Democrats nearly won a safely Republican congressional seat.
June 11 was another packed primary day, as voters in South Carolina, Maine, North Dakota and Nevada weighed in on who will make the ballot this fall. We had our eyes on a slew of Republican primaries on Tuesday, including several competitive contests for U.S. House seats, as well as contests to pick Nevada's GOP Senate nominee and effectively pick the next governor of North Dakota.
In South Carolina, Rep. Nancy Mace's Trumpian pivot didn't cost her, as she handily fended off an establishment-aligned primary challenger. Fellow incumbent Rep. William Timmons, who was looking vulnerable after an infidelity scandal, also came out ahead in a closer race against his right-wing challenger. In North Dakota's At-Large Congressional District, Julie Fedorchak became the first non-incumbent woman this cycle to win a GOP primary for a safely red seat. In Nevada, Republican voters chose Sam Brown as their candidate to challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen this fall.
Finally, a special election is set to give House Republicans one more seat of breathing room, as voters in Ohio's 6th District filled the seat vacated by Rep. Bill Johnson's departure in January — though not without some unexpected suspense.
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 just got the last tranche of votes from Greenville County in South Carolina's 4th District, and they weren't enough to put Morgan over the top. With virtually all of the vote counted, then, per the AP, it's Timmons 52 percent, Morgan 48 percent, and Timmons has been projected as the winner. In the end, his race was much closer than Mace's, despite her getting all the attention!
—Nathaniel Rakich, 538
Brown could also find himself in hot water this fall because he used to support using Yucca Mountain, a site in Nevada, as a nuclear waste site. That's a no-no in Nevada politics, and Brown has since backtracked on that position, but expect it to come up in Democratic ads a lot.
—Nathaniel Rakich, 538
I'm not yet sold on Brown being a better than average Senate candidate. I think he's done a good job of staying under the radar relative to other GOP nominees in Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Arizona, and avoided some of the missteps those candidates have made. (It doesn't hurt that Nevada is the perpetual redheaded stepchild of the Senate battlefield, always there but never paid much attention.) But he's still relatively untested. His political record includes failed bids for Texas state House a decade ago and for Senate two years ago. If he does ultimately win, I think it has a lot more to do with Trump's performance in the state than Brown's special strength.
—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections
Nathaniel mentioned that Rosen's senate seat could be the GOP's best pick-up opportunity outside the Big Three red states (West Virginia, Montana and Ohio). I think that's right. Brown doesn't seem to have any strange local scandals (unlike Sheehy in Montana, for instance)>, so the Nevada GOP didn't Dr. Oz itself here. Although Brown isn't originally from Nevada, he has a compelling personal story as a combat veteran, who suffered third-degree burns from a 2008 roadside bomb explosion in Afghanistan.
Of course, Nevada Democrats have dug up a few possible scandals and will focus on the abortion issue. On his website, Brown mentions that he is personally pro-life, but would not support national abortion ban because it would overturn the decision of Nevadans, so he's trying to thread that needle. Brown's wife has also been telling her abortion story so the Brown campaign must recognize that this will be a salient issue.
—Meredith Conroy, 538 contributor
