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

538 tracked over 10 competitive primaries for Senate, House and governor.

Tuesday, May 14 was another busy primary day, as voters in three states decided who would be on their general election ballots this fall. In Maryland, Democrats nominated women in two safely Democratic congressional seats, including Angela Alsobrooks, who is poised to become only the third Black woman ever elected to the Senate. In West Virginia and Nebraska, incumbent Republican representatives fended off far-right challengers.

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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Morrisey projected to win in West Virginia

ABC News reports that Morrisey is projected to win the Republican primary for governor of West Virginia — thus making him the heavy favorite to succeed Justice in Charleston next year. With 91 percent of the expected vote reporting, Morrisey is leading Capito 34 percent to 28 percent.

As you can see in the map below, Morrisey's win was built on his strength in West Virginia's border counties, which perhaps makes sense for a candidate not originally from the state. Capito, meanwhile, is winning a few central counties like Charleston's Kanawha County, and Miller is doing well in southwestern West Virginia — the heart of coal country.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538


Another EMILY's List endorsee wins

With Alsobrooks as the projected Democratic winner in the Maryland Senate race according to reporting by ABC News, EMILY's List can chalk up another win. We've been tracking EMILY's List endorsees in primaries and how they're faring. So far, they've endorsed 12 non-incumbent women (including Alsobrooks). Of these, just three have lost their primaries (who all happen to be in California).

If Alsobrooks wins in November, she will be just the third Black woman ever elected to the Senate.

—Meredith Conroy, 538 contributor


Trone had a ceiling

Yeah, Geoffrey, and it was a pretty convincing win for Alsobrooks at that. Pretty impressive after she trailed in polls for almost the entire primary — only the last two polls showed her ahead, and in our final average, Trone was still leading by 2 points. But Trone seemed to have a ceiling, as he just did not gain much support no matter how much more money he spent.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538


Alsobrooks projected in Maryland's Democratic primary for Senate

ABC News is reporting that Alsobrooks is projected to win the Democratic primary in Maryland's U.S. Senate race. With 53 percent of the expected vote reporting, Alsobrooks leads 53 percent to 43 percent. As the map below shows, she's ahead in the four largest localities in the state right now: Montgomery, Prince George's and Baltimore Counties, plus the city of Baltimore. She will face Hogan in November.

—Geoffrey Skelley, ABC News


Answer: Dunn wasn't from around there, and Elfreth had a lot of outside help

Meredith, the race seemed very close in a way that made it hard to project just who would win. It's true that Dunn raised a very large amount of money and definitely had a lot of traction online. But Elfreth raised a fair bit herself and actually represents part of the district in the Maryland state legislature, whereas Dunn didn't have an initial base of support as he hails from outside the seat in Montgomery County. Most critically, Elfreth received ample outside support from United Democracy Project, the AIPAC-associated super PAC. So while Dunn had raised $4.6 million to Elfreth's $1.5 million, UDP spent $4.2 million in support of Elfreth while Dunn had no outside help. To be clear, a candidate's campaign dollar goes farther when booking ads than for outside groups, but as Jacob pointed out in late April, the combined broadcast ad time bought by Elfreth and UDP sometimes outdistanced Dunn during the campaign.

—Geoffrey Skelley, 538