Abortion didn’t help liberals flip a Georgia Supreme Court seat.
On May 21, voters in Georgia, Idaho, Oregon, Kentucky and California held key elections for Congress and nationally watched local races. Two key figures from one of Trump’s legal cases, Fani Willis and Scott McAfee, easily won their races, while conservatives won a Georgia Supreme Court election fought largely over abortion. In the House, progressives lost two key races in Oregon, while California voters picked a successor to Kevin McCarthy.
As usual, 538 reporters and contributors broke down the election results as they came in with live updates, analysis and commentary. Read our full live blog below.
We’re up to 40 percent of the expected vote counted in the Republican primary for Georgia’s 3rd District, according to the AP, and Jack is up to 47 percent of the vote. If he can clear the majority threshold, he’ll avoid a June 18 runoff — and he’s trending in the right direction.
—Nathaniel Rakich, 538
Last week, we saw a fair amount of protest voting against Biden in the Democratic presidential primary in West Virginia’s coal country — an ancestrally Democratic area that still has a lot of voters registered with the party, but they’re much more conservative nowadays. Well, the same thing is happening in Kentucky’s coal country just over the border: For example, in Pike County, Biden is beating “Uncommitted” just 44 percent to 36 percent. Statewide, Biden has just 71 percent of the vote, which would be among his worst showings in the nation.
—Nathaniel Rakich, 538
Stop me if you've heard this one before: Two popular, incumbent Democrats in neighboring districts are suddenly forced to challenge one another in a primary when new, Republican-drawn maps toss them into the same district during the redistricting process. State Reps. Saira Draper and Becky Evans are in just such a pickle tonight as they vie for the Democratic nomination in Georgia's 90th District in DeKalb County. Evans, a former political aide and media production manager, was first elected in 2018, while Draper, an attorney and voting rights activist, won her seat in 2022. However, Evans has represents about 30 percent of the new district, making Draper a de facto incumbent of the two incumbents. With 46 percent of the vote reporting, Draper is leading 64 percent to Evans's 36 percent. Whoever wins tonight will be running unopposed in this deep blue district.
—Kaleigh Rogers, 538
Though Trump has already clinched the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, many states have yet to vote in their party primary. Political observers have been closely watching Trump's margins in these states for any potential signs of weakness with his base ahead of the general election. While many who vote against Trump in the primary probably weren't going to vote for him in the general election anyway, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, who dropped out of the presidential race in March, has routinely been garnering between 15 and 20 percent of the vote in primaries since then, a potential sign of dissatisfaction with Trump among some Republicans.
Whether or not you think that means trouble for Trump in November, he's not having that problem in Kentucky tonight: With 72 percent of the expected vote in, the former president is currently winning 85 percent of the vote, while Haley is at just 6 percent.
—Cooper Burton, 538
