WASHINGTON _ Republican candidate Troy Balderson narrowly led a closely watched special election Tuesday in an Ohio congressional district that his party has dominated for decades _ a slim margin that did little to settle doubts about Republican chances in the midterm elections this fall.
Both parties eyed an undetermined number of provisional ballots that will not be fully counted for days and could determine the final result.
The takeaway for the rest of the country was clear, however: The district, Ohio's 12th, was drawn to be a GOP stronghold, but President Donald Trump's election has put it _ and similar districts across the country _ into political doubt.
The suburbs of Columbus, the state capital, which make up the most populous part of the district, are prime territory for the sort of Republicans who have turned against the party in the Trump era _ politically moderate, college educated and affluent.
But the district's more rural sections moved heavily toward Trump in 2016 and have stayed with him.
The result of those two opposing forces was to move the district from a safe Republican area to tossup territory. Democrats hope _ and many Republican strategists fear _ that similar dynamics will turn enough red seats blue this fall to end the GOP majority that has controlled the House since the 2010 election.
Republicans threw extensive resources into holding Ohio's 12th congressional district _ spending extensively on television ads in the final weeks of the campaign and sending Trump to rally voters over the weekend. Whether Trump helped or not is hard to tell _ the election day results closely matched polls that had forecast a tossup race.
In the end, the Republican push may have been just enough to overcome Democratic enthusiasm for punishing Trump at the polls. The winner can't get too comfortable, however; he only gets to hold the seat for a few months. The two candidates will meet again in November with a full two-year term at stake.
The Ohio special election attracted the most attention among political strategists, but several other states voted Tuesday as well, with primary results that provided clues about each party's future.
In Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, a former state legislator with backing from labor unions and women's groups, defeated two other candidates who ran to her left as they sought the Democratic nomination for governor.
Her win adds to two trends that have dominated Democratic primaries this year _ victories by women and, for the most part, by conventional liberals over candidates further to the left.
Whitmer has a clear liberal record. She boasted on the campaign trail of her work to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. A bill she helped push through the state legislature expanded the program and provided coverage for some 600,000 state residents, government figures show.
But Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and other leaders of the party's progressive wing backed one of her opponents, Abdul El-Sayed, the 33-year-old former chief of Detroit's health department.
El-Sayed endorsed Sanders' call for "Medicare for All," and attracted considerable national attention in part because he would have been the nation's first Muslim governor. Whitmer said she would not endorse a statewide single-payer plan, declaring that she would not endorse "buzz phrases" that would require major tax increases.
A third candidate, Shri Thanedar, complicated the race. The novice politician but successful entrepreneur dumped millions of his own money into the campaign. He also favors a single-payer health plan.
In the end, though, neither Thanedar's money nor El-Sayed's endorsements were a match for Whitmer's record and support from long-standing Democratic constituencies. She won handily and will face Republican Bill Schuette, the state attorney general, in the fall.
The Sanders wing of the party scored a major upset in June when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won a congressional primary in New York City, defeating a member of the Democratic congressional leadership. Other than that, however, the candidates he has backed have lost more than they have won.
The opposite political dynamic dominated the Republican campaign in Kansas, where the race pit the establishment against a candidate from the right, and tested Trump's sway among GOP voters.
Incumbent Gov. Jeff Colyer took over in January when his predecessor, Sam Brownback, stepped down to take an ambassador's post. Colyer campaigned for a full term of his own. But he was challenged by Kris Kobach, a favorite of Trump's who promised to run an even more conservative administration than Brownback's.
With about half the vote counted, the two were locked in a tight race.
Against the wishes of the Republican Governor's Association, which mostly exists to back incumbents, and some White House staff members, Trump jumped into the race on Monday with a tweet endorsing Kobach, whom he labeled "a strong and early supporter of mine."
Some Republican operatives fear that Kobach, who became well known for crusading against illegal immigrants and has persistently pushed debunked claims of widespread voter fraud, would turn off moderately conservative voters. That could not only risk handing the governor's race to a Democrat, but also endanger two Republican congressional seats in the state.
Also, Tuesday, labor unions won a major victory in Missouri, as voters rejected a so-called "right to work" law. The bill, pushed by state Republicans, would have barred contracts that require workers at unionized companies to either join the union or pay it a representation fee.
