Following former President Donald Trump at the top of the ticket, GOP politicians surged across the state of Indiana, maintaining control of the state government as the party’s reign over the state approaches two decades.
Republicans swept statewide elections as Sen. Mike Braun’s gubernatorial bid, Jim Banks’s run for the U.S. Senate and Todd Rokita’s reelection campaign all handily took the state. Former President Donald Trump also took Indiana’s 11 electoral votes. All statewide races were won by double-digit margins, with Braun’s victory being the closest over Democrat Jennifer McCormick at a 14-point margin.
Incumbent District 28 State Senator Michael Crider won by a three-to-one margin over Libertarian Travis Chittum across the district. In Hancock County, Crider received 31,146 votes to Chittum’s 7,565.
The closest partisan race within Hancock County was run for Indiana State House District 88 between incumbent Republican Chris Jeter and Democrat Stephanie Jo Yocum. Across the district, Yocum was slightly closer than her 2022 counterpart, Donna Griffin, losing by a margin of a little over 16 points. Among Hancock County voters, the margin was wider, as Jeter won the county by nearly 20 points. Madison county also swung heavily toward Jeter, with Hamilton County being slightly more favorable to Yocum and Marion being a near-push with a margin of only 453 votes.
In the race for Hancock County Coroner, Republican Rudolph Nylund III defeated Democrat Kirbie Young by a two-to-one margin.
In Indiana’s lone ballot question, Hoosiers decided to remove the state superintendent from the gubernatorial line of succession in the narrowest statewide race, with 1,322,403 “yes” votes to 1,139,351 “no” votes, a 7-point margin.
As of 10:30 p.m. (the last update for judicial results), no judges were likely to be recalled. While several counties were not yet in, the judge with the closest results, Indiana Supreme Court Justice Mark Massa, was well above water, with a margin of 694,341 to retain and 314,127 to recall.
