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New York, Kentucky and Virginia will hold primary elections on Tuesday. There are also congressional second-round elections in North Carolina and Mississippi and second-round elections for legislative careers in South Carolina.
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The Kentucky Senate Democratic primary is highly competitive, as are several House races in New York. Surveys in Kentucky close at 6 pm local time; in New York, they will close at 9 pm local time.
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The number of voters casting absentee ballots increased dramatically due to the coronavirus pandemic, and the results of key races may not be known Tuesday night as a result.
We may have to wait for the winners.
What happens at the Kentucky to New York races on Tuesday may not be immediately known. Due to the large number of voters casting absentee ballots, the final results will not be tabulated for days. So in a close race, it may not be clear who won Tuesday night or even Wednesday.
In New York, absentee ballots are not fully counted until a week after the election. And those ballots could represent about half of all the votes cast in the primaries.
In Kentucky, absentee ballot requests have skyrocketed in the state’s two largest cities, Louisville and Lexington. However, several jurisdictions have indicated that on Tuesday they will only tabulate the votes cast that day, or those cast that day combined with those cast during early voting in person.
That would mean that potentially hundreds of thousands of absentee votes will not be counted until after Tuesday night.
Can Jamaal Bowman overthrow Eliot Engel?
Rep. Eliot L. Engel, a 31-year-old incumbent representing New York’s 16th district in the Bronx and Westchester County, is trying to fend off a vigorous challenge from his left in a Democratic primary seen as evidence of the The facility’s ability to resist its emboldened left wing.
Her main rival is Jamaal Bowman, the principal of a middle school that has been backed by prominent progressives, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
Heeding the annoyance of Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez two years ago in a neighboring district, the Democratic leadership, from Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi to Senator Chuck Schumer, has lined up behind Mr. Engel. In a sign of how vulnerable Mr. Engel has become, even Hillary Clinton stepped in to support him last week, her first endorsement in a 2020 House primary race.
Mr. Bowman has benefited from a number of useful events. A fellow candidate recently abandoned him and endorsed him. And earlier this month, before a press conference on police violence, Mr. Engel was caught by a microphone asking to speak and saying, “If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t mind.”
It remains to be seen whether that will be enough to overcome Mr. Engel’s name recognition and financial backing, and offset the fact that Mr. Bowman was unable to execute a door knocking operation due to the pandemic.
Only one Democratic incumbent has lost a primary so far in 2020.
A crowded race in the most democratic district in the country.
The race in District 15 in the South Bronx to replace Representative José E. Serrano, who is retiring, is perhaps one of the most peculiar Democratic primaries in the country.
The district is the bluest congressional district in the nation: Mrs. Clinton won it with 93.7 percent of the vote in 2016. However, the top favorite is Rubén Díaz Sr., a socially conservative Pentecostal minister with a history of making homophobic comments that he is considering voting for President Trump in November.
That is in part because 12 candidates have filled out the ballot, fragmenting support for a more liberal candidate. Mr. Díaz also has deep roots in the district after years on the City Council and the State Senate.
Lack of unity within the party’s left flank could harm progressives.
City Councilman Ritchie Torres, the first openly gay elected official in the Bronx, who describes himself as a pragmatic progressive, is at the forefront of fundraising. He has insisted that candidates with “no royal road” should abandon the race.
Democratic Socialists of America and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez have endorsed Samelys López, an activist. For democratic socialists, the main thing will be a test of their influence and how much traction their platform gains in one of the poorest and most minority areas of the country.
Carolyn Maloney faces a rematch
In 2018, when progressive fervor swept across the nation in the wake of President Trump’s election, Representative Carolyn B. Maloney was one of four members of the New York City House of Democrats who faced the primaries since the left.
Only one challenge was successful: Mrs. Ocasio-Cortez’s offer against Joseph Crowley, a former top House Democrat.
But Ms. Maloney’s challenger, Suraj Patel, garnered an impressive 41.2 percent of the vote. Patel, a hotel executive, seeks to capitalize on that result and her biggest name recognition on Tuesday to try to defeat Mrs. Maloney, a 14-term congresswoman representing the 12th District.
Lauren Ashcraft, a socialist and democratic comedian, and Peter Harrison, a housing activist, are also running in the primaries. The three-way challenge could dilute the anti-system vote and help Ms. Maloney achieve another victory.
Some political observers are watching how a considerable exodus of constituents from parts of Manhattan in the Maloney district due to the coronavirus could affect participation.
The decrease in population could translate into a drop in base support for the incumbent, although all eligible voters can vote absentee. Only more than 700,000 voters in New York City have requested absentee ballots, an astronomical number compared to past elections.
An expensive elementary school with the potential to make history
The Democratic primaries in District 17 in the Lower Hudson Valley, just north of New York City, are likely to decide who will replace Rep. Nita Lowey, who will resign after more than 30 years in office.
It has quickly become a face: over $ 7 million has been spent on the race. And it has raised questions about whether a wealthy candidate can go to Congress: Adam Schleifer, a former federal prosecutor and the son of a pharmaceutical billionaire, has spent more than $ 4 million, most from his own pocket.
There are six other candidates in the race, including Evelyn Farkas, a former member of the Obama administration, and David Carlucci, a state senator.
But Mondaire Jones, a former attorney who attended Harvard Law School after growing up poor in Rockland County, received the endorsement of the party’s liberal wing, garnering the support of the Working Families Party, Mrs. Ocasio- Cortez, Mrs. Warren and Mr. Sanders
A victory for Mr. Jones would be historical in nature: he could become the first openly gay black member of Congress. Mr. Torres could also become the first if he is victorious in District 15.
A race to face Mitch McConnell
Whoever wins the Democratic Senate primary in Kentucky, a race between State Representative Charles Booker and Amy McGrath, a former Navy pilot, will face an uphill battle against Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, in a State President Trump with almost 30 points four years ago.
But a career that was once seen as the loss of Mrs. McGrath has become competitive as Mr. Booker has tapped into the anger at police misconduct to energize his campaign and test the control that National party leaders have on state careers.
Mr. Booker is expected to have a large margin in Louisville, his hometown and the state’s largest city, so the question is whether Ms. McGrath can overcome that edge in the more rural east and west of Kentucky.
Working in your favor is the nature of voting in the coronavirus era: State leaders aggressively pressed absentee voting, so Ms. McGrath deposited a number of voter ballots long before Booker’s late increase.
