Indiana primaries 2024: Spartz survives, big spenders prevail

538 tracked several establishment-versus-insurgent GOP primaries.

Tuesday saw the resolution of several major Republican primaries in Indiana: Voters selected the men who will likely become the state’s next U.S. senator and governor, and three open U.S. House seats were the canvas for fierce primary battles between the establishment and populist wings of the GOP. A maverick Republican incumbent also successfully defended her seat after waffling over her decision to seek reelection.

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.


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ABC News is now reporting that Braun is projected to win the GOP gubernatorial primary

ABC News reports that Sen. Mike Braun is projected to win the Republican primary in the Indiana governor's race, making him the favorite to win in the general election this fall.

—Monica Potts, 538


A lone Senate projection

ABC News reports that Valerie McCray is projected to win the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. With 21 percent of the expected vote reporting, McCray has 67 percent of the vote over Marc Carmichael's 33 percent. McCray will face long odds against Rep. Jim Banks, the Republicans' one and only candidate on their primary ballot today, in November.

—Irena Li, 538


Is the GOP lagging on nominating women?

Over on Bluesky, Boston magazine contributing editor David Bernstein shared that the GOP has nominated men in all 10 open-seat solid-Republican districts going into tonight. A similar outcome for Democrats would be shocking, given that a vast majority of Democrats say that there are too few women in politics. But the GOP doesn’t share the same sentiment.

In 2020, we watched where Republicans were nominating women and found that, through August 2020, only 6 out of the 77 Republican women who had won their primaries did so in a safe Republican seat. A whopping 49 of those women won in safe Democratic seats.

In other words, the GOP women won primaries in places where they wouldn’t win in November. We’ll have more to say about that this year, after a few more primaries have passed.

—Meredith Conroy, 538 contributor


Indiana governor will likely come down to two party-switchers

While it’s well known that McCormick used to be a Republican before switching parties in 2021, it’s perhaps less well known that Braun also used to be registered with the opposite party.

Braun was registered as a Democrat until the 2012 cycle, perhaps a surprise for a politician ranked among the most conservative in the Senate based on DW-NOMINATE. In 2018, when he ran for Senate, he told CNN that he was only registered as a Democrat in order to vote in local primary elections and that he has always identified as a Republican regardless of his registration status.

In any case, at least according to the official records, the governor’s race in Indiana looks like it will be between two party-switchers, perhaps emblematic of the upheaval in partisan alignment we’ve seen across the nation in the last decade.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538


Candidates of color to watch in Indiana

Tonight, we'll be monitoring how candidates of color perform in primaries for governor, U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives. Overall, 11 people of color are running in these contests — six Republicans and five Democrats.

The most likely primary winner is Democratic Rep. André Carson, who is Indiana's lone Black representative on Capitol Hill (and was also only the second Muslim ever elected to Congress). Democrats in the solidly blue 7th District look set to renominate him against two little-known Black Democrats.

In the dark-red 4th District, insurance executive Rimpi Girn is an Indian immigrant who has raised at least a little money, so she may be the favorite for the Democratic nomination — but a November defeat against GOP Rep. Jim Baird is a near-certainty.

In the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate, clinical psychologist Valerie McCray is running a long-shot race to become the state's first Black U.S. senator. She ran for the state's 2022 Senate contest but failed to make the ballot and briefly ran for president in 2020. However, she's raised only $14,800, less than the $112,000 former state Rep. Marc Carmichael has brought in. Still, either Democrat will be a huge underdog against Rep. Jim Banks in the general election.

It's less clear if any candidate of color has a shot at winning a GOP primary. On paper, the contender with the best chance might be "Honest Gabe" Whitley, who has raised $364,000 in the solidly Democratic 7th District, making him the only Republican in that race to have reported raising anything. But Whitley is a lightning rod of controversy: Among other things, he faces accusations of concocting false donors and a fictional veterans organization to back his candidacy.

In the 5th District, speech-language pathologist and business owner Raju Chinthala is running, but he's unlikely to finish ahead of the incumbent Spartz or her leading challenger, Goodrich. Two Republican Latino candidates are running in the 1st District — Mark Levya and Ben Ruiz — but Lake County Councilmember Randy Niemeyer is the party's preferred candidate to take on Democratic Rep. Frank Mrvan.

Lastly, the best-known Republican on this list is Curtis Hill, who is making a long-shot bid for governor. Hill lost renomination for state attorney general in 2020 after allegations came out that he had groped a group of women at a party.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538