn into a giant Trump sign and for his links to the QAnon conspiracy theory. Majewksi was also in D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021. He’s sitting at 36 percent of the vote, ahead of state Sen. Theresa Gavarone (33 percent) and state Rep. Craig Riedel (27 percent), both of whom are more traditional candidates and would match up better against Kaptur.

In Indiana’s 1st District, Air Force veteran Jennifer-Ruth Green is declaring victory in the GOP primary even though the race hasn’t been called yet. ABC News has Green leading the field with 49 percent, and her nearest opponent, Blair Milo, is back at 18 percent. So Green looks like a good bet to clinch the nod. She’ll face an uphill climb against freshman Democrat Frank Mrvan, but this is a district Republicans see as trending in their direction.

And in Indiana’s 9th District, state Sen. Erin Houchin won the GOP nomination to succeed Rep. Trey Hollingsworth, winning 37 percent of the vote to former Rep. Mike Sodrel’s 26 percent and veteran Stu Barnes-Israel’s 21 percent.

Thanks again for following along! If there are any big developments in these races overnight, we’ll be sure to post an update in the morning.

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

Sarah, DeWine got the win, but finishing below 50 percent as an incumbent — he’s at 47 percent right now — is a very weak performance. DeWine was aided by the fact that he didn’t really get a top-tier challenger. On paper, Renacci, who lost the 2018 Senate race, might have been the candidate, but it just never came together for him. Moreover, the populist grassroots campaign of Joe Blystone split the opposition to DeWine — Renacci and Blystone have 50 percent of the vote between the two of them.

The Associated Press has called the GOP primary in Indiana’s 9th District for state Sen. Erin Houchin. She defeats former Rep. Mike Sodrel in her second congressional run.

Monica, that’s a great point that often gets missed. Even if the suburbs have shifted toward Democrats in many major metropolitan areas, they still host a ton of Republican voters. Just look at the primary results tonight for the Ohio GOP Senate race and you see that Vance finished first in some well-known suburban counties, like Delaware, north of Columbus, or Butler, north of Cincinnati.

It’s interesting, though, that while Trump’s pick prevailed in the Senate race, DeWine, who earned Trump’s ire in 2020, also prevailed in the race for governor. I realize Trump didn’t end up endorsing a challenger to DeWine, but I think we’re going to see mixed signals like this throughout the primaries. Still, this is clearly a win for Trump (and Trumpism) tonight.

I agree with Geoffrey as well. Vance didn’t lead in a single poll until Trump endorsed him. He was struggling to raise money or defend against attacks about his past anti-Trump comments, and the super PAC giving him air cover was running low on funds and sounding the alarm in a major way. The Trump endorsement neutralized those attacks and inspired Thiel to give the pro-Vance super PAC another $3.5 million lifeline.

I think that’s right, Geoffrey. Also, while rural voters are definitely the Trump base, in sheer numbers most Trump voters and supporters were in suburbs and cities, and Trumpism likely still finds its support there. Rural voters don’t make up enough of the population to make a difference on their own.

Mandel and Vance et al. were certainly jockeying for Trump’s anointment, Geoff. And when Trump accidentally created a portmanteau of their names when talking about his endorsements at a rally this weekend, I bet that was salt in the wound for Mandel.

The Tim Ryan campaign was ready for J.D. Vance’s win tonight. They just dropped a pre-produced video in which Ryan, seated in a diner, goes after Vance as a “celebrity, CNN analyst, and a big hit at Washington cocktail parties.” I wonder how many other potential opponents they cut ads about.

Absolutely, I do. I’m sure Trump will wear that feather in his cap, too. It’s not that his endorsement can move mountains, but in a crowded race with voters uncertain of where to go, Trump’s backing can make a significant difference.

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.

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.

I know some election-watchers have felt that Vance’s positions during the Ohio Senate race were a change from his persona as the “Hillbilly Elegy” author, but I always thought the book contained a lot of anti-government sentiment, especially against government programs, and a lot of the rural resentment that Katherine J. Cramer studied. It never seemed a turn to me, just a predictable evolution.

In Ohio’s Republican Senate primary, ABC News has projected that J.D. Vance will win, putting him on a collision course with Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan in the general election. Vance leads his race with 31 percent, about 7 points ahead of Josh Mandel. Vance earned Trump’s endorsement during the primary, and he will be favored to win in November in a GOP-leaning state.

Where things stand in Ohio’s GOP primary for Senate

And … ABC News has now projected that Vance will win the Ohio GOP Senate primary. That’s a call in the marquee race we’ve been tracking this evening.

We have a nailbiter in the Republican primary for Ohio’s 9th District, a Democratic-held district that became light red in redistricting. State Sen. Theresa Gavarone would probably be Republicans’ best shot at beating incumbent Rep. Marcy Kaptur, but she’s only barely ahead of two much more polarizing candidates: J.R. Majewski (who attended the Jan. 6 riot) and state Rep. Craig Riedel (who is aligned with hardline conservative Rep. Jim Jordan and the Freedom Caucus).

Where things stand in the GOP primary for Ohio’s 9th District

ABC News still hasn’t issued a projection in the Ohio GOP Senate primary, but the AP has called the race for J.D. Vance:

Yeah, Portman clearly didn’t have a good read on the race considering what he said earlier today:

That wasn’t unexpected, Jacob, given recent polls in the race. But boy, what a change in fortune for Timken. And what a disappointment for Portman, who had endorsed her!

Totally, Monica — Democrats really haven’t done much to shore up abortion rights in the states they control, at least not until recently. Contrast that with the impressive success Republicans have had on the anti-abortion front over the past decade. I would understand if Democratic voters felt a bit cynical about their party’s ability to make headway on this issue. And as you note, we just don’t know what a post-Roe reality will look like, which makes it hard to predict how people will respond.

Jane Timken, the former state GOP chairwoman who reportedly almost got the Trump endorsement over a year ago in the Ohio Senate race (how different the world would be!), has conceded after placing last.

Vance’s lead has only grown throughout the night — and if he is indeed the victor, he likely has Trump to thank. Max Miller in the 7th District, another non-incumbent, won his primary, meaning that nine out of Trump’s 12 endorsements for federal office have won their races tonight. Warren Davidson in the 8th has almost 80 percent of the vote with 22 percent reporting and Madison Gesiotto Gilbert has a seven-point lead with 21 percent reporting. A good night for Trump’s candidates — but of course, we knew he was largely picking easy winners anyway.

Amelia, yes, that could make a difference, especially in purple, highly competitive districts. But, like Kaleigh, I do see a lot of Democratic voters expressing frustration, since they have been voting for their party out of support for protecting abortion rights and it doesn’t seem to have translated into policy. Also, as you noted earlier, it could just be seen as an abstract issue people would rather avoid until it affects their lives in a dramatic way, and I don’t know if we’ll see that by November. It’s been settled law for so long, people tend not to think about it until it personally affects them.

I also wonder if Democrats will really be that energized since they already voted in a Democratic-majority Congress that could have enshrined Roe as the law of the land at some point sooner than now.

Hello from ABC News’s political unit! Jacob, to build upon your point about Gov. DeWine and a possible lack of enthusiasm toward him, it seems like the state Democratic party is trying to capitalize on those potential pitfalls.

Ohio’s state Democratic and Republican parties have predictably opposite reactions on Twitter to DeWine’s win in the Republican gubernatorial primary. The GOP celebrated his win. But I noticed in particular that Ohio Dems tweeted that “Republicans and Democrats agree on one thing: @MikeDeWine is the wrong choice for Ohio.”

Ohio hasn’t had a Democratic governor since 2006, but it remains to be seen if the Democratic party and Whaley can indeed capitalize in November on the discontent they claim that Republicans have toward DeWine.

Of note as well, given yesterday’s seismic report on the Supreme Court’s draft opinion on abortion rights, is whether projected Democratic primary winner Nan Whaley can gain more steam now as a self-identified “genuinely pro-choice candidate.”

Yeah, what I wonder about, Monica, is whether this could shake up races in purple states. Because we’re not talking about a 15-week abortion ban, which I think would be easier for people to shrug off. Moreover, anti-abortion legislators are not including the exemptions that used to be standard in abortion bans — for rape, incest, life of the mother. That could make a difference for voters who maybe haven’t been as concerned about abortion rights previously.

The results aren’t final yet, obviously, but it’s worth noting that the late polls got quite close to the actual results in the GOP primary for Ohio Senate. In the last two polls of the race, from Trafalgar and Emerson College, Vance averaged 25 percent, Mandel averaged 21.5 percent, Dolan averaged 20 percent, Gibbons averaged 13.5 percent and Timken averaged 6.5 percent. The results right now are Vance 31 percent, Mandel 25 percent, Dolan 22 percent, Gibbons 12 percent and Timken 7 percent. Not bad for a race where the early polls were mostly spammy internals!

We don’t yet know who will win the GOP Senate primary in Ohio, but one person who won’t win is investment banker Mike Gibbons. And if you went to sleep in March, that might surprise you, because Gibbons used his vast wealth to power himself to a polling lead and frontrunner status at what seemed like the exact right time.

But Trump’s endorsement of J.D. Vance likely derailed whatever momentum he had, and he’s currently sitting at a disappointing 12 percent, good for fourth place. (For comparison, Gibbons won 32 percent of the vote in the 2018 GOP Senate primary in Ohio.)

I agree, Kaleigh, and I also wonder if we’ll see the issue breaking along geographic lines. Support for abortion access in all, or most cases, varies a lot state to state, and so I wonder if it just further entrenches partisan divisions.

I disagree, Nathaniel. I don’t think you can avoid Roe being a major issue in the midterms if it’s overturned. But it’s a galvanizing issue on both sides, and it could just as easily bring out religious-right voters who maybe weren’t super engaged on, say, election integrity, as it will bring out Democrats. So whether it would change the outcome is a real question mark for me.

We are now up to 49 percent of the expected vote reporting in Ohio’s Republican Senate primary, where Vance continues to lead. He now sits at about 31 percent as Election Day votes have leaned a bit more his way than early voting. Mandel’s vote share has ticked up a bit too — he now sits at about 25 percent — while Dolan is back in third with roughly 22 percent. Vance is winning by doing well in most every part of the state, as he leads in most counties and is in second in most places where he doesn’t lead. With such a fragmented vote across five high-profile candidates (and seven candidates in total), that’s been good enough to put Vance in a position to win. Hard to not think Trump’s endorsement did the job, too, considering the relatively slim margins involved.

Where things stand in Ohio’s GOP primary for Senate

I’m honestly not sure, Sarah. I think, in large part, the midterm cake is already baked, due to the simple fact that Democrats hold the White House and the party in the White House tends to do badly in midterms. But if Roe v. Wade is indeed overturned, it could galvanize some Democrats who might have otherwise stayed home to vote, perhaps raising Democrats’ floor a little bit. I think a big wild card is whether the Supreme Court’s decision (which presumably will get handed down in June or thereabouts) will still be at the forefront of voters’ minds come October and November.

At the risk of repeating what I said in the chat, I think a ruling that overturns Roe could be bad news for Republicans because completely banning abortion is highly, highly unpopular. That said, I think people will have to actually experience what it’s like to live in a country where abortion is illegal in many states for the ruling to have a big political impact, and I’m not sure how fully that reality will sink in before the midterms.

Today was obviously a very big news day — and not just because of tonight’s primaries. I am, of course, referring to the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion that Politico obtained late Monday.

Amelia, Alex, Nathaniel, Geoffrey and I talked about this earlier today, but what repercussions do you all think the court overturning Roe would have for the upcoming midterm elections?

The folks at Decision Desk HQ have called the GOP Senate primary in Ohio for J.D. Vance, the Trump-endorsed candidate. ABC hasn’t made a projection in the race though.

As Jacob mentioned, Houchin is leading for the GOP race in Indiana’s 9th District. And as I wrote at the start of the live blog tonight, 24 percent of the GOP candidates in Indiana are women (compared with just 9 percent of Democratic candidates). That is a pretty good showing for a party where women are still just a small share of their overall caucus. Tonight, two female incumbents, Victoria Spartz (Indiana’s 5th) and Jackie Walorski (Indiana’s 2nd), have secured their nomination already, and with Houchin leading, as well as Angela Grabovsky in Indiana’s 7th District, Indiana Republicans will have several women competing in November.

How female candidates are doing tonight

With 45 percent of the expected vote in, it looks like DeWine has dropped below 50 percent in his primary. He’ll still win but so far it’s not a rousing endorsement for the embattled governor. And it’s an indicator that if he had faced an opponent more formidable than Renacci (like, say, one of the half-dozen hopefuls who spent millions of their own money on losing Senate bids), this night could have gone very differently for him.

In the GOP primary in Indiana’s 1st District, Green has the lead with about a third of votes reporting. This race has attracted a number of Big Lie believers. We couldn’t find a clear position on the Big Lie for Green, and Milo also hasn’t been firm — though a local news site said Milo had “expressed Trump-like doubts” about the 2020 election.

Two other candidates in this race have more overtly embraced the Big Lie: Ben Ruiz and Mark Levya. When our colleagues at ABC News reached out to Levya’s campaign to ask whether he believed the 2020 election was illegitimate, he replied (in all caps): “YES AND THE TRUTH WILL SOON COME OUT!”

There’s also one candidate who has clearly stated that he accepts the outcome of the 2020 election, Martin Lucas, who told us: “The Los Angeles Rams beat the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl. Joe Biden beat Donald Trump for the presidency. Both statements are historical facts. I do not believe Donald Trump won the 2020 election. I do not believe the election was illegitimate.”

Important pattern emerging in the Ohio Senate race: Vance is doing better with election day ballots across the state. This may reflect the fact that Trump endorsed Vance somewhat late in the race, so many early voters may not have had that information. Or it could be because Trumpier Republicans are less likely to vote early or absentee.

I think you brought this up earlier, Alex, but it’s interesting with Miller to see someone coming straight out of Trumpworld into a campaign of their own. Obviously that’s happened with previous presidential campaign staff, but with Trump it seems especially noteworthy because it’s essentially carrying his mantle forward. I wonder how many more of these candidacies we’ll see.

In Indiana’s 9th District, state Sen. Erin Houchin is maintaining her lead of 11 points over former Rep. Mike Sodrel. Veteran Stu Barnes-Israel is further back. There’s still about 20 percent of the vote still out, but it’s looking pretty good for Houchin, whose best areas like Harrison County still have a lot more vote to report.

In the GOP primary in Ohio’s 7th District, Republican Max Miller is projected to win, according to ABC News. Keep in mind, the district is an R+14 seat so Miller is definitely in good standing heading into November, too.

The Republican primary in Indiana’s 1st District is up to 33 percent reporting, per the AP, and Jennifer-Ruth Green still has a commanding 51 percent to 18 percent lead over Blair Milo. Green would probably be one of Republicans’ best possibilities to defeat Democratic Rep. Frank Mrvan in this district in the fall. With a FiveThirtyEight partisan lean of D+7, it’s Democratic-leaning, but not safe blue.

Tim Ryan, the newly christened Democratic nominee for Senate in Ohio, continues to hit on China as a main theme in his victory. speech