Although the elections may be tantalizingly close (in truth, they probably won't be that close), the likeliest outcome for the Republicans is. . .

The races have generally (but not consistently) been tightening in both states, especially according to polling organizations which are classified as Republican-leaning by liberal media sources. Some hardcore leftists (e.g. Washington Post) are cheerleading for a Democrat blowout in Virginia, but the ones who attempt to be less transparently liberal have the contests being tighter. Close though the races may be, as things stand now both Jack Ciattarelli (NJ) and Winsome Earle-Sears (VA) appear to be heading for losses. It's up to the good voters of New Jersey and Virginia to get out and vote and prove the pollsters wrong.

We'll start with a look at New Jersey.

Photo credit: inquirer.com

Background:

In 2025 Ciattarelli is making his third attempt for Governor of New Jersey. The three-term state legislator ran in 2017 and finished second in the Republican primary to Kim Guadagno, the two-term (2010-2017) Lt. Gov. under Governor Tubba Goo.

In 2021 Ciatterelli came closer than expected to an upset victory after starting 15 to 20 points down in early general election polls. Even polls taken in late October (by Democrat-college groups such as Emerson, Rutgers, Farleigh Dickinson & Monmouth) anticipated incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy being victorious by 6 to 10 points. Only the Trafalgar Group (R) came close to getting it right, predicting a 4-point loss for the challenger; Ciattarelli lost by 84,000 votes (3.2%).

Murphy was first elected in 2017 by vastly outspending Republican nominee Guadagno, as well as by capitalizing on the massive unpopularity of outgoing Republican Governor Chris Christie, to whom Guadagno was constantly linked. That election result maintained New Jersey's habit of alternating parties every 8 years in gubernatorial elections, a pattern which has held since 1993 when ultra-liberal Republican Christine Todd Whitman denied Democrat Jim "Flimflam" Florio a second term by eking out a surprising 1-point victory. Florio later claimed that he was "one of the first victims of modern right-wing talk radio", LOL. Democrats are likely to break that alternating pattern in 2025 as things stand now.

Photo credit: app.com

The 2021 election was mainly a referendum on Murphy's first term, with Ciatterelli being regarded as sufficiently bland and moderate to avoid alienating potential crossover Democrat voters which any Jersey Republican requires in order to have a chance of winning a statewide election. Murphy is a huge supporter of the illegal importation of new Democrat voters from foreign countries, and he designated New Jersey as a sanctuary state. He also took several steps to hinder the deportation of illegals (such as not permitting law enforcement to ask about immigration status), but by 2021 many New Jersey voters had grown weary of the invasion and their disaffection hurt Murphy's re-election chances. Nor were the voters pleased with the numerous tax increases which were passed by the overwhelmingly Democrat NJ legislature.

Unlike 2017, Republicans were able to compete on almost equal financial footing in 2021 in the expensive gubernatorial election. The same applies in 2025, though as we head into the final days of the race the Democrat has substantially more cash on hand, and therefore will likely be more visible in the media than Ciatterelli (nevermind the media bias advantage the Democrat already holds for free).

Ciattarelli won 6 of New Jersey's 12 congressional districts in 2021 -- including the one represented by 2025 Democrat nominee Mikie Sherrill. Sherrill is currently in her fourth term in the House, and is a member in good standing of the far-left wing of her party. She was first elected in the anti-Trump year of 2018 in what at the time was a tossup district (NJ-11) centered on upscale, suburban Morris County.

Until 2018 Morris County had been forever represented in Congress by liberal Republicans such as Rodney Frelinghuysen. Like several other squishy Republicans in the House, the staunchly anti-Trump Frelinghuysen picked 2018 to retire. The 72-year-old, 12-term representative was not comfortable being "forced" to toe the party line and support a president whom he despised. Frelinghuysen abandoned his House seat, hoping (or knowing) that he would be replaced by a Democrat who would help the new Democrat majority thwart Trump's legislative agenda and begin Trump's congressional persecution.

Morris County seems to have recently begun a journey away from the left and back towards the center, voting for Trump in 2024 after giving Joe Biden a 4.2% victory in 2020. Morris is reliably Republican in other statewide elections too (Murphy lost here twice and it wasn't particularly close), even selecting hapless Curtis Bashaw over Andy Kim in the 2024 Senate race. But in 2022 Democrat gerrymanderers added a larger portion of ghetto Essex County to the district, taking the district from being a complete tossup to favoring Democrats by 5 points. Republicans face an uphill battle to win it 2026 from either Sherrill or whoever her special-election replacement is if Sherrill becomes Governor as expected.

2024 presidential election results in New Jersey

Geography:

We have divided New Jersey into the six geographical regions listed below, shown with the counties which correspond to those regions:

• South Jersey: Atlantic, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Gloucester, Salem
• Central Jersey: Mercer, Middlesex, Somerset
• West Jersey: Hunterdon, Morris, Sussex, Warren
• Central Coast: Monmouth, Ocean
• Urbanized North: Bergen, Passaic
• Ghetto Jersey: Essex, Hudson, Union

Photo credit: redlineheadlines.com

Scott Presler and his organization have worked diligently over the past couple of years to increase Republican voter registration counts in certain states. Presler focused on Pennsylvania during 2024 and has been given inordinate credit for the GOP victories which occurred there -- Trump's win along with that of Senator Dave McCormick, and the important pickup of two House seats (CD-7 and CD-8) in Eastern PA.

While it is true that the Democrat registration advantage in PA was reduced to 3.1% from 5.6% during 2024 (a net GOP gain of 165,000 registrations in 12 months), the trend in PA has been significantly in the R direction for over 15 years now. Between November of 2008 and November of 2023 the GOP added 210,616 voters in the Keystone State while Democrats diminished by 579,285, a net change of 789,901 in the positive direction for Republicans.

Pennsylvania has apparently "cleaned up" its voter rolls in 2025, with both parties seeing a reduction in registrations:

2024:

• 3,710,290 R (40.5%)
• 3,991,381 D (43.6%)
• 1,460,307 I (15.9%)

• 3,642,630 R (40.9%)
• 3,811,262 D (42.8%)
• 1,448,470 I (16.3%)

2024 PA voter registration, by county

After 2024, Presler and his vote registrars moved east to New Jersey in an attempt to turn that state "red". As in PA, trends in New Jersey are already favoring Republicans, although these trends have not manifested themselves in any victories. Trump's loss by 5.9% here in 2024 was actually the best showing for a Republican candidate since George Bush lost by only 2.4% in the 3-way election of 1992. Prior to 1992, the GOP won 6 presidential elections in a row in New Jersey before the state's demographics began to head rapidly south.

Recent results have been no better down the ballot, with Chris Christie the only Republican to win statewide since Christie Whitman in 1997; the GOP has not elected a U.S. senator from the Garden State since ultra-liberal Clifford Case in 1972, and the U.S. House districts have been gerrymandered to an extent which limits Republicans to just 3 districts out of 12 (and at least one of those GOP districts, CD-7, is very marginal). Those factors notwithstanding, Trump did a little better statewide than expected in 2024, Jack Ciattarelli almost pulled off a major upset in the most recent gubernatorial election, and there appears to be reason for some optimism on the Republican side going forward.

The trend is also apparent in the New Jersey voter registration figures, to a minor degree.

November 2023:

• R: 1,541,158 (23.7%)
• D: 2,504,294 (38.6%)

• R: 1,628,633 (24.2%)
• D: 2,534,932 (37.7%)

• R: 1,670,297 (25.3%)
• D: 2,525,346 (38.2%)

2024 presidential election result in Virginia

Background:

Although Trump lost the Commonwealth of Virginia in 2024, his margin of defeat (5.7%) was a distinct improvement over 2020 when he lost by over 10 percent; the 2024 outcome was in line with other recent presidential elections in Virginia. There was false optimism in the 2024 U.S. Senate race, where many wishful thinkers believed that Hung Cao would defy the polls and score a major upset over incumbent radical leftist Timmy Kaine, or at least make it a close call. Cao did neither of those things, losing by 9 points which was just a slight tick better than the polls predicted.

Trump's sizable step in the right direction, along with the surprise victory by Republican Glenn Youngkin for Governor in 2021, helps to create the illusion that Virginia is a "purple" state where Republicans have almost as good a chance at winning as Democrats do. In reality, Virginia is slipping behind the rest of the country and becoming "bluer" by the day. Relative to the nationwide percentage of the Republican presidential vote, Trump's 4-point underachievement in VA in 2024 was the worst showing here for a GOP candidate since the 1940's when Virginia was solidly Democrat across the entire ticket. Although Virginia does not register voters by party, recent estimates of party affiliation indicate that Democrats have nearly a 2:1 advantage over Republicans. That's not very purple.

Speaking of Governor Youngkin, his win in 2021 was primarily the result of the stars and planets aligning in his favor, and it is now abundantly clear that Youngkin's electoral success (and that of his party, which gained 7 seats and took control of the state House that year) was a temporary phenomenon.

Youngkin benefited from several factors, which have some parallel to Donald Trump's surprise victory in 2016, and those factors may have also helped Republicans in races down the ballot in Virginia in 2021:

Photo credit: washingtonmonthly.com

• Youngkin, like Trump in '16, was a political outsider and not a career politician, and both were fortunate to be able to run against the single most repugnant and unlikeable Democrat available at the time (Terry McAuliffe, Hillary Clinton). Former Governor and Clinton crony McAuliffe was a godsend for Youngkin. McAuliffe's abrasive personality and his far-left political positions proved to be quite helpful to the moderate Republican candidate. Furthermore, the Republican was able to compete financially against the Democrat's massive fundraising advantages by contributing significantly to his own campaign. Youngkin distanced himself from Trump (just as McAuliffe was not able to distance himself from Joe Biden) enough to keep moderate and independent voters from rushing to the left.
  
  The 2021 Republican nominee was aided to a substantial extent by voter revulsion against local school boards (notably in Loudoun County) which were defying parents -- and common sense -- by welcoming the presence of boys in girls' bathrooms and by continually "overstepping parental rights during the pandemic". When a male student raped a female student in a Loudoun County school bathroom in 2021, the incident and the school's mishandling of it rightfully became a national scandal -- at least in the "right wing" media. The liberal media downplayed and/or ignored the story after an initial cursory report, with a majority of voters in upscale, liberal Loudoun County probably being totally unaware of what had occurred right in their own backyard. But many good voters in the rest of the state were aware of this atrocity, and their reaction to it may have helped Youngkin considerably.
  
  
  
• Virginia is not exactly known for the cleanliness of its elections in recent years, but Youngkin was perhaps not taken as seriously by Democrats as he should have been even though he was close or even slightly led McAuliffe in polls which were taken in the closing weeks of the race. Trump also was not given a serious chance to win in 2016, and liberal pollsters right up to election day helped the Democrats maintain their (false) overconfidence; Democrats and Deep Staters of both parties did prepare for the eventuality of Trump's election by fabricating the "Steele Dossier" and all the phony "Russia, Russia, Russia" crap to attempt to hamstring him after the fact, but they apparently didn't put as much -- let's call it "extra effort" -- as usual into achieving their desired electoral outcome in the first place.
  
  Underestimating the amount of voter support which both Trump and Youngkin actually had, the Democrats apparently did not feel the need to ensure victories by their usual methods (cough, cough). Trump was able to achieve narrow victories in critical states such as Pennsylvania (by 0.7%), Michigan (0.2%), Wisconsin (0.7%) and Florida (1.2%) and thus win the electoral vote despite losing the popular vote by 2.1%. Youngkin improved his party's showing from 2017 in several areas of the state, winning in the Tidewater and Richmond areas, and vastly reducing the deficit in NOVA -- even in Loudon County, but still lost by 11 points there.
  
  In the aftermath of that glorious 2021 outcome it was reported that one of the major reasons for it was the "Virginia Project", a Republican effort to increase election integrity (something Democrats always oppose) by, for one thing, recruiting poll watchers for as many precincts as possible. With 36% of the votes in the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election being cast early or absentee, the impact of GOP poll watchers was somewhat muted unless they were present when the envelopes were being opened and the ballots counted; their presence on election day was still helpful, though.
  
  With it seeming to work so well in Virginia that year, the Virginia Project (we were told) would serve as a model for helping ensure the honesty of future elections, and would be expanded to states beyond Virginia. Looking at many important outcomes from 2022 onward, the proponents of the Virginia Project either never implemented their model or it didn't function as well as expected. For one thing, there's much more to the concept of election integrity than poll watchers can accomplish.
  
  
  
• Even with all of those advantages, both Trump and Youngkin won rather unconvincingly. The mistakes which national Democrats made in 2016 at the presidential level were "rectified" in 2020; the mistakes which Virginia Democrats made in 2021 began to be rectified almost immediately: the 7-seat gain which gave Republicans the Virginia state House starting in 2022 was erased in November of 2023 when Democrats added 3 seats and seized control of the House, 51-49; they have held the state Senate throughout Youngkin's term, by a 21-19 margin.

Photo credit: lifenews.com

GOP nominee Winsome Earle-Sears is an immigrant from Jamaica who arrived in the U.S. at the age of 6. She served in the United States Marine Corps for 4 years in the 1980's and became an American citizen during that time. Her political career commenced in the early 2000's when she won a race for the state House, upsetting a black Democrat who had been in office for two decades. She was the first Republican to win a state House seat in a majority-black district in Virginia since 1865. She later became the state's first female Lieutenant Governor (elected in 2021) and is the first black female to be elected to any statewide office in Virginia.

Although Sears endorsed Donald Trump in 2020 and served as the chairman of a PAC called "Black Americans to Re-elect the President", she broke with Trump in 2022 because she believed that the candidates Trump had endorsed that year were too conservative and therefore unelectable (in fact they weren't elected, but Sears was wrong about the reason for their defeats). At that time Sears declared she would not support Donald Trump's election bid if he were to run in 2024.

Probably for this reason (yeah, "probably"), Trump for a long time refused to support Sears for Governor in 2025, though he belatedly came through with an endorsement earlier this week.

Sears also has the endorsements of Governor Youngkin, state Attorney General Jason Miyares, the entire Virginia Republican congressional delegation, and some congressmen from other states. Sears is pro-life, supports "common sense" tax cuts and government spending cuts, and opposes Democrats' radical pro-crime policies such as "catch and release" and sanctuary cities. She opposes incompetent (but powerfully unionized) teachers and favors school choice and parents' rights. Sears also strongly supports Virginia's "right-to-work" law. These positions stand in stark contrast to that of her allegedly "moderate" Democrat opponent, Abigail Spanberger.

Photo credit: twitchy.com

Spanberger, a native of New Jersey, went from being a substitute schoolteacher and a postal inspector to (as of 2006) being a spy for the Central Intelligence Agency; a rather unique career change. When she first entered politics, Spanberger's CIA resume was sanitized so that it could be declassified and, according to ABC News, the former spook stuck "to carefully scripted lines, approved by the agency, when talking about her work" on the campaign trail.

In 2018 CIAbby was recruited to run against Republican incumbent Dave Brat for a seat in Congress. Brat had irritated many GOP bigwigs by daring to oppose -- and defeat -- golden boy Eric Cantor, a squish who was a member of the GOP leadership (House Majority Leader) when he was shocked by Brat in the 2014 primary. We wrote at length about Brat's situation here, and his parallels to ex-congressman Bob Good. Good, a very solid conservative like Brat, fell out of favor with his party's leadership in 2024, and irritated the biggest bigwig of them all (Donald Trump). Good was defeated in the 2024 primary.

VA-7, the formerly Republican-oriented district in which Brat toppled Cantor and then 4 years later was defeated by Spanberger, was altered to give Democrats a much greater chance of success after 2014. Brat survived in 2016 because the Democrats pretty much gave him a free pass, but in 2018 Spanberger was able to raise and spend over $7 million dollars to purchase that House seat. That was more than double the amount which Brat could raise (or obtain from his indifferent party leadership). The surplus millions which Deep State Abby was able to throw around proved to be critical as she eked out a 1.9% win in the recently-gerrymandered district; her margin of victory came almost exclusively from the new Democrat areas in the Richmond suburbs which were added after 2014.

Democrats spent lavishly while procuring numerous House seats in 2018 and, coincidentally, another new Democrat who was the recipient of an astronomical "investment" that year was New Jersey's Mikie Sherrill who is now her party's gubernatorial nominee in that state.

Photo credit: NRCC

Republicans picked up 13 House seats in 2020 but Spanberger's wasn't one of them although a serious effort was made. Her district, which had been rated as R+10 prior to the 2016 Democrat gerrymander, was still slightly "red" and Republicans had it high on their list of potential pickups. Spanberger, then as now, occasionally talks like a moderate and did cast a highly publicized (and highly choreographed) vote against Nancy Pelosi for Speaker in January, 2019. Spanberger then spent the remainder of her first term in Congress establishing her liberal bona fides, but was able to conceal that fact from the voters.

Nick Freitas, a solid conservative, defeated squishy John McGuire (now a congressman from Virginia's Fifth District) in a contentious Republican party primary convention in July of 2020, and won the right to oppose Spanberger in November. As in 2018, the Republican carried all areas of the district aside from the deteriorating Richmond suburbs, but that was not sufficient to prevail district-wide. Or was it?

In the afternoon of the Wednesday following the 2020 election, Freitas had a lead of a little more than 1,300 votes over Spanberger. Then came the discovery of a "flash drive" by the husband of a Democrat operative in Henrico County, and that flash drive miraculously contained over 14,000 as yet uncounted votes in the 7th District. Just as miraculously, Spanberger happened to receive a tremendous percentage (64%) of those flash votes. The Democrats later found even more votes for CIAbby, making sure that her final margin was outside the range which would require an automatic recount. In 2022, Spanberger spent over $9 million dollars to successfully retain the 7th District seat; redistricting by that time had moved the district even further left in order to help ensure her another term. Spanberger did not seek re-election in 2024 in order to focus on her gubernatorial run.

Geography:

As we did with New Jersey, we have split Virginia into 6 regions:

• Rural Chesapeake Bay area
• Greater Richmond
• Hampton Roads
• Northern Virginia
• Piedmont / Southside
• Shenandoah Valley / Southwest Virginia

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2025 Governor New Jersey Virginia

Photo credit: Mike Braun For Indiana

In the state of Indiana on May 7, the Republican primaries all went as expected although one outcome was successfully influenced by a considerable amount of out-of-state money being spent by single-issue groups in order to defeat a certain GOP candidate.

In the high-profile gubernatorial primary, moderate-conservative U.S. Senator Mike Braun easily defeated a collection of viable opponents; these included current Lieutenant Governor Suzanne Crouch, state Commerce Secretary Brad Chambers and businessman Eric Doden. In the weeks before the primary, the liberal media frequently cried about how horribly conservative all of these candidates were, leaving the impression for the good citizens of Indiana that any of them would make a fine Governor. Braun won with 39.5% of the vote in the 6-candidate field, with Crouch coming in a distant second with 21.7%. Braun won every county but three.

Braun's opponent in November is virulent Trump-hater Jennifer McCormick. McCormick was once elected -- as a Republican -- in a fluke in 2016, happily riding the coattails of the President she hates to an upset win over the incumbent Superintendent of Public Instruction in Indiana; the office was then abolished by the state legislature in 2019. McCormick switched parties in 2021 and has become the consummate liberal Democrat, attempting to appeal to voters on the basis of favoring unrestricted abortions, radical environmentalism, and of course more taxpayer money for left-wing teachers' unions. McCormick was unopposed in the Democrat primary. She starts the general election campaign well behind in the polls; she will finish the campaign there too.

Squishy state legislators won GOP primaries in CD-1 and CD-8. CD-1 (Gary, Hammond, Michigan City, most of LaPorte) hardly matters because the incumbent Democrat is easily going to win again in November.

Photo credit: AIPAC

In CD-8, ex-Congressman John Hostettler was trying to reclaim the seat he lost 18 years ago. Hostettler wasn't exactly a paragon of arch-conservatism during his time in Washington, but he was OK and he'd be better than state Senator Mark Messmer who at one time was a conservative but is now a total squish. Hostettler was branded as "anti-Jewish" and was opposed by the extremely wealthy Israel Lobby (groups such as the "Republican Jewish Coalition" and "United Democracy Project"). Over $2 million of their money went into this single U.S. House primary with the goal of electing the more liberal Republican. Messmer won with nearly 40% of the vote while Hostettler (who was endorsed by Rand Paul and Charlie Kirk) came up just short of 20% in the field of eight. Money talks, and in this contest it absolutely shrieked. One wonders just how much these particular special interest groups are spending to oust anti-Israel Democrats from Congress; there aren't any shortage of those, but these groups seem to be giving them a free pass.

In CD-5, incumbent moderate Victoria Spartz lately hasn't been too bad on issues aside from ones related to Ukraine. She alone in the U.S. House at least has a personal reason to keep funneling billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to that thoroughly corrupt rathole -- she is from the Ukraine. Spartz had initially decided not to run for re-election this year, and was probably lured back out of GOPe fear that a true conservative would win her district. And one would have, too. Spartz narrowly prevailed over conservative state House member Chuck Goodrich by just 6% (39% to 33%). Max Engling came in third, taking 10% of the conservative vote away from Goodrich, more than enough to alter the outcome. There were 6 lesser candidates seeking the nomination as well.

Jim Baird in CD-4 is an elderly RINO joke but Trump bypassed conservative challenger Charles Bookwalter and endorsed the incumbent since Baird was 98% certain to win the primary based on name recognition and a mere 7:1 advantage in money. Nevermind that the actual conservative would have been 98% certain to win in November too seeing as how Democrats don't even bother with this district. Trump rarely, if ever, passes up a safe RINO incumbent, and at least Baird didn't vote for Trump's impeachment (which is probably all that mattered in this case).

The CD-3 seat is open in 2024 because incumbent Jim Banks is running for the Senate; he was unopposed in the primary and will win easily in November, giving Indiana an actual conservative there alongside his moderate-liberal GOP colleague Todd Young. Conservative ex-congressman Marlin Stutzman (last elected in 2014) attempted to reclaim his old seat, and succeeded in this hotly-contested primary. Four different candidates won at least one county in this northeastern Indiana district which includes Fort Wayne. Conservative Tim Smith was the leading challenger to Stutzman, taking 22.6% to the winner's 24.2%. Stutzman had numerous endorsements from current and former congressmen. Moderates Wendy Davis and state Senator Andy Zay came home third and fourth, combining for over 35% of the vote. Grant Bucher was fifth at 10.3% but he actually won two small counties. Stutzman is heavily favored to return to Congress in November after he defeats unknown and unfunded liberal Kiley Adolph, who predictably won the Democrat primary on the basis of being a female who was running against a male.

In Maryland on May 14, liberal women swept the Democrat primaries for open seats in the U.S. Senate and House districts 3 and 6. We've already profiled the Senate contest, and as far as House races only the primary in CD-6 was of any significant interest to Republicans; it's their one slim chance of picking up a Democrat-held House seat in Maryland, where liberals currently occupy 7 of the 8 districts thanks in at least a couple of cases to hyper-partisan Democrat gerrymandering. CD-6 is the most gerrymandered of them all.

On Tuesday in that district, 2022 gubernatorial candidate/sacrificial lamb Dan Cox ran against perennial candidate Neil Parrott in the GOP primary. Both are conservatives. Parrott was victorious by 47% to 30%, and this will be his third consecutive try to take the 6th district. He'll be facing the wife of former congressman John Delaney, an ultra-liberal who won three terms here (2012, 2014, 2016) due solely to the harsh gerrymander implemented by the veto-proof Democrat legislature in 2011.

When the district maps were redrawn that year, CD-6 was shifted a whopping 16 points to the left by adding execrable areas of Montgomery County to the nice counties in the panhandle west of Frederick. The district was moved slightly back towards the center (7 points) in 2021. Still, Trump lost the redistricted area in 2020 by almost 10 points (instead of the 23 points by which he lost in CD-6 as it stood prior to redistricting). As of 2022, Democrats still have a 6.5% edge in voter registrations here, and it appears that "independents" regularly break left too. The Cook PVI for CD-6 claims it's only D+2, which seems like a crock given recent presidential & House election results. Furthermore, Parrott's chances in the general election are hardly enhanced by the sizable financial advantage which the liberal feminist Democrat has here. Given that this open district is not totally a lost cause, the RNC may eventually decide to toss a few dollars in Parrott's direction.

Photo credit: bacon.house.gov

Nebraska: the state-level GOP organization which, according to surely unbiased media reports, "was taken over by those loyal to former President Donald Trump during a contentious state convention" -- that happened back in 2022 -- decided to oppose (or ignore) all 5 of the Republican incumbents who were running for federal office. This is quite good since pretty much all 5 incumbents are squishes, but unfortunately the tactic proved to be utterly ineffective. For one thing, actions (especially $$$) speak far louder than words, and these were only words; the conservative challengers collectively had about $1.50 to work with here. Also, making the announcement regarding endorsements just moments before the voters had to head to the polls was a great way to make sure that as few people as possible got the message.

Nebraska has two Senate elections this year, one of which was necessitated when Trump-hater Ben Sasse fled to Florida and was replaced by Pete Ricketts, who was appointed by Governor Jim Pillen in January, 2023. The other Senator, Deb Fischer, is also up this year.

There are also 3 incumbents who are running for re-election to the House: Mike Flood in CD-1, Don Bacon in CD-2 and Adrian Smith in CD-3. Here are the lifetime American Conservative Union (ACU) ratings for these guys:

• Senator Pete Ricketts: 66% (1 year)
• Senator Deb Fischer: 81% (11 years)
• Rep. Mike Flood: 72% (2 years)
• Rep. Don Bacon: 64% (7 years)
• Rep. Adrian Smith: 85% (17 years)

The NEGOP made no endorsement in the races involving Fischer and Flood, and they endorsed challengers to Ricketts, Bacon and Smith. All 5 incumbents did face primary opposition -- such as it was.

Fischer won on Tuesday with 80% and Ricketts had 79%. Their challengers, official party support and all, didn't even rise to the "nuisance" level. Flood received 82% in his congressional primary, Smith 74% and Bacon 62%. Don Bacon enjoys his role as a rabidly anti-conservative Republican who helps the Democrats on most important issues, and he richly deserved a challenge. His challenge will come not from some destitute conservative Republican in the primary, but instead from a greasy, well-funded liberal Democrat in the general election. Far-left state Senator Tony Vargas (2023 ACU rating: 7%), who nearly defeated Bacon in 2022 is back for another crack at him and carries with him a bank account that is chock full of Democrat dollars.

The district which Bacon represents contains the city of Omaha and some of its suburbs. Omaha may not rank down there with the likes of East St. Louis, Newark, the Bronx, Detroit and similar hell-holes, but it is far from being a good area. The suburban territory is the only thing keeping Republicans afloat here -- barely. Bacon, even as far to the left as he is, is not nearly liberal enough to suit about half of the voters in CD-2. His winning margins have been 1.2% against incumbent Brad Ashford in 2016; 2.0% and 4.6% against radical leftist Democrat Kara Eastman in 2018 and 2020 (a comparatively sane liberal Democrat would have likely won in 2018, but Ashford lost the primary); and 2.6% against Vargas in 2022.

Donald Trump narrowly carried this district in 2016, by just 2.2%, and he lost it in 2020 by 6.5% (!). That loss was significant because Nebraska awards electoral votes by congressional district, and Biden was able to get an unlikely vote from Nebraska (Trump got the other 4).

CD-2 was nearly unchanged in the most recent redistricting (2021), despite the ease with which that task could have been accomplished. But the Stupid Party, which controls the legislature and the redistricting process, deliberately opted not to harm the Democrats in any way. If Trump loses in 2024 by this one electoral vote, be sure to thank cowardly Nebraska Republican legislators.

So for no good reason at all the district remains marginal; Charlie Cook rates it as dead even.

In a totally marginal district such as this, a chump like Don Bacon may be the best we can do since a 60% liberal (R) is better than a 100% liberal (D). These are districts where we must usually accept a compromise; however in other places we can certainly do better -- especially in a state like Nebraska. Politicians like Ricketts, Flood and Fischer are clearly not the best we can do.

Keep in mind that what we conservatives think is "better" is terrifying and loathsome to the GOP establishment. Not because they might lose, but because they might win. Which brings us to:

Photo credit: National Review

West Virginia, where energetic conservative Senate candidate Alex Mooney was swamped by doddering moderate Governor Jim Justice in Tuesday's Senate primary as was expected. "Terrifying and loathsome" is pretty much how the GOPe would describe Mooney. We'd describe him as "conservative". The GOPe would agree, and that's their main problem with the 5-term congressman.

Mooney was the first prominent Republican to enter the race against vulnerable Democrat incumbent Joe Manchin, who later tucked his tail between his legs, chose not to run for re-election and went on to briefly pretend that he could become President (or at least stop Donald Trump from being President, which is the most important thing to liberals and fake centrists).

The GOPe, namely Mitch McConnell and Steve Daines (his little toady who runs the NRSC) flew into a panic and dragged Governor Justice into the race by appealing to his ego, thus creating a potentially divisive primary, which is the kind of thing they claim to abhor -- when it suits them.

The latest results show Justice with 61.8% of the vote, while Mooney received 26.5%. Five others collected approximately 12%. With nothing to vote for on the Democrat side, since electable Democrats are all but extinct in the Mountain State (some, like Jim Justice, now label themselves as Republicans), numerous Democrats undoubtedly crossed over and voted in the Republican primary.

Mooney had the support and the endorsements of prominent conservatives like Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz and ex-Senator Jim DeMint; Justice had some semi-conservative endorsements (Marsha Blackburn, Tom Cotton), some moderate-liberal endorsements (Mitch McConnell, Shelley Capito [whose politician-son endorsed Mooney], Lindsey Graham) and some misguided endorsements from alleged conservatives (Donald Trump).

In the end, Justice also had the votes. West Virginia is now a very solidly Republican state; like many others which fit that description, it is in no way a solidly conservative state.

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Photo credit: Bloomberg Government

The first paragraph of the article, mainly telling us what we already knew:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, have been working for months to recruit the most electable candidates in must-win swing states to retake the majority next year.

"Electable" of course means "someone who is a moderate/liberal toady for Mitch McConnell, like Steve Daines is". The liberal Republican establishment is sticking to the lie that the only reason why the GOP isn't in control of the Senate today is because of all the supposedly flawed candidates who lost in states like Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania during the failed "red wave" of 2022. Add in other states such as Nevada which were ripe for a pickup and a couple more ridiculous pipe dreams (Colorado, Washington) and some lunatics seriously expected a GOP majority of something like 10 seats right now, 55-45 or so.

The party seeks to make sure that only approved Mitch Bitches get on the ticket for 2024, and no more "flawed" conservatives. When that strategy fails next November, the GOPe excuse will be that conservative voters didn't do their job and let the party down.

Here's a howler from the article, regarding Montana:

The establishment has "coalesced around former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy's candidacy while privately dissuading Rep. Matt Rosendale from throwing his hat in the ring. Sheehy has the backing of Daines and Gov. Greg Gianforte (R-MT), while Rosendale has the backing of the well-funded Club for Growth despite not being in the race yet. Party establishment has said that Rosendale's 2018 loss to Tester proves he cannot win statewide."

Then the party establishment consists of idiots, liars, or both. You see, Rosendale, who is a far more conservative option than Squish Sheehy, in fact DID WIN STATEWIDE in Montana in 2020, by nearly 14 points against a very well-funded liberal Democrat to boot.

The article goes on to note that the GOPe is "staying out" of the primary in Ohio -- because they can easily see that the right-ish primary vote will be split between Secretary of State Frank LaRose and MAGA conservative Bernie Moreno, allowing liberal state Senator Matt Dolan to prevail by getting the primary votes of many Democrat infiltrators who will never vote for him in the general. Why should the GOPe interfere when things are going so well for them? You should already be well aware of the liberal machinations in West Virginia, with the GOP backstabbing conservative Rep. Alex Mooney in favor of doddering moderate Governor Jim Justice.

Now back to the "bad candidate" lie of 2022. True that the quality of some of the GOP candidates was less than great (Oz leaps to mind), but it's also been true for a long time that the GOPe will ensure that candidates it doesn't approve of (conservatives) will not succeed in general elections, and the best way to do that is to fail to support those candidates with $$$$ and thereby concede massive financial advantages to the Democrats.

Check this out from the key swing state Senate races in 2022:

Arizona: D spending, $192 million; R spending, $15 million

Georgia: D: $326 million; R: $69 million

Nevada: D: $64 million; R: $18 million

New Hampshire: D: $42 million; R: $4 million

Pennsylvania: D: $76 million; R: $49 million

Even in states the GOP won (barely) in 2022, Democrats still had massive spending margins over their Republican opponents; the Rats made sure that their ultra-liberal Senate candidates in Wisconsin and North Carolina didn't have to rely solely on their melanin advantages, and therefore they also had far more resources to work with than Ron Johnson or Ted Budd. In Ohio, J.D. Vance was outspent by close to 300% (!), but then Ohio isn't supposed to be a swing state so the Democrats theoretically needed to pump in tremendous cash just to have a fighting chance. Ohio will obviously be a lot tighter in 2024 than it was in 2022, and this time all that Democrat cash will be critical.

Looking at the financial picture as it is developing for the 2024 Senate races, in every state where the GOP can even dream of making a pickup -- including West Virginia -- the incumbent Democrat is starting out far ahead in the money race. Even where there isn't a Democrat incumbent who is running again (Michigan) the liberals are still miles ahead in geld. With it still being so early in the campaign season, perhaps that's not the most meaningful way to evaluate electoral chances because incumbents always start out far ahead.

Oh yeah?

The loony left has at most only two semi-realistic possibilities of taking a Senate seat from the Republicans in 2024 and in one of those -- Texas -- GOP incumbent Ted Cruz is already trailing his dumb-as-dirt opponent in fundraising, and that trend is likely to continue through 2024. The Democrats are laser-beam focused on taking Texas because once it finally flips from true blue to commie pinko red, any Republican has a 0.0% chance of ever winning another presidential election. Since the Rats can't make their presidential candidate (presumably Biden, for now) attractive to Texans, they are sinking tons of cash into the Senate race in the hopes that the coattail effect will work up the ticket as well as down.

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Photo credit: Matt York, Associated Press

"The Hill", of all sources, contends that every one of the five most allegedly endangered Senate seats up in 2024 are currently held by Democrats! The five are: West Virginia, Montana, Ohio, Arizona and Wisconsin. We know that's hardly wishful thinking on the part of that leftist site, but are these pickups actually realistic or is this just a lot of crocodile tears to go with the veiled warning to Democrats to get busy doing whatever is necessary (wink, wink) to keep those seats, especially with Senate control at risk?

West Virginia: is supposed to be a slam-dunk pickup, perhaps with Joe "I've never lost an election in my life" Manchin deciding to keep his record intact by failing to run again and making the pickup a 100% certainty. The GOPe firmly supports moderate Governor Jim Justice and will do whatever it takes to prevent conservative Alex Mooney from getting the nomination. If Manchin really is as much of a "centrist" as some folks claim, the transition from Manchin to Justice in the Senate probably won't be very noticeable when it comes to their voting records.

Montana: The GOPe is rallying behind businessman Tim Sheehy, which probably tells you everything you need to know about this newcomer's politics. The question remains as to whether 2018 candidate and current congressman Matt Rosendale will enter the race. The Republicans lost Montana in 2018 for the same reason they lost West Virginia -- their candidate was attacked for the crime of not being born in the state (that plus some other Dirty Democrat Tricks, particularly in Montana). If Rosendale tries again in 2024 he'll do better than 2018, but he might be too conservative for his party's establishment.

Ohio: The GOP doesn't even appear to have a viable candidate. State Senator Matt Dolan is a liberal who got barely 20% of the vote in the 2022 Republican Senate primary, most of those votes coming from Democrats; Bernie Moreno is trying to paint himself as the MAGA candidate a la J.D. Vance, and will probably get a Trump endorsement if he can demonstrate a substantial lead in the polls. Ohio is not the solidly Republican state that the hopium addicts wish it was. For proof of that statement look no further than Sherrod Brown's past electoral successes, including 2018 when we were assured that Brown was toast because Trump won Ohio in 2016. Oops.

Arizona: Republicans can always count on a fair election in Arizona of course (LOL) but even if that really was the case their only hope here is for a 3-way race between the slimy "independent" incumbent (Sinema) a really slimy Democrat congressman (Gallego) and whoever the GOP nominates; that way the Republican could win with merely a plurality of the vote, and a plurality is probably the best they can do in this state these days. Some believe that Kari Lake will be back for a repeat of 2022. She was too good to be allowed to win then, and the same applies now. Whether it takes threats, bribes or both, Independent Sinema may not even choose to run for re-election, clearing the field for the Democrat nominee to very likely prevail next November.

Wisconsin: Rebecca Kleefisch, who would probably be Governor right now if it weren't for Trump's misguided and ineffectual endorsement of proven loser Tim Michels in 2022, would be a very good candidate and former Milwaukee County sheriff David Clarke would be good as well. Unfortunately, the GOPe is far more interested in millionaire candidates who will spend their own funds and not waste the apparently limited amount of cash the party has to throw around this cycle ("Pleez send us munney!"). Better still for the GOPe, the typical millionaire-type candidate often tends to be a squish although in this case Wisconsin venture capitalist Eric Hovde is described as a "conservative activist", at least by those on the left who hate him. So maybe he's not bad, but any Republican starts off as a clear underdog here.


Other possibilities, but don't hold your breath: There's Michigan, where incumbent liberal Debbie Stabenow is retiring in 2024 and will likely be replaced by well-funded liberal congresswoman Elissa Slotkin. There are a lot of GOP possibles to take her on, but none of them are serious threats to win. Except perhaps former Detroit police chief James Craig, who tried to run for Governor in 2022 but made the rookie mistake of having Democrat operatives in disguise gather signatures for him, which were deliberately falsified and Craig was kicked off the primary ballot at the last minute, leaving nothing but a field of underfunded and outclassed twerps on the Republican side. Hopefully he'll be smarter this time around.

Then there's Nevada, where the current Democrat Senator barely got 50% in 2018 against former Republican incumbent Dean Heller, who ran screaming to the left in a failed effort to keep that seat. The string-pullers on rare occasions allow the GOP to win a close election in Nevada (e.g. 2022 Governor) when the Republican candidate is acceptable to the left. If Sam Brown or Jim Marchant becomes the Senate nominee: (a) either one would make a great Senator, therefore (b) that is not going to be one of the few times the puppetmasters will allow the Republicans to win a statewide general election in Nevada although the result would likely be close. The GOP could simply nominate an eternal loser such as Adam Laxalt or Danny Tarkanian again, at least that would remove any suspense regarding the outcome.

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Photo credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh

Actually, that's one thing he's not. The article claims that Manchin is regretting his high-profile vote which singlehandedly provided the margin for passage of the Democrats' ludicrously-named "Inflation Reduction Act" last August. But he knew exactly what he was doing at the time, and only now that the 2024 campaign season is beginning to get underway is Manchin feeling a little heat at home in West Virginia. He pretends to be a thorn in the side of his party, but when the chips are down he always comes through for the leftists.

Republicans are lining up to take Manchin on, the first one was solidly conservative representative Alex Mooney. The liberal GOP establishment therefore went into a panic, but calmed themselves down by successfully recruiting term-limited Democrat-turned-Republican Governor Jim Justice to oppose Mooney in the primary.

The RINOs and their big $$$$ donors are now able to run away from Mooney and toward Justice. Donald Trump should endorse Mooney to give Mooney's campaign some traction, but apparently that's too much of a risk to the all-important Trump Winning Percentage since Mooney is unlikely to survive the primary.

Aside from his conservatism, the RINOs' problem with Mooney is that he wasn't born in some rural hovel in the geographical center of West Virginia and therefore is doomed to always be considered an outsider like Patrick Morrissey was painted as when he ran against Manchin and lost -- basically for that reason alone -- in 2018. Morrissey has since been elected to statewide office in WV, and is running for Governor in '24 and will probably win, so the voters seem to have forgiven him for the sin of being born elsewhere. Will the voters also forgive Mooney? We very likely won't get to find out this year.

The fear is that Manchin and the media would use the same playbook against Mooney that they did against Morrissey. They also fear that Mooney is "unelectable" even in this bluest of blue states because they feel (and wish, and try their best to ensure) that all conservatives are unelectable.

It's a moot point because no way the establishment lets Mooney win the GOP primary if Justice is in the race, and maybe even if he isn't. Given that Justice will be the nominee, at this time we feel he has about a 60-40 chance of defeating Manchin. Manchin is as slimy as they come, but West Virginia voters have been fooled by him in the past and may be again in the future. Also Manchin is a good campaigner -- good enough, anyway -- and most Republicans are not. Justice won in 2016 (as a Democrat, prior to switching parties) by "only" 7 points, but the next truly tough election campaign he faces will be his first one.

If something from way out of left field happens and Mooney is the nominee, it wouldn't be surprising at all to see the state's other Senator (alleged Republican Shelley Capito) all but endorse Manchin by talking about how delighted she's been to serve with him, how wonderfully "bipartisan" he is, etc. Other RINOs will also pull out the knives and aim for Mooney's back; Mitch McConnell will see to it that Mooney is starved for funds. But as stated above, that scenario is very likely something we won't have to worry about.

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Phony "moderate" Joe Manchin West Virginia 2024 Alex Mooney Conservative Jim Justice RINO