We are about five weeks out from the August 2 primary in Missouri.  With Roy Blunt deciding that it is time to move on, there are multiple candidates in both party’s primary.  While Missouri has been gradually moving to the right, there is a chance that Democrats could pull out a win, but a lot depends on what happens on August 2.

To some degree, the Republican primary in Missouri is an echo of what we have seen in Ohio and Pennsylvania.  With a large number of candidates and no clear favorite, we are looking at the potential for a very close race which in turn means that Donald Trump could very easily impact the result by putting his thumb on the scale (as opposed to the recent primary in Alabama where Trump had little noticeable impact on the race when he first endorsed Mo Brooks, less impact when he rescinded that endorsement, and no impact when he decided to endorse Kate Britt at the last second to get a cheap win for his endorsement scorecard).

There are twenty-one people running for the Republican nomination.  For the purposes of the Trump endorsement race, there are three groups of candidates:  the field, the chase pack, and the lead pack.  The field consists of fifteen candidates with no state-wide name recognition and no significant resources.  Each of these candidates would be lucky to get 2-3% of the vote.  But each vote for the field is a vote that is not going to the top six candidates. Continue Reading...