South Carolina, Nevada, North Dakota primaries and Ohio special election 2024: Nancy Mace, Sam Brown win

Democrats nearly won a safely Republican congressional seat.

June 11 was another packed primary day, as voters in South Carolina, Maine, North Dakota and Nevada weighed in on who will make the ballot this fall. We had our eyes on a slew of Republican primaries on Tuesday, including several competitive contests for U.S. House seats, as well as contests to pick Nevada's GOP Senate nominee and effectively pick the next governor of North Dakota.

In South Carolina, Rep. Nancy Mace's Trumpian pivot didn't cost her, as she handily fended off an establishment-aligned primary challenger. Fellow incumbent Rep. William Timmons, who was looking vulnerable after an infidelity scandal, also came out ahead in a closer race against his right-wing challenger. In North Dakota's At-Large Congressional District, Julie Fedorchak became the first non-incumbent woman this cycle to win a GOP primary for a safely red seat. In Nevada, Republican voters chose Sam Brown as their candidate to challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen this fall.

Finally, a special election is set to give House Republicans one more seat of breathing room, as voters in Ohio's 6th District filled the seat vacated by Rep. Bill Johnson's departure in January — though not without some unexpected suspense.

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.


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We’re pretty firmly in runoff territory in South Carolina's 3rd

Upstate, the race to replace retiring Rep. Jeff Duncan has essentially fallen into a close three-person race. With 63 percent of the expected votes counted, Trump-endorsed Burns is at 31 percent, Biggs has 30 percent and Jones has 20 percent. Toss in double-digit support for Kevin Bishop, the recently retired communications director for Sen. Lindsey Graham, and it's enough to split the vote in a way that makes it very hard for any candidate to break the majority threshold. Whoever finishes tonight in the top two slots will very likely face off again in a runoff election in two weeks' time. It's been interesting to see the vote regional breakdown as ballots are counted. Jones is leading in Laurens County with 52 percent of the vote there — no surprise, as this is the part of the district that Jones represents in the state House. Burns is leading in Pickens, Abbeville (trivia: this is the first county in the U.S., alphabetically), and McCormick Counties — the first two are slightly more conservative, and the first is his home county.

—Kaleigh Rogers, 538


Mace is the first anti-McCarthy Republican to win an election

As we've noted, Mace was one of eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy from the speakership last year. Two (Ken Buck and Matt Rosendale) have already resigned or retired from Congress, and McCarthy allies were targeting many of the other six for defeat in primaries this year. Mace was the first of these to face voters, and she obviously survived, so pro-McCarthy forces are 0-for-1.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538


Mace projected to win

The AP has projected that Nancy Mace will win the GOP nomination in South Carolina’s 1st District. It’s an early call for the embattled congresswoman who has angered both Trump allies and House GOP leadership over her two terms in Congress. She leads her opponent, 58 percent to 29 percent, with just over a quarter of the vote counted. Mace will be the favorite in the general election too, after the Supreme Court halted a lower court’s ruling that her district needed to be redrawn.

—Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections


I wonder which way election day votes will go in South Carolina’s 4th

Kaleigh, you raise an interesting question. Election day voters do tend to be more MAGA in primaries, similar to how they’re more Republican in general elections. (This isn’t surprising — Trump is the one who cast unfounded aspersions on the security of mail voting.) So I wonder who those votes will benefit today in South Carolina’s 4th. Timmons has Trump’s endorsement, but temperamentally, he’s not very bomb-throwy. Morgan, a member of the state House’s Freedom Caucus, fits that description much better, so maybe he’ll be the pick of election day voters? We shall see.

—Nathaniel Rakich, 538


That’s a wrap!

Well, it’s unclear when we’re going to know the winners in the last few Nevada races, so we’re going to call it a night. Here’s a roundup of what happened in June 11’s key races:

- In the special election in Ohio’s 6th District, Republican state Sen. Michael Rulli defeated Democratic Air Force veteran Michael Kripchak, but by a shockingly narrow margin (9 points). Trump won this district by 29 points, so Democratic enthusiasm was really high here.
- In South Carolina’s 1st District, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace survived her second straight contested GOP primary as an incumbent, and by a much more comfortable margin than two years ago. Mace will face businessman Michael Moore (no, not that one) in the general election, where she’ll be the heavy favorite.
- In South Carolina’s 3rd District, the Republican primary is going to a runoff, with the top two candidates — Trump-endorsed pastor Mark Burns and Air National Guard Lt. Col. Sheri Biggs, who finished neck-and-neck — facing off again in two weeks.
- In South Carolina’s 4th District, Rep. William Timmons barely beat back a strong primary challenge from tea party Republican state Rep. Adam Morgan.
- Up north in Maine’s 2nd District, former NASCAR driver and current state Rep. Austin Theriault easily clinched the GOP nomination over his colleague Michael Soboleski. Now Theriault will race against Democrat Jared Golden, the Blue Dog who’s held this seat since 2018.
- In North Dakota, the Republican primary for governor was projected early, with Rep. Kelly Armstrong pulling quickly ahead of Lt. Gov. Tammy Miller. And the contested GOP primary for the state’s open at-large congressional district was projected for Public Service Commissioner Julie Fedorchak.
- For U.S. Senate in Nevada, Army veteran Sam Brown scored an easy win in the Republican primary. He’ll face Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen this fall in what will be one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races.

Finally, here’s the status of the three unprojected races in Nevada.

- Nevada’s 1st District looks like it will be a rematch, with 2022 nominee Mark Robertson leading the Republican primary for the right to once again face incumbent Democratic Rep. Dina Titus. However, Flemming Larsen could still win the GOP nomination too.
- In the crowded Republican primary in Nevada’s 3rd, conservative columnist Drew Johnson has a narrow lead over former state Treasurer Dan Schwartz. "Halo" composer Marty O’Donnell, the establishment pick, is in a surprising third place.
- In Nevada’s 4th, former North Las Vegas Mayor John Lee appears to have the inside track over Air Force veteran David Flippo.

—Monica Potts, Nathaniel Rakich and Kaleigh Rogers, 538; and Jacob Rubashkin, Inside Elections