Today, Indi­ana and North Car­olina hold their Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial pri­mary elec­tions. But those are decid­edly unin­ter­est­ing when the nom­i­nee is already essen­tially ordained.

No, today’s inter­est­ing elec­tion sto­ries are fur­ther down on the ballots.

Indi­ana

The Hoover Hoosiers are also vot­ing in their United States Sen­ate pri­mary. Incum­bent Sen­a­tor Richard Lugar (R-​​IN), who took office at the same time as Pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter, is defend­ing his seat against chal­lenger Richard Mour­dock, who is cur­rently the State Treasurer.

Lugar is the tar­get of accu­sa­tions that he has become too lib­eral to rep­re­sent Indiana’s con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues. How accu­rate is this?

Sen­a­tor Richard Lugar (left) and Richard Mourdock

In 1977, when he took office, Lugar’s DW-​​NOMINATE score was +0.341, appre­cia­bly more con­ser­v­a­tive than the aver­age Repub­li­can Senator’s +0.233. Since then, his DW-​​NOMINATE score has con­sis­tently low­ered; as of the 111th Con­gress, his score was +0.241. That’s still more con­ser­v­a­tive than the aver­age Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor in the 95th Con­gress, but far less con­ser­v­a­tive than the +0.448 score of the aver­age Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor in the 111th Con­gress. In fact, you have prob­a­bly noticed that Lugar’s 1977 score is to the left of the aver­age Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor of today. It’s also to the left of +0.3, the value pre­dicted by the state’s Par­ti­san Vot­ing Index.

In the 111th Con­gress, Sen­a­tor Lugar was the sev­enth most lib­eral Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor. With the depar­tures of Sen­a­tors Arlin Spec­tor and George Voinovich, he became the fifth most lib­eral Repub­li­can in the Senate.

It seems, then, that the accu­sa­tions are accu­rate. Polls indi­cate that Mour­dock has about a ten-​​point lead over Lugar, and so it is likely that Indiana’s senior Sen­a­tor will fall today.

Mour­dock as been endorsed by Tea Party favorites. Will his Tea Party cre­den­tials help or hurt him in Novem­ber? The depends on a large num­ber of fac­tors, and it’s too early to see how they will impact the final out­come. But there are some echoes here of Nevada’s 2010 Sen­ate race. We’ll explore this topic fur­ther at a later date.

North Car­olina

North Car­olina has two inter­est­ing votes.

Amend­ment 1, if passed, would amend the state Con­sti­tu­tion to pro­hibit same-​​sex mar­riage. It would also pro­hibit same-​​sex civil unions, some­thing of which it appears most North Car­olini­ans are unaware. When polled, a major­ity of those who believe it only applies to mar­riage sup­port Amend­ment 1, while a major­ity of those who are aware of the civil-​​union ban oppose it; a major­ity of North Car­olini­ans are unop­posed to single-​​sex civil unions. Yet when asked about Amend­ment 1 with­out con­text, a major­ity of those polled sup­port it.

It may come as a sur­prise to many Amend­ment 1 sup­port­ers to find that an unin­tended con­se­quence of this law could be to inval­i­date many wills, trusts, and pow­ers of attor­ney between unmar­ried het­ero­sex­ual cou­ples, includ­ing those involv­ing cus­tody and vis­i­ta­tion rights.

Oddly, the wife of one of the amendment’s authors report­edly claimed that her hus­band drafted the amend­ment to pro­tect the “Cau­casian race”.

Recent polls sug­gest that Amend­ment 1 will pass by a double-​​digit margin.

The other race is for Gov­er­nor. Demo­c­ra­tic incum­bent Bev Per­due decided not to run for reëlec­tion, so both sides have pri­maries. For the Democ­rats, Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor Wal­ter Dal­ton has an edge over for­mer Con­gress­man Bob Etheridge, who rep­re­sented Con­gres­sional Dis­trict 2. The Repub­li­cans’ for­mer Char­lotte Mayor (who lost to Per­due, by 4.5 points, in 2008) Pat McCrory has a com­mand­ing lead over the oth­ers in polls for that pri­mary elec­tion. This far out, McCrory has a bit of an edge over Dal­ton, though that may tighten up between now and November.

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