Only two ex-governors have attempted a comeback in state history Just as the door to elected statewide office for Democrats in West Virginia seemed to be shut and sealed, reports came out last week that there is GOP support for conservative Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin to run for governor yet this cycle. The reports circulated following Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrissey’s recent 5.7-point primary victory with just one-third of the vote in a competitive six-candidate field. Manchin, who served as West Virginia’s chief executive from 2005 to 2010, would not be able to secure ..read more

Only three ex-presidential candidates over the last 68 years received more support in the state Last Tuesday Nikki Haley turned in two notable performances in the Republican presidential primaries – receiving 21.7 percent of the vote as the only alternative to Donald Trump on the Maryland ballot and 18.2 percent in Nebraska against Trump and Perry Johnson. [Haley also received 9.4 percent in a five-candidate race in West Virginia]. Haley was two months and eight days removed since she suspended her presidential campaign in early March, and her showing last Tuesday in Maryland and Nebraska mar ..read more

In Nebraska’s Democratic presidential primary, Minnesota U.S. Representative Dean Phillips came out on top in Logan County, winning five votes to Joe Biden’s four. Logan County is located in the central party of the state where more than 175 voters cast their ballots in the GOP primary. This is not Phillips’ first county-wide victory. Prior to suspending his campaign on March 6th, Phillips carried Cimarron County in Oklahoma’s panhandle on Super Tuesday, winning 11 of the 24 votes (45.8 percent) while Biden won just six. The post Dean Phillips Wins Another County appeared first on Smart Politi ..read more

The Vermont Republican would still trail two predecessors in lifetime gubernatorial service should he win and serve a fifth term Four-term Republican Governor Phil Scott recently announced he would seek reelection in Vermont – all but guaranteeing the GOP will hold the state’s top elected office in the otherwise deep blue state. Scott is widely popular in Vermont and consistently boasts one of the nation’s highest gubernatorial approval ratings. Governor Scott’s margin of victory during his four previous bids for the office has grown each cycle from 8.7 points in 2016, 14.9 points in 2018, 41 ..read more

Mike Braun wins comfortably despite notching the second lowest support and fourth smallest victory margin in state party history Indiana Republican U.S. Senator Mike Braun moved one step closer to becoming one of the fewer than two-dozen sitting or ex-U.S. Senators elected governor since 1900, after winning his party’s nomination on Tuesday. Braun faced a loaded field of six candidates and won with 39.3 percent – just the third time in state party history the GOP gubernatorial nominee did not receive majority support at the primary. Lieutenant Governor Suzanne Crouch received 21.9 percent, wi ..read more

It has been a half-century since an incumbent party failed to hold its at-large U.S. House seat for two full terms Of the six at-large U.S. House races on the ballot in 2024, only the ranked choice voting contest in Alaska is expected to be competitive. Democrat Mary Peltola ended a 25-cycle drought for her party with special and general election victories less than three months apart in 2022, but 2022 candidate Nick Begich III is back for a rematch in a state with a nearly double-digit GOP partisan tilt. Peltola is a fairly popular political figure in the Last Frontier State and Democrats ar ..read more

The state had hosted uncontested Democratic and Republican primaries for the office in just two previous cycles Down the ballot in Pennsylvania’s primary election last Tuesday, voters also had the task of formally nominating candidates in the state’s U.S. Senate contest. Neither three-term Democratic incumbent Bob Casey nor former GOP investment executive David McCormick faced any opposition in their respective contests. The 2024 primary was just the third time out of 41 primaries since 1914 in which both major parties hosted uncontested primaries for the office. This comes on the heels of th ..read more

Four withdrawn presidential candidates since 2000 received a larger percentage of the state’s presidential primary vote than Haley did on Tuesday As documented a month ago on this site, it is not out of the ordinary for withdrawn presidential candidates to continue to receive the support of a substantial percentage of primary voters – such candidates have attracted the votes of at least one in six voters more than 50 times since the 1980 cycle. Nikki Haley did so for a fourth time since her March 6th exit from the 2024 GOP nomination race – this time in Pennsylvania, where she received 16.6 p ..read more

Kenosha’s Peter Barca hopes to join the more than one in 10 members of the U.S. House from Wisconsin who had gaps in service; Barca’s, however, would be a state record The recent decision by Wisconsin Democrat Peter Barca to run for his old 1st CD seat puts him on a path to make history in the Badger State. Barca served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives after a special election victory during the 103rd Congress (1993-1995) that was sandwiched in between representing the Kenosha-based 64th Assembly District (1985-1993, 2009-2019). After the election of Tony Evers in 2018, Barca ser ..read more

The GOP path to taking control of the U.S. Senate got even clearer with Larry Hogan entering the Maryland U.S. Senate race this winter More than two months after former two-term Maryland Governor Larry Hogan filed his paperwork as a candidate for the U.S. Senate, a new survey by the Baltimore Sun finds he still holds a double-digit lead against each of his likely Democratic opponents (three-term U.S. Representative David Trone and Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks). Hogan’s lingering popularity among the electorate should not be surprising on its face – he won reelection by 1 ..read more