Primaries to watch Tuesday (5/14/24)- Maryland, Nebraska, West Virginia

[Tekken_Guy]

Incredibly early in NC, but Brad Knott has such a large lead in NC-13 that you have to suspect the rest of the district is going to go for him to some degree once more results show up. Johnson county could counter the trendline in other counties, but will it?

Daughtry suspended her campaign a couple of weeks ago.

[Tekken_Guy]

Why would any D partisan want Alsobrooks to prevail? We are going to have to light millions on fire to defend the seat when Trone could light up his own cash.

MD is not going to be competitive and Dems don’t need to spend a dime there.

[Tekken_Guy]

Looking at the Maryland results, this is starting to look somewhat like what I predicted for Maryland in my Ron DeSantis TL ("A Blank Canvas") I did not too long ago, particularly the congressional races in MD-02 and MD-03 where it's Johnny Olszewski versus Kim Klacik in the former and Sarah Elfreth on top in the latter. Except for sure the Democrats are certain to hold onto those seats unless Dems really get burnt fried crispy with whatever "October Surprise" comes about (especially if the result is unfavorable to the Dems, or a major economic setback like a default on the national debt is what the surprise is about).

It's also fair to say that the Millennial vote is indeed the "it vote" now, especially considering in MD-03 you had several state legislators running, duking it out and sacrificing what otherwise could have been safe legislative seats for the once-in-a-blue-moon chance to represent their area in Congress. And considering this and MD-02 are suburban bastions (in this case, suburbs of Baltimore), it doesn't shock me if the primary rationale for Elfreth being on top in her primary has to with undecided Dems settling on the candidate whose parents put her in pink Pampers as a baby - as blue and pink diapers were actually quite common when many of today's Millennials were babies themselves (I for one was in blue diapers as a baby!).

There are of course other factors as well, such as Elfreth being backed by a sizable number of Maryland Dem insiders as well as AIPAC and a splintered progressive vote, but the fact that Elfreth pulled ahead of Harry Dunn (whose primary M.O. going for him was J6, which one would think would have been a deciding factor in a Dem primary) is fairly remarkable. Dunn coming up short may also indicate that J6 isn't exactly the "silver bullet" some Dems were hoping in primaries, and certainly isn't the case for many Rs who broke into the Capitol on January 6th either - as merely earning Trump's endorsement likely was never predicated on whether or not you were a Capitol rioter, but rather a combination of legislative experience, a conservative voting record, and mere platitudes about being "madly in love" with Trump.

As for Larry Hogan, I wouldn't exactly say that not crossing 60 percent is a dealbreaker for him, especially since the DSCC will have to really pull out all the stops to get Alsobrooks elected. White college educated voters along the Acela corridor think quite similarly regardless of which party's colors they wear on Election Day, and there will certainly be plenty of Hogan voters who otherwise will be voting for Biden. The big losers will be those Democrats in states like Texas and Florida who now will have to plead their case for help from Washington or spend bigly on polling to justify the case that their races aren't "lost causes", as the Dems are already having to play catch-up given the GOP is all but guaranteed to win Manchin's seat the moment 7:30 p.m. approaches on November the 5th in West Virginia.

Hogan will not be competitive. Democrats shouldn’t spend any resources here.