The 9 federal races in Missouri

[MarkD]

You can treat this thread as a megathread for discussing any of the federal races in Missouri this year: the Senate race and any of the eight House races. (Sorry in advance for how long this OP is going to be.)

MO-SEN There are 34 people who have filed to run for the US Senate this year: 21 Republicans, 11 Democrats, 1 Libertarian, and 1 Constitution Party candidate. I wonder what the 2023 edition of the Official Missouri Handbook (colloquially known as the Blue Book) is going to look like; how many pages is it going to take to print the primary election results, broken down county-by-county, of 34 candidates for the Senate? I’m sure that 21 candidates in one party primary is a record for Missouri.

None of the 11 Democrats has ever held an elective office; two of them have run for office before, so far as I know. That is certainly unusual too, to have no candidates in the primary who have held any elected office. As probably everyone here knows, former state Sen. Scott Sifton withdrew from the race on 3/29, and endorsed fellow Democrat Trudy Busch Valentine, who filed that same day he withdrew. I had never heard of her before that day, and I find it very, very surprising that any member of the Busch family is a Democrat. (I heard many years ago that the Busch family and their business organization regularly make huge campaign contributions to both state parties, but nevertheless, I never thought I’d see the day that one of them runs for office themselves, much less runs as a Democrat.)

The Libertarian who is running is Jonathan Dine, a repeat candidate who has run for the US Senate three times in the past twelve years. The Constitution Party candidate is named Paul Venable, who ran for Sec. of State two years ago (last place in a five-way race). The Green Party and any independents who want to run can also get on the November ballot by submitting at least 10,000 signatures of registered voters no later than August 1; according to Wikipedia, there are two independents who have announced their intentions to run (I don't recognize either of their names).

Out of the 21 Republicans who filled, 15 of them are obviously very minor candidates, and none of them are likely going to get any more than 1% of the primary vote. In fact, collectively, the combined votes of all 15 of them are probably going to be no more than 8%. I don’t recognize the names of fourteen of them; the only one I do recognize is Bernie Mowinski, who has been a perennial candidate. He has run for a few different offices several times in the last 24 years, and always lost every primary he entered by wide margins. So the six major candidates who are running are Eric Greitens, Eric Schmitt, Vicki Hartzler, Dave Schatz, Billy Long, and Mark McCloskey. Of those six, Greitens, Schmitt, and Hartzler are obviously the first-tier candidates. This primary is mainly their three-way contest. According to RealClearPolitics, and some other pollsters, the three of them are closely bunched together in recent polling, with Greitens’ popularity going down and Hartzler’s popularity rising. The three of them are so close I have no idea which of them will win. Then the second-tier candidates are Long, Schatz, and McCloskey; I think it’s highly probable that Long will come in fourth place, Schatz in fifth place, and McCloskey in sixth place.

MO-01 This is such a heavily Democratic district that the only important contest is going to be the Democratic primary. Three unknown Republicans and one unknown Libertarian are not worth paying attention to. In the Dem primary, incumbent Cori Bush has four opponents (another person who previously filed recently withdrew from the race), but the only opponent who will matter in this race is state Sen. Steven Roberts. He just won the Senate seat less than two years ago, and he served in the state House for four years before that; as such, given that he doesn’t have much experience, maybe he isn’t the best person to try to emphasize that he’ll be a more effective legislator than Bush. But I hope he succeeds. (I used to live in the first district, up until about three years ago; I voted for Lacy Clay in the 2018 primary, and I would have voted for him again in the 2020 primary. I would dislike having Bush as my current congresswoman.)

MO-02 Incumbent Ann Wagner has three opponents in the Republican primary, two of whom are unknowns and will be minor and insignificant. But Paul Berry III is certainly not unknown or insignificant. Berry, a resident of Maryland Heights, has run for offices five times in the last ten years. He first ran for state Rep in 2012 in the Democrat primary, but came in a distant third place. Two years later, he ran for the same Rep seat, but in the Republican primary, where he was unopposed. But he lost the general election with only 35%. Then in 2016, he ran for Congress, MO-01, but came in a distant second place in the Republican primary. Two years later, he ran for St. Louis County Executive; he comfortably won a two-way race in the GOP primary, then ended up with 37.21% in the general election (to the incumbent’s 57.02%). Two years ago, he ran for County Executive again (a special election triggered by the fact that the 2018 winner resigned almost immediately after that election due to scandal, and a special election was needed to select someone to fill out the remaining two years of the four-year term); Berry won the GOP primary comfortably again, but in the November election he ended up with 36.39% to Democrat Sam Page’s 58.27%. Given that two county-wide runs in the last four years certainly gives him a pretty high degree of name recognition, it makes Berry a more credible opponent in the Republican primary for MO-02 than Wagner has ever had before. His Maryland Heights home will probably not be in MO-02 once the new map is adopted, but the only thing that means to him is that he won’t be able to vote for himself.

Three Democrats have filed, and the obvious frontrunner, and probable winner of the primary, is going to be state Rep. Trish Gunby. It’s baffling to me why she is going to run for the congressional seat when she has only been in the MO House for two years so far (she won a November 2019 special election). I would think she would run for reelection to the state House, win a couple more times, and then try for Congress after she has more experience. Her chances of winning the general election are going to get slimmer and slimmer depending on how much more heavily Republican the district gets in redistricting, so we have to wait to see the map that finally gets adopted before we can adequately predict her chances.

The Libertarian who has filed for this district is perennial candidate Bill Slantz (a resident of unincorporated St. Charles County). He has run for an office every two years for the last twelve years: twice for state House, once for state Senate, once for Lt. Gov., and two previous runs for MO-02.

MO-03 There are four unknowns competing with incumbent Republican Blaine Luetkemeyer in the GOP primary, but of course he’ll beat them all by a landslide. There are also four Democrats running, but they’re all unknown; whichever of them wins, they will pose no threat at all. There is no Libertarian running for this district, the only district without one. This hasn’t happened in any Missouri congressional districts since 2010; of all US House races in Missouri since 1996, there have only been two occasions in which less than a full slate of Libertarians have run for every congressional district -- 2008 and 2010.

MO-04 Eight Republicans, one Democrat, and one Libertarian have filed for this open race (Hartzler, of course, is running for the Senate). The Democrat is named Jack Truman; he lives in the same city as Harry Truman was born in, so maybe he’s a relative? Jack Truman has run for US House three times previously: twice in MO-07 and once in MO-04. The Libertarian candidate has also run for Congress before too, several times, but most of his previous races, he ran in MO-05. Among the eight Republicans, six are unknown and inexperienced at politics. I think the one most likely to win the primary is state Senator Rick Brattin, currently in his first term in the state Senate, and formerly elected four times to the state House. Brattin’s former state Rep district was very similar to the former district of Hartzler over 20 years ago. The other officeholder is state Rep. Sara Walsh, who won her first election in an August 2017 special election. Someone who represents about one-fourth of the congressional district is more likely going to win compared to someone who represents only about one-twentieth. And again, we don’t know yet what the district boundaries are going to be: maybe very little, or none, of Walsh’s state Rep. district is going to be in district 4 when the map comes out.

MO-05 Incumbent Democrat Emanual Cleaver, II is going to have a rematch with the one person who ran against him two years ago in the Democratic primary. The Libertarian who is running is also a repeat candidate from two years ago. After Cleaver easily wins the primary, he is going to face Republican Jacob Turk for the EIGHTH TIME! Turk has two opponents in the GOP primary this year, but he will undoubtedly win it by a landslide, given how often he won the primaries, by landslides, in the past 14 years. Of the seven previous races Turk has run against Cleaver (2006 through 2018), the closest race was in 2014, a year with notoriously low turnout in the Democratic base. Turk got 45% to Cleaver’s 51.6% that occasion; in 2010, he got 44.2% to Cleaver’s 53.3%. The rest of the five races, Turk received in the range of 32% to 38%.

MO-06 Sam Graves has four opponents in the GOP primary, one of whom, Christopher Ryan, is a perennial candidate who has run against Graves five of the last six election cycles – always coming in a very distant second place in the primary. The three Democrats and one Libertarian running are all unknown, first-time candidates, so it’s pretty obvious that Graves will easily win a twelfth term, maintaining his status as the dean of the House delegation.

MO-07 This seat is also open because incumbent Billy Long is also running for the Senate. Eight Republicans, three Democrats, and one Libertarian have filed. The three Dems are unknowns; the Libertarian candidate has run for this district seven times in the last 18 years. The three major Republican candidates are Jay Wasson, Eric Burlison, and Mike Moon. Wasson won his first-ever election 20 years ago as a state Rep.; after four terms in the House, he got elected to the state Senate (2010), serving there for eight years as well, so he has sixteen years experience as a state legislator (and four years out of office). Burlison got elected to the state House in 2008, he was reelected three times, and in 2018, he replaced Wasson in the state Senate, for a total of twelve nonconsecutive years as a state legislator. Moon ran for district 7 in both 2010 and 2012, losing to Long in the primary both times; then he won three terms to the state House – 2014, 2016, and 2018 – and after those three terms, he got elected to the state Senate in 2020. So there are two current Senators and one former Senator who are very probably locked in a pretty tight three-way race. Among the other five minor candidates running in the primary, one is Camille Lombardi-Olive, who has run for the US House three times before: once as a Democrat in district 7, once as a Republican in the same district, and once as a Republican in district 1.

MO-08 This district has the fewest candidates who are running: incumbent Jason Smith has one opponent in the primary, and only one Democrat and one Libertarian have filed. I don’t recognize the name of the GOP opponent, or of the Democratic candidate. Libertarian Jim Higgins is easily recognizable from previous runs for the US House. Two years ago, he ran in district 6; he ran once in district 1, twice in district 2; he's also ran for Governor once and for state Senator twice. But in November, Smith is going to be as easily reelected as Luetkemeyer and Graves.

So altogether, there are 38 Republicans, 22 Democrats, and 7 Libertarians who are going to be on the ballot this August running for the House (unless some drop out). (Sixty-seven candidates for the US House in the primary election is very likely a record for Missouri too. But look at the ratio of Senate candidates to House candidates: 34 for the statewide office compared to 67 for the offices for 8 districts. Whew!)
Like the statewide Senate race, Green Party and independent candidates who want to run for any of the eight congressional districts may do so by submitting petitions with a certain number of signatures (2% of the number of votes cast in the particular district in the 2020 election) by August 1.

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

Fantastic post! Thanks for putting the effort into this, it's really good information.

[MarkD]

Thanks!
Clarification: I just read that Jack Truman (MO-04) is indeed related to former President Harry Truman; Jack says Harry is his great-uncle. But being a relative is probably not going to help his chances this November.
The three previous occasions Jack Truman ran for Congress were in 2016: he came in second place in a two-way race in the Dem primary for MO-04 -- 2006: he won the Dem primary in MO-07 but lost to Roy Blunt in Nov. -- and 2004: he came in second place in a four-way race in the Dem primary in MO-07.

[MarkD]

Now that a new congressional map is passed by both chambers of the state legislature (and I assume Gov. Parson with sign it), I can confirm the following two details I talked about in the OP.
The home of Paul Berry III (two-time Republican nominee for St. Louis County Executive) is not in MO-02 -- it is still in MO-01 -- so he won't be able to vote for himself.
Sara Walsh's home and her entire district is now going to be in MO-03, not MO-04, where she filed to run. So she stands very little chance at being able to win the primary. Sen. Brattin is almost certain to win the primary in MO-04.
On another note, I didn't notice before, but Congressman Jason Smith has listed his home address as a PO Box in Cape Girardeau, which suggests that he moved from his longtime home in Cuba to C.G. If so, this is similar to what Bill Emerson did 40 years ago when they redrew his district to exclude his home in Jefferson County; he also moved to Cape Girardeau when he saw the new map in 1981. But this time, Smith seems to have anticipated that his Crawford County home would be put in MO-03 instead of MO-08.

[user12345]

MO-01 This is such a heavily Democratic district that the only important contest is going to be the Democratic primary. Three unknown Republicans and one unknown Libertarian are not worth paying attention to. In the Dem primary, incumbent Cori Bush has four opponents (another person who previously filed recently withdrew from the race), but the only opponent who will matter in this race is state Sen. Steven Roberts. He just won the Senate seat less than two years ago, and he served in the state House for four years before that; as such, given that he doesn’t have much experience, maybe he isn’t the best person to try to emphasize that he’ll be a more effective legislator than Bush. But I hope he succeeds. (I used to live in the first district, up until about three years ago; I voted for Lacy Clay in the 2018 primary, and I would have voted for him again in the 2020 primary. I would dislike having Bush as my current congresswoman.)

I think it is very important to note the number of sexual assault allegations against Roberts. He has settled with at least one woman for his sexual misconduct and actually served with another member that he allegedly raped.

[MarkD]

MO-01 This is such a heavily Democratic district that the only important contest is going to be the Democratic primary. Three unknown Republicans and one unknown Libertarian are not worth paying attention to. In the Dem primary, incumbent Cori Bush has four opponents (another person who previously filed recently withdrew from the race), but the only opponent who will matter in this race is state Sen. Steven Roberts. He just won the Senate seat less than two years ago, and he served in the state House for four years before that; as such, given that he doesn’t have much experience, maybe he isn’t the best person to try to emphasize that he’ll be a more effective legislator than Bush. But I hope he succeeds. (I used to live in the first district, up until about three years ago; I voted for Lacy Clay in the 2018 primary, and I would have voted for him again in the 2020 primary. I would dislike having Bush as my current congresswoman.)

I think it is very important to note the number of sexual assault allegations against Roberts. He has settled with at least one woman for his sexual misconduct and actually served with another member that he allegedly raped.

My mistake. I wasn't aware of that. Well, now I have no one to root for in the Dem primary. Cori Bush is pretty obviously going to win renomination handily, Roberts will be in a not-close second place -- but maybe more than 33% of the primary vote, but unlikely as high as 40% -- and the three other candidates will be a distant third, fourth, and fifth place respectively.

[MarkD]

State Rep. Sara Walsh withdrew from the race for MO-04 two days ago, so that just leaves Sen. Rick Brattin and six other minor candidates running in the Republican primary. I think it's pretty obvious that she withdrew because the new map places her entire state rep. district -- and her home in Ashland -- in MO-03. That change doesn't conclusively prohibit her from running in MO-04, but it does mean she doesn't have any constituents from her district that can help boost her candidacy in MO-04. So now with her gone, it's pretty clearly Brattin's race to lose, and I can't imagine how he could lose, unless some major nasty is going to be revealed in the next two months. So Rick Brattin is pretty clearly going to replace Vicky Hartzler at the end of this year, and he's obviously going to be just as delightful about LGBT issues as Hartzler has always been.

[MarkD]

I just read a report that Democrat Ben Samuels is going to drop out of the race for MO-02 because the new map drew his home out of the district and put him in MO-01. Mr. Paranoid claimed that the state legislature did it on purpose to discourage him from running. I had been assuming that he had no chance of winning the primary against state rep. Trish Gunby, but according to the article (Missouri Independent) Samuels had raised over $1,100,000 in campaign funds, which is more than three times as much as Gunby has raised so far.

[MarkD]

For some reason, the Missouri SoS site which lists the candidates who are going to appear on the primary ballot has still not removed Ben Samuels from their list of candidates for MO-02.
In any event, I ought to retract my derogatory comment about Samuels claiming that the state legislature gerrymandered the district primarily to discourage himself from running. I've watched a video of him being interviewed in which talked about a number of issues, but when he talked about the gerrymandered district lines, he no longer talked as if it was all done just to target him. See the interview here.

As of now, Missouri will have 65 candidates on the primary ballot running for the 8 districts, but unlike the 34 candidates running for the Senate, 65 is not a record. This afternoon, I spent a couple of hours in the library at Washington U. Law School researching past editions of the Official Missouri Handbook (also known as The Blue Book) to see how many candidates have run for the US House in Missouri in previous primaries. I looked as far back as 80 years, to 1942. The record number of candidates (within the last 80 years) was in 1952: there were 80 candidates that year! In 1976, there were 74 candidates. What made the 1976 election exceptional was that half of the state's incumbents - 5 out of 10 - were not running for reelection. However, even if the raw number of candidates has been higher than this year, the ratio of candidates to number of districts in which to run is a record: 65 running for 8 districts is a fraction over 8 candidates per district, whereas 74 candidates in 10 districts in '76 and 80 candidates in 11 districts in '52 was only a little over 7 candidates per district.

[MarkD]

It's been a month since the last time any candidates for federal or state office in Missouri withdrew, so it appears that now the list of people who will appear on the primary ballot next month is finalized. There are still 34 candidates who will be on the ballot for the US Senate - 21 Republicans, 11 Democrats, 1 Libertarian, 1 Constitution Party - and 64 candidates for the US House - 36 Republicans, 21 Democrats, and 7 Libertarians.

I also have to correct some things I posted above about MO-04. I thought that state Senator Rick Brattin was the only major candidate running for the Republican nomination in the 4th District, and the six others also in that race were unknown nobodies. I was mistaken. Mark Alford is one of the six who I thought was an unknown, but he's actually a former news anchor on one of the TV stations in the Kansas City area, so that does give him a significant amount of name recognition for residents of the western part of the district. His name familiarity probably even extends beyond Sen. Brattin's senate district. I've recently seen, in Wikipedia, that a poll taken back in January of this year put Alford on top in the polling among likely Republican voters (with a huge number of undecideds), and Brattin way behind Alford. Also according to the Wikipedia page, among the others who are running in the GOP primary are a former Boone County Clerk and a professional ice hockey player (who did NOT play for the KC Mavericks, so he doesn't necessarily have much name recognition in western or central MO). The former Boone County Clerk's home is in Ashland, the same town where Sara Walsh lives, and he doesn't reside in the 4th District - only the northern half of Boone County is in the 4th. However, the former Clerk, Taylor Burks, had raised and spent the most money as of March 31 of this year, according to Ballotpedia. And an NPR article quotes him as saying that he's going to move his family into northern Boone County this year. So all in all, this may be a much tighter race than I originally thought. (Teaches me to stop assuming that if I had not already heard of any particular candidate, then they aren't particularly well-known to anyone else either.)

[MarkD]

Some predictions (mostly based on hunches!)

Turnout: I think there'll be about 1 million votes cast next month. There is only one ballot proposition to vote on, and it presents a very non-controversial issue, so there's no reason to think that it will boost voter turnout like in August 2004 (same-sex marriage), August 2018 (right-to-work), or August 2020 (Medicaid expansion) - (the August 2004 voter turnout has been the highest ever). And I think there will be about 150,000 more votes in the Republican primary than the Democratic primary, so about 575,000 to 425,000.

The Republican Senate race is pretty clearly going to be very close, with Schmitt, Hartzler, and Greitens virtually tied. It wouldn't surprise me if they are within 0.2% of each other, such as Schmitt at about 23.6%, Hartzler at 23.4%, and Greitens at 23.2%. But in the Democratic primary, the only thing that seems fairly certain is that it's a two-way race between Lucas Kunce and Trudy Busch Valentine.

In MO-01, I think Cori Bush wins with about 55% to Steve Roberts' 35%, with the remaining 10% split among the three minor candidates. Who wins the Republican primary will of course be unpredictable and unimportant.

In MO-02, Trish Gunby will obviously win the Democrati primary by a landslide. But the race between Ann Wagner and Paul Berry seems harder to pinpoint. Wagner pretty clearly will win, but by how large of a margin? Maybe she gets 60% to Berry's 34%, with the remaining two minor candidates getting 3% each? If she gets only 60%, that'll be the lowest she's ever gotten in the Republican primary.

In MO-3 and MO-6, incumbent Republicans Luetkemeyer and Graves obviously both win their respective primaries by huge landslides, and who will win the Democratic primaries in those respective districts will be unimportant.

In MO-04, I think we might see about 36% for Sen. Brattin, about 32% for Mark Alford, about 15% for Taylor Burks, about 10% for Parson-endorsed Kalena Bruce, and the remaining 7% split among the three minor candidates.

In MO-05, since incumbent Emanuel Cleaver is having a rematch with the same person he beat two years ago in the Democratic primary, the result of this primary should be pretty much the same: about 85% to 15%. In the Republican primary, perennial candidate Jacob Turk, back for an eighth run against Cleaver, will probably get 67% of the primary vote or so, since that's pretty much what he's gotten most of the time in the past primaries.

In MO-07, we have a race between three major candidates and five minor ones. The major candidates are two current state senators and one former state senator. I think the three of them will be pretty darn close - 31%, 30%, and 29% - and the remaining five minor candidates will split 10%. But which senator comes in first place? Maybe Eric Burlison, as my hunch, because he's the youngest of the three. The Democratic primary, again, is unimportant.

In MO-08, incumbent Smith is probably going to win by a bigger landslide than Luetkemeyer or Graves.

[MarkD]

I'm a big believer in making sweeping conclusions based on initial returns, so I imagine we should be watching these four counties for the Senate race:

https://twitter.com/Missouri_Mapper/status/1550969846975832065

I'm not a believer in the relevancy of facts like this, especially since, in the 2020 election, Trump won 18 of the 19 bellwether counties of the entire nation (counties that had voted for the winning presidential candidate ever since 1980).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_election_bellwether_counties_in_the_United_States

[MarkD]

As you all probably know by now, Eric Schmitt has easily won the GOP primary for the US Senate. The fact that he won by such a large margin - beating Hartzler by a little over 2-1 - is what surprises me the most. I was counting on a probability that it was going to be much closer, and that the winner might not even clear 30% of the votes cast. On the Democrats' side, Trudy Busch Valentine has won by primary by a margin of about 5% points.

The total number of votes cast is approximately what I thought it was going to be: about 1,000,000 votes. But the Republicans' advantage is wider than I thought it would be. I was predicting anything from a 57.5% to 42.5% ratio to maybe 60% to 40%. But it appears that the ratio is going to be even wider than that. According to unofficial results, with all precincts reporting, there were over 654,000 Republican voters and over 367,000 Democratic voters - 64% to 36%.

Cori Bush beat Steve Roberts by a much wider margin than I thought.

Very, very surprising is that Paul Berry came in last place in the Republican primary running against Ann Wagner. I thought for sure Berry would come in second place, and probably would get over 33% of the primary votes. He did so poorly that I wouldn't blame him if he complained that there was something fishy about the results.

For Mark Alford to win MO-04 so strongly surprises me quite a lot too.

And for Mike Moon to come in a distant fourth place in MO-07 is just as surprising as the other results above. The fact that he got less than half as many votes as the third-place finisher, and has less than 9% of the votes cast in the GOP primary, is downright hilarious. State Senator Eric Burlison is going to be the next congressman from MO-07.
~~~~

Unrelated to the fact that this thread and this board is about congressional elections, I've seen some other interesting results in Missouri state elections. It doesn't surprise me at all that Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick won the primary for state Auditor by such a wide margin.
Some incumbent state legislators who were running for reelection lost their primary, though. State Senator Bill White has lost to newcomer Jill Carter in SD 32 (Joplin area). In the House races, there was only one district in which two incumbents were paired up and ran against each other - HD 73 in St. Louis County (the airport, and cities of Berkeley and Ferguson). Incumbent Raychel Proudie was previously elected in the old version of 73, and the new version of the district contained a huge amount of the old district Proudie was already representing, whereas the other incumbent, Mike Person, had extremely little of his old district 74 in the new 73, so it's not at all surprising that Proudie easily beat Person. On the other hand, there are 5 other incumbent state reps being challenged by newcomers who ended up losing. Republican Randy Railsback, previously elected in the old district 8, ran for reelection in the new version of 2, and lost by a wide margin. Another incumbent Republican, John Simmons, of HD 109, in northern Franklin County, narrowly lost to a challenger in a 3-way race. But 3 incumbent Democrats lost to new challengers: in HD 36 in southern Kansas City, Annette Turnbaugh lost by a wide margin (nearly 26% points); in HD 67 in northern St. Louis County, Neil Smith lost by over 31% points; and in northwestern part of the city of St. Louis, HD 84, incumbent Chip Price lost by a margin of nearly 15% points.

For pro-choice Democrats, a big disappointment about the primary election results for state reps is probably that Alderman Bill Stephens of St. Louis did not beat incumbent Steve Butz in HD 81, which covers the southeast section of the city. Stephens' campaign emphasized that he was pro-choice on abortion and Butz was not. Butz won 2,623 to Stephens' 1,731 - or 60.243% to 39.757%.

[MarkD]

Some additional observations about the unofficial vote counts in the primary.

Billy Long getting a little under 5% of the total primary vote is very embarrassing for him. Add to that the fact that he came in third place even in his own congressional district. I've counted the votes for all candidates among the ten counties that make up 99% of the 7th district (according to the old lines), and Long ended up with almost exactly 17%, only about 0.72% points ahead of Greitens, and about 1.83% behind Hartzler, with Schmitt way ahead of them all at a little under 41% (and a little over 7% for all the rest combined) -- just in those ten counties. Furthermore, well over half of all of Long's votes came from his district: about 55.75% of all of his votes he got statewide came just from those ten counties.

Greitens was ahead of Hartzler in every whole county in the 8th district (again, per the old district lines). He outright won, by plurality, in the three Boot Heel counties (Dunklin, New Madrid, and Pemiscot), and among the remaining 26 whole counties (everything in the 8th except southern Jefferson County), he always came in second place behind Schmitt but ahead of Hartzler. I calculated the total number of votes cast in the GOP primary in the 8th, for the US Senate, at 86,296, divided in this way: 39,831 for Schmitt (46.16%), 22,834 for Greitens (26.46%), 13,037 for Hartzler (15.11%), and 10,594 for all the remaining 18 candidates (12.28%).

Greitens also beat Hartzler in the 6th district (previous lines), which I will describe as including all of Clay County but none of Audrain County or Jackson County. Accumulating all of the votes in the Senate primary in 34 whole counties in the northern tier of Missouri, there were 90,682 votes cast, with Scmitt at 43,091 (47.52%), Greitens at 20,256 (22.34%), Hartzler at 16,635 (18.34%), and 10,700 for all the rest (11.80%).

Hartzler, of course, won her own district, the 4th district (previous lines, except that I will count as including all of Audrain, Camden, and Webster Counties), for a total of 24 whole counties. Out of 111,948 votes in total, Hartzler got 43,920 (39.23%), Schmitt got 37,181 (33.21%), Greitens got 18,192 (16.25%), and all of the rest got 12,655 (11.30%).

In the 3rd district, which I will include all of St. Charles and Jefferson Counties, there were a total of 136,200 votes in the Senate primary, and Schmitt got a smidgen under half of them, 67,949 (49.89%). Greitens again came in second place here, but just by a smidgen -- 25,945 for him (19.05%) to 25,747 for Hartzler (18.90%), and 16,559 for all the rest (12.16).

Then in the St. Louis City-St. Louis County combined area, there were just 70,021 votes cast, and Schmitt won way over 50% -- he got 40,974 total, for 58.52%, compared to Hartzler getting 12,563 (17.94%), Greitens got 10,751 (15.35%), and all the rest got 5,733 (8.19%).

In the 5th district -- Jackson, Lafayette, Ray, and Saline counties -- there were just 52,492 votes cast for the GOP primary, and Schmitt got a smidgen over 50% -- 26,267 (50.04%). Hartzler got 12,467 (23.75%), Greitens got 8,615 (16.41%), and all the rest got 5,143 (9.80%).

Mark McCloskey -- the guy trying to ride on his "fame" for brandishing his gun at BLM protesters marching down his street -- had some surprising results too in some counties. Statewide, he only got 2.98% of the GOP primary votes, but he did far better than that in a handful of counties. His best county of all was Livingston County, where he got 12.43%, and his second best was in Henry County, where he got 12% even. There were seven other counties in which he got over 6%: Gasconade, Gentry, Lewis, Linn, Mercer, Pike, and St. Francois. And besides that, he got between 3% and 6% in 39 other counties, spread all over the state, but somewhat more heavily concentrated in the 3rd congressional district.

Counting all of the primary votes cast statewide for the US Senate (including Dem voters, Libertarian, and Constitution Party), there were 1,025,558. For the eight respective congressional races, there were 986,437 votes. That's 39,121 less, and the number of House votes calculates as 96.2% of the number of Senate votes. So were there exactly 39,121 Missouri voters who voted just for Senate but did not vote for the House at all? Not per se. As I went through each and every county's election returns (again, still unofficial), I discovered there were several counties in which the votes cast for the US House was slightly higher than the votes cast for the US Senate. I found 8 counties in the 6th Congressional District in which the votes cast for that House race were slightly higher than the votes cast for the Senate. There were also 4 counties in the 8th CD like that. And when I compared the votes cast in each county among the 18 whole counties that make up the 12th state Senate district, I found 11 of the counties had more votes cast for that particular state Senate race than for the US Senate race. Adding up all of the votes cast for the 3 Republicans who ran for SD 12 (just the 18 whole counties; not counting the chunk of Buchanan County) to all of the votes cast for the US Senate race, there were 30,556 for the state Senate but 30,369 for the US Senate. AAAAND, looking specifically at House Districts 1 and 2 (which are completely within SD 12, taking up 9 of the 18 counties of the senate district), there were more votes cast for the five Republicans running for HD1 and for the two Republicans running for HD 2 than there were votes cast for the US senate! In HD 1, there were 7,044 votes cast for the US house, 7,009 for the state senate, 7,051 for the state house, but only 6,919 for the US Senate. In HD 2, there were 7,281 votes cast for the US house, 7,368 for the state senate, 7,534 for the state house, and 7,361 for the US senate. (Aside: in HD 2, the incumbent Republican, Randy Railsback, lost the primary by a wide margin. Two years ago, Railsback ran in what was then district 8, comprised of his home county, Caldwell, and Clinton County, and small chunks of Clay and Ray Counties. He easily won the Republican primary in August 2020, and was unopposed for the general election. But redistricting has put his home in Caldwell County into the new version of HD 2. He narrowly won Caldwell County this week, but he lost by landslide margins in three other new counties, and only ended up with 38.24% of the vote in the 2-way race.)

And lastly, there's one more thought that occurred to me yesterday, now that Trudy Busch Valentine is the Dem nominee for this race. I looked back at all 14 of the last US Senate races in Missouri, dating back to 1982, and I noticed that out of these 15 Senate races, the Democrats nominated a woman 10 times, and nominated men 5 times. Republicans have not nominated a woman once, now that even Vicki Hartzler lost this year. The 15 races I'm covering here in this list includes the 2002 special election (SE) that occurred because of Mel Carnahan's death weeks before the general election that he won.
1982 -- Harriet Woods (then a state senator)
1986 -- Harriet Woods (then Lt. Gov.)
1988 -- Jay Nixon (then a state senator)
1992 -- Jeri Rothman-Serot (then a St. Louis County Councilor)
1994 -- Alan Wheat (then a congressman)
1998 -- Jay Nixon (then state Attorney General)
2000 -- Mel Carnahan (then Governor)
2002 (SE) -- Jean Carnahan (then incumbent (appointed) US Senator)
2004 -- Nancy Farmer (then state Treasurer)
2006 -- Claire McCaskill (then state Auditor)
2010 -- Robin Carnahan (then Sec. of State)
2012 -- Claire McCaskill (then incumbent US Senator)
2016 -- Jason Kander (then Sec. of State)
2018 -- Claire McCaskill (then incumbent US Senator)
2022 -- Trudy Busch Valentine

[MarkD]

Neither any Green Party candidates nor any independent candidates submitted enough valid signatures on petitions to be able to qualify to appear on the ballot for any of the 9 federal races. So the ballot for US Senate will have four names -- Schmitt, Valentine, Libertarian Jonathan Dine, and Constitution Party's nominee Paul Venable. In 7 of the Congressional districts -- 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 -- there will be 3 names on the ballot for the US House: a Repub, a Dem, and a Lib. In district 3, there will only be 2 names -- incumbent Repub Blaine Luetkemeyer and Dem Bethany Mann.

When the results for the primary election were finalized and certified, there was a net gain of 2,137 more votes for US Senate than had previously been reported in the "unofficial results" during the previous three weeks. Republicans ended up with 1,201 more votes, for a total of 655,675; Democrats ended up with 835 more votes, for a total of 368,255; Libertarian Jonathan Dine ended up with merely 21 more votes, for a total of 2,973; and Constitution Party's nominee Paul Venable had 80 more votes, for a total of 792. The new total vote count is 1,027,695, which is about 198,000 less than two years ago, 252,000 less than four years ago, and about 14,000 more than had been cast for Governor six years ago.

I'll predict now that Schmitt wins by about 11 points -- he gets 54% to Valentine's 43%, while Dine and Venable split 3%.

[MarkD]

I am going to stick with my previous prediction that Schmitt wins by an 11-point margin (much narrower than his win for Treasurer six years ago - 17 points - and the margin he had two years ago for A.G. - 21.5 points). So about 54% to 43%. Busch-Valentine will win in the usual places Dems win: St. Louis City and County, Jackson County (both urban, by a landslide, and suburban, rather narrowly), Boone County, probably by an 11 point margin, and I predict she'll win Clay County by about 1 point. All of the rural counties, of course, will be landslides for Schmitt.

There should be no surprises in the 8 House races. Mark Alford and Eric Burlison will be the next new Congresscritters from Missouri come January. The only interesting question will be how big of a margin will Ann Wagner get? Will it be narrow like her last two re-elections because of the abortion issue, or will she do better than 2018 and/or 2020 because redistricting made the district safer, and abortion is not going to matter much?

[MarkD]

Schmitt is apparently going to win by about the margin that I said he would, when the final results are all in from the precincts in St. Louis and Kansas City.

EDIT: Ooops, I spoke too soon. It turns out there aren't any more unreported precincts in St. Louis or KC so Schmitt will end up winning by a slightly wider margin that I predicted he would: about 13 points instead of 11.

All 8 House races are turning about the way I thought they would, too. Wagner's reelection was boosted by redistricting, and Luetkemeyer's reelection margin came down a bit, because half of Boone County was added to his district. In MO-05, Republican Jacob Turk has lost to Emanuel Cleaver, II for the eighth time, getting only 36.51% of the vote.

[MarkD]

Today, the MO Sec. of State office published the finalized election results. The finalized results include about 6,000 more votes than the preliminary, "Unofficial" results that were on the SoS website for the last month. Eric Schmitt now has 3,330 more votes than in the preliminary report, Trudy Busch Valentine has 3,819 more, the Libertarian has 115 more, and the Constitution Party nominee has 60 more -- but hundreds of write-in votes have been deducted from the tally, undoubtedly because over 90% of the write-ins were invalid. Likewise, each of the respective candidates for the US House -- 8 Dems, 8 GOP -- also has hundreds of more votes than before.

Voter turnout was pretty low in the usual places: most predominantly black neighborhoods in St. Louis area and KC, in the predominantly Hispanic area just east of downtown KC, in the northwest region of Springfield, in the Bootheel, and in Pulaski County. Pulaski, of course, is the location of Ft. Leonard Wood, and I figured out a long time ago that the reason Pulaski always has low voter turnout is because FLW is an Army training base, with lots of soldiers who were included as Pulaski residents in the census, but most of those soldiers are transient residents, and few of them seem to have any desire to vote in Missouri elections. Pulaski County has the highest population of the six counties in Senate District 16 (followed by Phelps, Laclede, Wright, Dent, and Maries). Pulaski has 30.7% of the population of the district, but Pulaski cast the third-highest number of votes in district 16, only 19% of all the votes.

The low voter turnout in the predominantly black areas of St. Louis City and County is very discouraging. Senate District 5, which covers approximately 60% of the city, including most of the predominantly black neighborhoods, appears to have the fewest votes cast of any of the 34 senate districts (I have not yet tried to calculate the votes in the KC area). I counted only 39,209 votes for US Senate, but in two of the districts in the County - Districts 15 and 24 - there were more than twice as many as in 5 - over 81,000 in 24 and over 84,000 in 15. Statewide, the average number of votes cast for the US Senate in a state senate district was 60,857. The two senate districts in STL County that are also black majority - 13 and 14 - also had thousands of votes under the 60k average. Of the twelve house districts in the St. Louis area that are black majority, all but one of them had below-average voter turnout (compared to statewide).

[Schiff for Senate]

I'm a big believer in making sweeping conclusions based on initial returns, so I imagine we should be watching these four counties for the Senate race:

https://twitter.com/Missouri_Mapper/status/1550969846975832065

I'm not a believer in the relevancy of facts like this, especially since, in the 2020 election, Trump won 18 of the 19 bellwether counties of the entire nation (counties that had voted for the winning presidential candidate ever since 1980).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_election_bellwether_counties_in_the_United_States

Yeah, that little factoid is something I hear frequently trotted out by Big Lie believers when asked to present evidence that Trump won.

[MarkD]

I've done even more calculating of voter turnout and partisan split of state legislative districts -- all 34 senate districts and most of the 163 house districts. These calculations make it clear that the worst rate of voter turnout in the whole state were in 15 of the 16 black-majority house districts and all 4 of the black-majority senate districts.

The 16 house districts in MO that are black-majority are 22, 23, 26, 27, 66-68, 73-79, 84, and 85. The first four are in KC and the rest are in STL. Out of those 16 districts, the total amount of votes cast was higher than average for the whole state (12,694 for US Senate per district is average) in only one -- district 67 (the northernmost part of St. Louis County), where 13,164 votes were cast, 3.7% higher than average. Across all 15 of the other districts, voter turnout was so low that, on average (of those 15), only 8,557 votes were cast per district, 32.6% lower than average. The lowest turnout of all (of those 15) was in district 23, just southeast of downtown KC, where only 4,906 votes were cast for US Senate: 61.35% lower than average. Out of all 163 districts, the only one where voter turnout was lower than district 23 was district 121, covering most of Pulaski County - including all of Ft. Leonard Wood (see my comments about that in my last post). The number of votes cast in 121 was 66.1% lower than average.

Out of the 15 black-majority districts with low turnout, the average district voted 84.3% for Trudy B. Valentine, 13.8% for Schmitt, and 1.9% for others.

Hypothetically, if voter turnout in all 15 of those districts did match the bone fide statewide average, that would have meant 62,057 more votes would have been cast for the Senate race -- 2,131,187 instead of 2,069,130. And breaking down those 62,057 votes by the ratio of 84.3% for D, 13.8% for R, and 1.9 for others, Schmitt would have ended up with 54.22% instead of 55.43%, and Valentine would have ended up with 43.40% instead of 42.18%. Hence, Schmitt's margin of victory would have been cut down to 10.82 points instead of 13.25 points.

Besides the 15 black-majority district and district 121, voter turnout was also quite low in district 10 (downtown St. Joseph), district 19 (downtown KC and predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods east of there), district 21 (within Independence), district 93 (Lemay area of St. Louis County), districts 132 and 133 (within Springfield), districts 149 and 150 (the bootheel), and district 161 (within Joplin).

On the other hand, voter turnout was very high in several districts within St. Louis County: districts 71, 88-91, 95, 96, 98, 100, 101, and 110; one district in St. Louis City, 82; one district in KC, 25; one district in suburban KC, 30; one district in Cole County, 59; one within St. Charles County, 102; one within Camden County, 123; and one within Greene County, 137. 

[MarkD]

Now I have results for the US Senate race broken down to all 34 state senate districts. There are some senate districts in which my calculations are not particularly precise, due to the fact that some precincts are split between two districts, and in several counties, absentee ballots are tallied countywide, not broken down to the precinct level.

Like I've said elsewhere in this thread, Schmitt's margin of victory statewide was 13.25 points -- 55.43% to 42.18%. What is interesting about the results broken down to the state senate district level is that none of the 34 districts came anywhere near to matching the statewide average of 13.25 points. Ten districts voted for Valentine; six districts voted for Schmitt by margins narrower than his statewide average, but all six of them voted for him by margins less than 9 points; the remaining 18 districts all voted for Schmitt by margins of at least 21 points.

In the lines below, each row begins with the senate district number, then Valentine's votes (according to how I calculated them), followed by Schmitt's votes, then others. Then after "=" is the total number of votes in the district (average statewide was 60,857), followed by "--", then percentages: first Valentine, then Schmitt, then others.
After the first ten lines -- every district that voted predominantly for Valentine -- is the total number of votes for all ten districts.
Then after the next six districts -- the ones that voted relatively narrowly for Schmitt -- is the total number for those six districts.
Then lastly is the list of all remaining 18 districts, the ones which voted heavily for Schmitt, and then the total for those 18 districts.
Here is the statewide map of the 34 districts
https://www.sos.mo.gov/CMSImages/Elections//Maps//2022JRCStatewideSenateDistrictMap.pdf
                D            R        O                        D            R            O      
SD 5 - 34,759 / 3,471 / 709 = 38,939 – 89.27% / 8.91% / 1.82%
SD 13 - 38,508 / 8,920 / 845 = 48,273 – 79.77% / 18.48% / 1.75%
SD 9 - 33,047 / 8,196 / 926 = 42,169 – 78.37% / 19.44% / 2.20%
SD 14 - 39,591 / 11,415 / 1,024 = 52,030 – 76.09% / 21.94% / 1.97%
SD 7 - 43,734 / 12,961 / 982 = 57,677 – 75.83% / 22.47% / 1.70%
SD 4 - 53,472 / 16,058 / 1,085 = 70,615 – 75.72% / 22.74% / 1.54%
SD 24 - 46.566 / 33,573 / 1,104 = 81,243 – 57.32% / 41.32% / 1.36%
SD 19 - 35,608 / 25,940 / 1,562 = 63,110 – 56.42% / 41.10% / 2.48%
SD 1 - 40,938 / 30,952 / 1,146 = 73,036 – 56.05% / 42.38% / 1.57%
SD 17 - 29,952 / 25,180 / 1,468 = 56,600 – 52.92% / 44.49% / 2.59%
All 10 above - 396,175 / 176,666 / 10,851 = 583,692 – 67.874% / 30.267% / 1.859%

SD 30 - 26,164 / 26,252 / 2,021 = 54,437 – 48.06% / 48.22% / 3.71%
SD 15 - 40,904 / 42,395 / 1,097 = 84,396 – 48.47% / 50.23% / 1.30%
SD 8 - 33,179 / 35,206 / 1,486 = 69,871 – 47.49% / 50.38% / 2.13%
SD 23 - 28,998 / 32,575 / 1,284 = 62,857 – 46.13% / 51.82% / 2.04%
SD 11 - 21,078 / 24,458 / 1,337 = 46,873 – 44.97% / 52.18% / 2.85%
SD 34 - 28,171 / 33,465 / 1,700 = 63,336 – 44.48% / 52.84% / 2.68%
All 6 above - 178,494 / 194,351 / 8,925 = 381,770 – 46.754% / 50.908% / 2.338%

SD 2 - 23,743 / 37,190 / 1,148 = 62,081 – 38.25% / 59.91% / 1.85%
SD 22 - 20,797 / 35,307 / 1,401 = 57,505 – 36.17% / 61.40% / 2.44%
SD 21 - 22,991 / 42,306 / 1,755 = 67,052 – 34.29% / 63.09% / 2.62%
SD 31 - 20,423 / 39,094 / 1,720 = 61,237 – 33.35% / 63.84% / 2.81%
SD 10 - 16,959 / 39,451 / 1,535 = 57,945 – 29.27% / 68.08% / 2.65%
SD 26 - 18,359 / 46,061 / 1,437 = 65,857 – 27.88% / 69.94% / 2.18%
SD 3 - 14,903 / 37,978 / 1,320 = 54,201 – 27.50% / 70.07% / 2.44%
SD 6 - 18,117 / 47,611 / 1,917 = 67,645 – 26.78% / 70.38% / 2.83%
SD 20 - 17,142 / 45,963 / 1,998 = 65,103 – 26.33% / 70.60% / 3.07%
SD 18 - 14,471 / 41,050 / 1,633 = 57,154 – 25.32% / 71.82% / 2.86%
SD 12 - 15,337 / 47,168 / 1,525 = 64,030 – 23.95% / 73.67% / 2.38%
SD 28 - 14,700 / 46,418 / 2,269 = 63,387 – 23.19% / 73.23% / 3.58%
SD 32 - 12,378 / 40,748 / 1,510 = 54,636 – 22.66% / 74.58% / 2.76%
SD 16 - 10,446 / 36,966 / 1,562 = 48,974 – 21.33% / 75.48% / 3.19%
SD 29 - 13,319 / 47,578 / 2,028 = 62,925 – 21.17% / 75.61% / 3.22%
SD 27 - 12,399 / 45,393 / 1,417 = 59,209 – 20.94% / 76.67% / 2.39%
SD 33 - 11,969 / 50,779 / 2,052 = 64,800 – 18.47% / 78.36% / 3.17%
SD 25 - 8,530 / 39,960 / 1,187 = 49,677 – 17.17% / 80.44% / 2.39%
All 18 above - 286,983 / 767,021 / 29,414 = 1,083,418 – 26.489% / 70.796% / 2.715%