Perhaps Trump has been reading the 538 live blogs and didn’t like my comments about him padding his record when it comes to endorsing candidates guaranteed to win (uncontested, incumbents, etc), but the former president took a few gambles in tonight’s races on dark horse candidates. It … did not pay off. Of the 19 races tonight where Trump made an endorsement, 15 are projected to win, three are projected to lose, and one is leading (Celeste Maloy in Utah’s 2nd District, but it’s a close race). However … 12 of those wins were uncontested races, and among the uncontested races, two endorsed candidates were incumbents (including Rep. Lauren Boebert, who was running in a new district but is still a sitting representative).

When Trump actually rolled the dice tonight, like in endorsing Dave Williams in Colorado’s 5th District or Trent Staggs for the GOP Senate race in Utah, he came up short. Overall, 79 percent of Trump’s endorsees are projected to have won their races tonight, but when you consider only the contested races (even including incumbents), Trump is 50-50 on his endorsements, with one race pending. What was I saying about padding the record again?

—Kaleigh Rogers, 538

Philip Bump and Lenny Bronner over at The Washington Post dove into precinct results in New York’s 16th District and found something interesting: More heavily Jewish precincts voted pretty strongly for Latimer.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538

We talk a lot about how effective or useful polling is these days, and Americans don't have a tremendous amount of trust in polling. According to a recent Marist poll, 61 percent of Americans said they trust polls "not very much" or "not at all."

So I think it's important to make note of when polls do a good job of depicting where a race stands. And Noble Predictive Insights's latest poll of Utah, which they fielded last week, was pretty spot on. They found Curtis leading the Senate primary field with 48 percent, followed by Staggs (28 percent), Wilson (9 percent) and Walton (6 percent). According to the AP, the current results are: Curtis 52 percent, Staggs 28 percent, Wilson 14 percent and Walton 6 percent, with 67 percent of the expected vote counted. That's pretty good. And in the gubernatorial race, Noble Predictive Insights found Cox ahead, 55 to 42 percent, over Lyman. He currently leads 59 to 41 percent, with 68 percent of the expected vote counted. Not bad for a primary poll!

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections

Cox may have been booed at the convention, Meredith, but Utah voters seem to feel OK about the state under his leadership. In a HarrisX/Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll conducted earlier this month, when asked whether the U.S. was on the right or wrong track, 77 percent of Utah voters said it was on the wrong track, compared with 14 percent who said it was on the right track. But when asked the same question about their own state, 48 percent said it was on the right track, and 36 percent said it was on the wrong track. That level of satisfaction is pretty rare these days, so despite some recent closer polling, I'm not surprised to see Cox running away with this race.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538

I think there's a decent argument that Burns's loss in South Carolina was a bit of bad luck. Neither Burns nor Biggs had held elected office before, and neither had significant backing from the state party generally, so that one may have been a bit of a toss-up. As Geoffrey mentioned, Burns had some baggage, so given two unknown candidates, that might have offset the benefit of the Trump endorsement.

But in the Utah Senate race and Colorado's 5th, Trump chose to back outsider-ish candidates rather than those who were supported by other Republican institutions or the party apparatus. Dave Williams was controversial from the start, running as a candidate while maintaining his position as party chair, which many saw as a conflict of interest. And neither Utah nor Colorado have ever been states that were particularly friendly to Trump's bombastic style, so his choice of outspoken MAGA candidates in those races may not have persuaded voters to those candidates.

—Mary Radcliffe, 538