I find myself wondering if Missourians are leaning Democrat this year.  Like the Senatorial primary, Democratic candidates in the State Auditor race received more total votes than Republican candidates — around 298,000 total votes for Republican candidates and nearly 310,000 for Democartic candidates.  I hope this is a trend that continues through November.

I’m little surprised Col. Jack Jackson lost the Republican primary to Sandra Thomas.  Jackson’s campaign played up all the usual Republican talking points:  military service, family values, and God.  Then, maybe that was the problem.  Sandra Thomas’ advertising focused on her experience and that fact that she’s actually a CPA — the only one of the Republican candidates.  I know very little about the Democratic candidate, Susan Montee, but I think she’s going to have a real fight on her hands with Thomas.

Claire McCaskill won her primary run — no real surprise there.  However, here’s an interesting aside:  if Claire gets the same number of Democratic votes, plus the votes for her poorly-named opponent, she will get more total votes than all the Republican candidates combined — a good 20,000 more.

I have to admit that I am not a huge McCaskill fan.  The only reason she ever gets my votes is because I think she has the best chance of beating her opponents when push comes to shove.  She came real close in the governor’s race and it looks like she has an excellent chance of taking down the worthless Jim Talent.  I think a big reason McCaskill lost the governor’s race was because she couldn’t penetrate into Missouri’s red counties where Republicans pretty run unopposed; and it didn’t help when Blunt went way negative in his attack ads.  Talent certainly isn’t above that, but I think there is a real tiredness for Republican politics in Missouri — even among the usually easy-to-get Evangelical vote that is so strong in rural Missouri.  Many Evangelical Christians I call friend said they planned to vote for Claire McCaskill and would love nothing better than to see Matt Blunt hit the road.  I may be going out on a limb here, and while I think this will be a tough race, I also think it’s Claire’s race to lose.

The writing may have been on the wall, but I have to say I’m surprised that Joe Lieberman lost.  Ned Lamont seems like a good guy and he certainly had the liberal blogosphere on his side, but he just didn’t act like a strong candidate.  Oh, well, he’s Connecticut’s Democratic candidate now.  Hopefully, this upset bodes well for Democrats in November.