Maryland, West Virginia and Nebraska primaries 2024: Alsobrooks beats Trone

With 14 percent of the expected vote reporting, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice looks headed for an easy defeat of U.S. House Rep. Alex Mooney in the race to be the GOP nominee for Senator from West Virginia. Mooney currently leads Justice only in Jefferson and Berkeley Counties in the Northeastern panhandle of the state — an area with a lot of exurban communities of the Washington, DC, metro area. Our polling average for the race had Justice ahead of Mooney by 34 percentage points. He is currently up by 29 points, 59 percent to 30 percent, though of course it is still early in the night.

On the Democratic side, coal executive Don Blankenship currently trails his competition with 16 percent of the vote, and 10 percent of the expected vote reporting. Glenn Elliott, the mayor of Wheeling, West Virginia, holds a sizable lead over Zachary Shrewsbury, a Marine Corps veteran, though again it's too early to call a winner in that race too.

—G. Elliott Morris, 538

Nathaniel, in 2018 Blankenship won just four counties in the GOP primary. One of them was Mingo County, on the state's southern edge and Blankenship's home base. He won it with 45 percent of the vote in 2018, and in 2024 it's the only county he's carrying so far, with about 52 percent of the vote. Mingo was once staunchly Democratic but has zoomed rightward, as has most of the state. In 2004, John Kerry carried over George W. Bush by 13 percent. In 2020, Biden only won 13 percent of the vote!

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

Real heads may remember Blankenship, a convicted criminal, from 2018, when he almost won the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, which would've been establishment Republicans' worst nightmare as they sought to take down Manchin. Well, he's trying for a comeback tonight in the Democratic primary for Senate, and he's in a distant third place.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538

As Nathaniel mentioned earlier, West Virginia's 1st Congressional District's Republican primary has a candidate, Evans, who served three months in jail after filming himself storming the Capitol on Jan. 6. His performance in the district, which includes the state capital city of Charleston, will be a good illustration of where the party is when it comes to how important election denialism remains. Evans apologized for his actions in court, but after leaving jail, he began calling himself a "J6 patriot."

This evolution mirrors what has happened in the Republican Party, as GOP primary voters have become less likely to believe Trump is to blame for Jan. 6, more swayed by conspiracy theories about the insurrection and less likely to say Biden was legitimately elected, according to a Washington Post/University of Maryland poll from the third anniversary. As Mary mentioned earlier, Democrats are much more worried about a repeat of the insurrection and worried that democracy in the U.S. is in peril.

So far there's only about 3 percent of the vote reporting, and Miller has opened up with a lead with 65 percent of the vote. But if Evans upsets the race and pulls out a win over the incumbent Miller, who has also shown unwavering support for Trump, his actions on that day are unlikely to hurt him in this deep red district.

—Monica Potts, 538