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.
Latest headlines:
Polls are closed in the Ohio special election
It's 7:30 p.m. Eastern, which means polls are now closed in Ohio. There are no primaries in the Buckeye State tonight, but there is a special election in the state's 6th District, which was represented by Republican Rep. Bill Johnson until January, when he resigned to lead Youngstown State University.
According to Daily Kos Elections, Ohio's 6th District voted for Trump 64 percent to 35 percent in 2020, so Republican state Sen. Michael Rulli should easily defeat Democratic Air Force veteran Michael Kripchak there today. However, we'll still be keeping an eye on Rulli's winning margin as an indicator of the national political mood. Special election performance over a partisan baseline has historically been a good predictor of general election outcomes.
That said, individual special elections can be idiosyncratic, so you really need to consider today's result in Ohio's 6th alongside the other special congressional elections we've had this cycle. So far, Democrats have overperformed the weighted partisan leans of the districts in those elections by an average of 4 percentage points. We'll see how much — or whether — Ohio's 6th moves that average.
—Nathaniel Rakich, 538
One candidate tonight could help fill your dramatic campaign ad fix
I don't know about the cinematography, Monica, but if Halo composer and NV-03 candidate Marty O'Donnell comes out on top in his GOP primary tonight, I hope we'll see some great campaign ad scores from him.
—Tia Yang, 538
Burgum’s ad was notable for another reason …
… It was one of the few times a public figure claiming to be from a "small town" was legitimately from a small town. Burgum’s hometown, Arthur, North Dakota, has a population of 328 at the 2020 census. That’s even smaller than 538's tiny-town contingent: My hometown population is 506, and Monica’s hometown has a population of 2,500.
—Kaleigh Rogers, 538
Will the next North Dakota governor ever make a video like this?
One of the races I'm watching tonight is the Republican primary for North Dakota's governor, and, as Geoffrey noted earlier, that race has been increasingly heated. Of course, the Republican nominee is seeking to replace Burgum, who is retiring after a brief run for the Republican nomination for president, and amid chatter that he could be Trump's vice presidential pick. So I'd just like to take a moment to remember this cinematic video Burgum used to launch his presidential campaign, with a voiceover that praised small-town values over scenic images of hills and livestock. Maybe we can look forward to such a video one day from his successor.
—Monica Potts, 538
The winner of Maine's 2nd District GOP primary will face an endangered Democratic incumbent in fall
Maine's 2nd District is host to a GOP primary in which two first-term state representatives, Austin Theriault and Mike Soboleski, are contending for the right to take on three-term Democratic Rep. Jared Golden. The incumbent has managed to hold onto this seat, which takes in most of Maine north of its southern coastal area, despite its slight Republican lean: Trump would have carried it 51 percent to 45 percent in 2020, according to Daily Kos Elections, making it the second-most Republican-leaning seat (by presidential vote) that a Democratic incumbent is defending in 2024, trailing only Rep. Mary Peltola's at-large seat in Alaska.
Theriault, a former NASCAR driver, looks to be favored. He has Trump's endorsement, which he's naturally emphasized in his ads, and he's congressional Republicans' top choice, having earned the backing of Speaker Mike Johnson and the Congressional Leadership Fund. Moreover, Theriault has raised $1.2 million to Soboleski's $117,000. The only somewhat recent poll was an early April survey from Public Opinion Strategies on behalf of Theriault's campaign that found him leading Soboleski 30 percent to 7 percent. But while Theriault has Trump's backing, Soboleski aligns with the former president — and around two-thirds of Republicans nationally — on the question of the 2020 election's legitimacy. Unlike Theriault, Soboleski has echoed Trump's unsupported claim that Biden didn't legitimately win.
—Geoffrey Skelley, 538