5 States Are Voting on Tuesday. Here’s What to Watch.

Tuesday is another busy voting day, with Kansas, Michigan, Missouri and Washington holding primaries and one Ohio district holding a special House election. We’ll have live results beginning Tuesday evening.

Here’s a look at the most important races.

Voters in Ohio’s 12th District will choose a replacement for Rep. Pat Tiberi, a Republican who resigned to work for a business group. The candidates are Troy Balderson, a Republican endorsed last week by President Donald Trump, and Danny O’Connor, a Democrat.

The race is expected to be close and both national parties are spending heavily. But whoever loses will get a rematch in the regularly scheduled election in just three months.

At the top of the ballot here is the race for governor, a job held by Jeff Colyer since the former governor, Sam Brownback, accepted an ambassadorship under Trump.

Colyer is running against Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the face of Trump’s voter fraud commission, in the Republican primary. In a dynamic that has become very familiar this year, each man wants to be known as the most loyal and effective ally of the president. Kobach, a firebrand on immigration as well as voting laws, resembles the president in tone and style, leaving Colyer to argue that he is a pragmatist who will more effectively accomplish Trumpian policy goals. Trump endorsed Kobach on Monday.

Also running are three Democrats: Carl Brewer, a former mayor of Wichita; Laura Kelly, a state senator; and Joshua Svaty, a farmer and former state agriculture secretary. Some Democrats think that if Kobach wins the Republican nomination, it could give them an opening among voters who see him as too extreme.

Finally, voters will be choosing their candidates in two Republican-held House districts that Democrats hope to flip in November. Seven Republicans are on the ballot in the 2nd District, where Rep. Lynn Jenkins is retiring; the winner will face Paul Davis, a Democrat who won the district during his unsuccessful bid for governor in 2014. And in the 3rd District, which includes Democratic-leaning Kansas City and Overland Park, six Democrats are vying to challenge Rep. Kevin Yoder.

Four Republicans and three Democrats are running for governor here, a wide-open race since Gov. Rick Snyder has reached his term limit. On the Republican side, the top contenders appear to be Attorney General Bill Schuette and Lt. Gov. Brian Calley. On the Democratic side, the candidates are former state Sen. Gretchen Whitmer; Shri Thanedar, a businessman; and Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive former director of the Detroit Health Department.

Meanwhile, two businessmen are running in a Republican primary to challenge Sen. Debbie Stabenow, a three-term Democratic incumbent who is running for re-election. This is yet another race in which the candidates are jockeying for the Trump vote and Trump weighed in late last month, endorsing John James over Sandy Pensler. A poll conducted shortly before the endorsement showed an extremely close race, but Trump’s support could give James the edge.

Five House races in Michigan are also expected to be competitive in November, especially the Republican-held 8th and 11th districts. In the 8th District, two Democrats — Elissa Slotkin and Chris Smith — are vying to challenge Rep. Mike Bishop. And in the 11th District, where Rep. David Trott is retiring, there are crowded primary fields on both sides.

Keep an eye, too, on the 13th District, where Rep. John Conyers Jr. resigned last year because of sexual harassment allegations. It is a safe Democratic seat, but the primary is hard-fought.

Sen. Claire McCaskill is believed to be one of the most vulnerable Democrats in the Senate because of her low approval rating and Trump’s victory in Missouri by nearly 20 percentage points. Six years ago, she managed to win re-election largely because of the deep unpopularity of her Republican opponent, Todd Akin, who drew national ridicule and condemnation for claiming that women did not get pregnant in cases of “legitimate rape.” This time, Republicans are hoping to nominate a stronger challenger.

The front-runner is Josh Hawley, Missouri’s conservative attorney general, for whom Trump has raised funds and campaigned; his long-shot opponent is Austin Petersen, a libertarian. Polls show an extremely close race between Hawley and McCaskill.

In the 1st Congressional District, Cori Bush is running against an incumbent Democrat, William Lacy Clay, in a test of whether the progressive playbook pioneered by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in New York can work in the heartland.

Voters will also weigh in on a ballot measure that will determine whether Missouri becomes a right-to-work state, meaning that workers would no longer have to join a union or pay fees if their workplace is unionized. Republicans passed right-to-work legislation in 2017, but labor groups collected enough signatures to prevent the measure from taking effect pending a statewide ballot.

Two of Washington’s 10 congressional districts have competitive races Tuesday. The primaries will be “top two,” meaning that — as in California — the top two finishers will move on to the general election, regardless of party.

In the 8th District, four main candidates are running to replace Rep. David Reichert, a retiring Republican whose seat is considered a tossup this year. Former state Sen. Dino Rossi, a Republican, is expected to finish comfortably in the top two in the primary. The big question is which Democrat will make it along with him: Shannon Hader, a former official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jason Rittereiser, a lawyer; or Kim Schrier, a pediatrician.

In the solidly Democratic 9th District, Rep. Adam Smith, a longtime congressman with a top position on the House Armed Services Committee, is facing a primary challenge from Sarah Smith, a democratic socialist. On the surface, this looks a lot like New York’s 14th District, where another democratic socialist, Ocasio-Cortez, beat Joseph Crowley, a longtime congressman with a powerful leadership position. Sarah Smith has encouraged the comparison, while Adam Smith has emphasized the differences between the two races — including the fact that Ocasio-Cortez was born and raised in her district, while Sarah Smith lives just outside this one.