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


Messmer leads former Rep. Hostettler in race that attracted lots of outside money

We’ve got a few votes counted in the 8th District as well (8 percent of the expected vote, to be precise), which sits in the southwestern corner of the state. This seat attracted a fair bit of outside spending, both in support of Mark Messmer, the state senator currently leading the bunch, and against former Rep. John Hostettler, who represented a predecessor district in the 1990s and 2000s. The race was notable in that it represented the first time AIPAC’s affiliated super PAC, United Democracy Project, got involved in a Republican primary. Previously, it had only spent in Democratic primaries.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections