What Went Down During The May 17 Primary Elections

We’ve got the first dump of mail ballots in Oregon. In the Democratic primary for governor, Tina Kotek leads Tobias Read 59 percent to 32 percent. On the GOP side, Christine Drazan has 24 percent, Bob Tiernan 21 percent and Stan Pulliam 10 percent.

Well, let’s see if we have any FiveThirtyEight writers in Pennsylvania’s 184th, a South Philly state House district where the incumbent is another progressive — in this case, Elizabeth Fiedler — facing a more moderate challenger with the backing of local ward leaders. (This is not my district, but that didn’t stop me from getting mailers attacking Fiedler.)

With the polls closing in Idaho, we’re thinking ahead to the GOP governor race. McGeachin made a big splash in the news regarding bans on COVID-related mandates, but only 8 percent of Republicans listed COVID-19 as a major issue and less than 1 percent of Republicans noted frustration at mask or vaccine mandates in an open-ended question on the country’s biggest issues, according to our FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll.

Generally, Little and McGeachin have fairly similar stances on other major issues like the validity of the 2020 election. It’ll be interesting to see if their diverging stances on mask and vaccine mandates will make a difference, although it seems unlikely that they will give McGeachin a much-needed boost since the issue is a lower priority among Republicans.