While former President Donald Trump is hailing an 85-3 record on his Truth Social account after Tuesday's night's primaries, President Joe Biden is about the take a loss with his first endorsed candidate.
The primary for Oregon's 5th District, where Rep. Kurt Schrader, D-Ore., was trailing challenger Jamie McLeod-Skinner, was too close to call in part because of a printing issue with ballots in Oregon's third-largest county.
While the race is too close to call because of the limited number of votes counted, Biden's Schrader (around 39%) is not close, trailing by more than 21 points to McLeod-Skinner (61%) with around 61% of the vote tallied, according to the latest tally by Decision Desk HQ.
Biden had called Schrader a "strong and consistent voice" in his first endorsement in the 2022 midterm primary season. Oregon voters instead are overwhelmingly siding with his opponent.
While Biden has chosen to mostly stay out of the Democrat primaries, a loss would couple with the fact that Republicans note that popular Democrat candidates like Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O'Rourke, Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, and Ohio Sen.-nominee Tim Ryan are avoiding campaigning with the sitting Democrat president in their high-profile races.
Midterms tend to be a slog for sitting presidents and the turnout is favoring Republicans, too.
In Pennsylvania, Republicans have a higher turnout than Democrats in primary elections for the first time since 2012 and GOP turnout is 75% higher than 2018. That is despite Democrats outnumbering registered Republicans in the state by more than a half million voters.
Some of the low turnout might be explained away by the fact the Democrat gubernatorial nominee Josh Shapiro ran unopposed.
In North Carolina on Tuesday night, the GOP primary votes were near the 2020 presidential election cycle levels, which is noteworthy for a midterm cycle. Total votes cast are around 86% higher than the 2018 midterms in the state.
Republicans have turned out 758,637 GOP primary votes, compared to 612,645 for Democrats.
The Biden-won counties of 2020, GOP primary votes totaled 169,210 or 182% higher than in 2018.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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