In Tuesday's primaries, a big day for Donald Trump

Former president Donald Trump finally had a good day in Republican primaries on Tuesday. Candidates that Trump endorsed won quite a few contested races, some with solid margins.

In Nevada, Trump-endorsed gubernatorial candidate Joe Lombardo beat the runner-up in a crowded field by about 20 percentage points, while Trump's preferred Senate candidate, Adam Laxalt, cleared 50% of the vote, something that had mostly eluded his open-seat and challenger candidates this cycle. And Trump finally got a big one to brag about: In South Carolina, Trump-endorsed challenger Russell Fry trounced incumbent Rep. Tom Rice, who had voted last year to impeach Trump and then defended that vote during his renomination campaign. Fry, too, cleared 50%, while Rice was held to only a quarter of the vote, giving Trump his revenge.

If every primary had looked like these, Trump's reputation for influence with Republican voters would be a lot stronger than it has been this year. The results this week looked good for him, no doubt.

That said? One reason for his success on Tuesday was that Trump made safer picks, including in those Nevada contests. He also picked up a winner in another Nevada primary, for secretary of state, in another divided race where getting a bit more than a third of the vote was sufficient. I don't know how much Trump's backing mattered there, but the ideal setting for a big endorsement effect is in a primary election with lots of little-known candidates. Especially a down-ballot primary, which presumably had little media coverage.

After all, there's no question about whether most Republican voters like Trump — most voters like all their party's politicians. So if the only thing that a voter knows about a bunch of candidates is Trump's endorsement, it may have quite a bit of influence even if that voter isn't seeking to help Trump. It may be only a case of some information beating none.

And then back to South Carolina. While Trump did have one big win there, he also lost one, with incumbent Rep. Nancy Mace of the state's first congressional district defeating a Trump-backed challenger by about 8 percentage points. Of course, beating House incumbents in primaries isn't easy, even in a redistricting year. Indeed, it's perhaps of note that Mace received the same share of the vote — 53% — as the Trump-endorsed incumbent William Timmons, in the fourth district. I do wonder whether Rice, the defeated incumbent, may have been in as much trouble from a sour mood among voters as he was from breaking with Trump. Surging gas prices, high inflation and a persistent pandemic may be more of a factor in those contests than the former president.

Of course, while that sour mood that may be a bit of a problem for Republican incumbents right now, it's going to be a large problem for Democrats if it persists until November. Yesterday's special election in south Texas to replace a resigning member of the House was unusually difficult to interpret, but it's unlikely that Republican Mayra Flores would have flipped the seat with 51% of the vote if President Joe Biden was popular right now.

The election was complicated by many factors; the seat, which had gone for Biden narrowly in 2020, is disappearing with redistricting, with the election on Tuesday only to pick someone to represent the old seat for the rest of this Congress. Because an incumbent Democrat will be shuffling over to run in the new seat — which is much better for the party than the current lines — the Democrats didn't put a lot of effort into this contest, while Flores and the Republicans worked hard to set her up for a long-shot attempt at winning the new district in November. Still, at the very least, her victory is a reminder that if nothing changes, 2022 is apt to be a very good year indeed for Republicans.

And one more thing? Nevada politics maven Jon Ralston tells us that the "GOP here is primed to nominate election deniers (or worse) for: U.S. Senate. LG. AG. SOS. Treasurer. And maybe one congressional district." Trump or no Trump, the Republican Party is becoming a party that simply can't accept defeat. And democracy is in trouble for as long as that's the case.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.