Georgia, Oregon, Idaho and Kentucky primaries 2024: Willis, McAfee win; tough night for progressives
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.
Latest headlines:
The rise of electability
Nathaniel, I think a particularly interesting subset of that conversation surrounds the concept of "electability" — when a voter casts a ballot for a candidate in a primary based not on whether they agree with their policy positions but whether they think that other voters will want to vote for that person over the alternative. That's a big part of the race in Oregon's 5th District, where one side has been making a pretty explicit electability case against the other candidate based on her loss in the 2022 race and damaging stories that have come out since. And of course Biden benefited heavily from the electability argument in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries (which, in my mind, is a big part of why he's struggled so mightily to keep his coalition together). But I think it's a little reductive to shove that all in with vibes. Voters who cast their ballots informed by electability concerns are actually trying to do something pretty sophisticated! Whether or not they're any good at it is another question ...
—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections
Should we really care what voters say they prioritize?
Mary, your post about what issues were most important to Oregonians reminded me of a post I read from political scientist John Sides today. He wrote up a study that found that voters didn't really vote for the candidate they perceived as better on the issues they claimed to care about. Basically, voters aren't making a linear, rational calculation of "which candidate is better on which issue?" Instead, a lot of the time, it's just vibes.
—Nathaniel Rakich, 538
Oregon voters care about good governance
When asked what the most pressing issue in America is, Oregon voters were most likely to select "government leadership" from a list of issues in an April poll from The Bullfinch Group/The Independent Center. Twenty percent of registered voters surveyed selected the issue, more than in any other state included in the Pacific states survey. While we haven't seen a similar outcome in issue polls of other states so far this cycle, it's also fairly uncommon for pollsters to include the issue when this type of question is asked. However, even in other states in the survey with similar partisanship as Oregon, such as California, voters were less focused on governance (just 9 percent of California voters selected the issue as the most pressing) and more focused on the kinds of issues we've seen in other states: immigration and the economy.
The next most chosen issues for Oregon voters were "jobs and the economy" (14 percent), immigration (11 percent) and abortion (8 percent). Seven percent of Oregon voters selected each of "energy and the environment," health care, and national security.
—Mary Radcliffe, 538
Today’s EMILYs List endorsements
We've been tracking candidates this cycle who have earned an endorsement from EMILYs List, the prominent political action committee formed to elect pro-choice Democratic women. In today's congressional primaries, EMILYs has endorsed four women — three in Oregon, and one in Georgia. In Georgia, incumbent Rep. Lucy McBath secured their endorsement, and as we mentioned earlier, she's the projected winner of her primary in the 6th District.
In Oregon, two incumbents who are seen as targets for Republicans in November earned EMILYs List endorsements: Rep. Val Hoyle in the 4th District and Rep. Andrea Salinas in the 6th. In addition to these incumbents, EMILYs List endorsed state representative Janelle Bynum in Oregon's 5th District. Bynum is facing attorney Jamie McLeod-Skinner; McLeod-Skinner was Democrats' nominee in 2022, when she lost the general election by less than 3 points. Polls are still open in most of Oregon, so we will have to wait and see how this race shakes out.
—Meredith Conroy, 538 contributor
Dexter projected to win in Oregon's 3rd District
Well, that wasn't as interesting as we expected. ABC News is reporting that state Rep. Maxine Dexter is projected to win the Democratic primary in Oregon's solidly blue 3rd District. With 45 percent of the expected vote reporting, Dexter leads Jayapal 53 percent to 25 percent. This result prevents some history: Had Jayapal won this race and gone on to win the general election, she and her sister Pramila Jayapal (a representative from Washington state) would've been the first sisters to serve in Congress at the same time while representing different states. In November, Dexter will almost certainly win the general election and succeed retiring Rep. Earl Blumenauer in the Portland-based seat.
—Geoffrey Skelley, 538