Live coverage: Aug. 2 primaries in Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington

Five states are holding primaries tonight, while Kansas will vote on an amendment to remove the right to an abortion from the state constitution. Ohio voters will also go back to the polls for primaries for their state legislature, which were delayed because of redistricting litigation (primaries for the Buckeye State’s other offices took place as planned in early May).

We’ll be liveblogging the results here and also covering the returns closely on Twitter.

Key races: Previews | Cheat-sheet

Results: AZ | KS | MI | MO | OH | WA

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 12:21:04 AM +00:00 · Steve Singiser

Good evening, and welcome to one of the bigger primary nights of the 2022 cycle. The first part of the night includes major contests in Kansas, Michigan, and Missouri, and then the western states chime in with primary results from Arizona and Washington state. Strap in for what might be one of the more intriguing primary nights of the year!

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 12:23:23 AM +00:00 · Steve Singiser

A couple of reminders before we head into the evening. We will start to report results when the results are at 10% of the expected total for the night. Now, this can be an imperfect measurement—the early results could be early vote that one candidate worked harder to cultivate, or it could be disproportionately from a particular area or region. So we encourage you not to draw too many conclusions early in the night.

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 12:27:05 AM +00:00 · Steve Singiser

MI-11 (D): And we start the night with one of the teeth-gnashing election issues. If you are following along with USA Today (or the New York Times), they show Rep. Andy Levin winning this member-versus-member primary with Rep. Haley Stevens by a 59-41 margin. But as you can see on the Oakland County website, it is Stevens that holds the edge. Again, this is early vote, and it is hard to know if those ballots represent a normal distribution in the race, or not. We have certainly seen races where walkup vote strongly favored one candidate (PA-12 comes to mind).

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 12:35:04 AM +00:00 · Steve Singiser

MI-11 (D): Digging a little deeper, we can see how Haley Stevens has forged this moderate lead. As one might expect, she is doing quite well in the parts of the new 11th that made up her old district. And, as one might expect, Andy Levin is also doing quite well in the parts of the new 11th that made up HIS old district. So the dividing line, as we sit here at the start of the evening, is that Haley Stevens is running well ahead of Andy Levin in the parts of the district that neither have repped since January of 2021 (about 1/3 of the new district is the remnants of the old 14th district).

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 12:49:43 AM +00:00 · Steve Singiser

MI-12 (D): We’ve hit the threshold (right at 10%) in this race, and it is turning out as many suspected. Rep. Rashida Tlaib might’ve been in some modest amount of distress had she been consigned to a head-to-head contest. But with the opposition divided in three different directions, she is positively cruising. Tlaib is sitting at 57%, with her nearest competitor (Detroit city clerk Janice Winfrey) back at 25%.

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 1:02:01 AM +00:00 · Steve Singiser

Kansas: We have finally hit the threshold in what might be the most important contest of the night: the voter initiative in Kansas which, if passed, would give the legislature the right to regulate abortion by whatever methods please them, including and up to an outright ban.

But these are results that need an immense amount of context. Right now: the NO side is up 69-31, which is great news, of course. But two things to consider: 1) this is almost entirely advance vote, which would undoubtedly benefit the more progressive side of the equation; 2) the vote is also disproportionately from bluer counties like Wyandotte, Douglas, and Riley counties. So...while the early returns are heartening, there are miles to go in this one.

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 1:07:23 AM +00:00 · David Jarman

MI-Gov: We’ve passed the 10% reporting mark in the Republican primary in the Michigan gubernatorial contest. Unsurprisingly (based on the last few weeks of primary polls), conservative talk radio host Tudor Dixon has a substantial lead. She’s at 43%, to 20% for businessman Kevin Rinke, 19% for Garrett Soldano, and 15% for insurrectionist real estate agent Ryan Kelley.

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 1:15:54 AM +00:00 · David Jarman

MO-04: I know you’ve all been on the edge of your seats to see who succeeds Rep. Vicki Hartzler (who’s currently running for Senate) as Republican nominee in the dark-red 4th district! We’ve hit the threshold, and it’s a close three-way race. State Sen. Rick Brattin is leading at 28%, rancher Kalena Bruce is at 25%, and former TV newsman Mark Alford is at 23%, with 17% estimated reporting.

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 1:23:11 AM +00:00 · David Jarman

Kansas: We’re up to 22% estimated reporting, and we’ve hit an important benchmark, in that Sedgwick County, the state’s most populous red county and where Wichita is located, has started reporting. ‘No’ (i.e. the good guys) is winning even there, at 62-38, which take the statewide total to 65-35 in favor of ‘no.’ As before, we’d remind everyone to look at these results with extreme caution, though, as, even though these votes are distributed around a wide variety of counties, these votes may nevertheless be heavily reliant on early votes (which, as we saw prominently in 2020, tend to favor Democrats).

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 1:28:13 AM +00:00 · David Jarman

MO-Sen: We’re past the 10% reporting mark on the Republican side in the Senate race in Missouri, and it’s a split decision for Donald Trump. One of the Erics that he endorsed, Attorney General Eric Schmitt, is on track to win the nomination at 42%. However, the other Eric that he endorsed, ex-Gov. Eric Greitens, is lagging in third place at 19%. They’re separated by Rep. Vicki Hartzler, at 27%. Remarkably, there’s another U.S. Rep. in the race, Billy Long, who’s languishing all the way back at 3%. We’re still waiting on the Democratic side to hit the threshold before we can talk about who’s likely to oppose Schmitt.

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 1:39:14 AM +00:00 · David Jarman

MI-03: Some interesting results in Michigan’s 3rd district in the Republican primary, where we’ve just passed the threshold at 11%. This is the race where various Beltway pundits got their feelings hurt by Democrats’ efforts to boost Trumpist challenger John Gibbs over sorta-moderate incumbent Republican Rep. Peter Meijer. Gibbs does in fact currently lead Meijer 53-47, but important context is that Gibbs is relying heavily on smaller Ottawa County for that lead (where he’s up 58-41 with 67% reporting), but Meijer is winning in much larger Kent County (where the major city of Grand Rapids is), up 57-43 with only 5% reporting. 

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 1:44:45 AM +00:00 · David Jarman

MO-Sen: We’re up to 12% reporting on the Democratic side in the Missouri Senate race (though this looks like less of a out-in-left-field pickup opportunity with Eric Schmitt as GOP nominee instead of Eric Greitens). Beer baroness Trudy Busch Valentine leads veteran Lucas Kunce 45-35.

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 1:47:19 AM +00:00 · David Jarman

MI-Gov: The AP has called the Republican gubernatorial primary in Michigan for Tudor Dixon, which means that millions of ad-watching Michiganders are likely to become verrrrry familiar in the coming months with the film Buddy BeBop vs. the Living Dead.

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 1:52:22 AM +00:00 · David Jarman

Kansas: Johnson County — Kansas’s most populous county, in the Kansas City suburbs, and the scene of one of the nation’s biggest red-to-blue shifts in the last decade — just dropped a big old load of votes in the abortion vote, and the large majority of them were on the ‘no’ side: going 72-28 in favor of ‘no,’ with reportedly 70% of the county vote reported. That takes us up to 45% reporting statewide and boosts the overall topline to 66 no-34 yes. We’ll continue to advise caution on football-spiking yet, but it’s starting to look like it’ll be a steep climb for abortion foes to turn this one around with the Election Day vote.

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 1:56:13 AM +00:00 · David Jarman

MO-07: The race to replace Republican Rep. Billy Long in the dark-red Missouri’s 7th district in the Springfield area has reached the 10% mark. So far, state Sen. Eric Burlison is in the lead at 36%, followed by state Sen. Jay Wasson at 24 and pastor Alex Bryant at 19.

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 1:59:59 AM +00:00 · David Jarman

MI-08: Also of note, we’ve passed the threshold in the Republican primary in the new 8th district in Michigan (this is primarily the old Flint-area 5th, where Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee is the incumbent, but it became more competitive in redistricting). Paul Junge, last seen losing to Elissa Slotkin in the old 8th in 2020, has a big lead here at 55%, leading Candice Miller (no, not ex Rep. Candice Miller, just someone with the same name) who has 23%.

Wednesday, Aug 3, 2022 · 2:04:34 AM +00:00 · David Nir

The liveblog continues here.