Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics has a primary round-up. It’s election day in Arizona, Minnesota, Maryland, Wisconsin, Delaware, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont, plus D.C.’s got a mayoral vote.

All eyes are on Providence. Can conservative Stephen Laffey unseat the Bush-bashing “mooooderate,” GOP Sen. Lincoln Chafee? The BBC is biting its fingernails.

Forbes/AP overview:

ine states and Washington, D.C., were holding primary elections Tuesday, but Chafee’s race has drawn the most attention as another test of the depth of anti-incumbent sentiment and the erosion of the political middle ground.

Chafee has a remarkable amount of support from national Republicans, especially for a senator who has often been at odds with the party, bucking the administration on tax cuts, civil liberties and the Iraq war. He faces Steve Laffey, a former investment banker and mayor of Cranston, R.I.

In Maryland, Democrats were choosing a Senate candidate to go up against Republican Michael Steele, the lieutenant governor. An open House seat in Arizona has drawn a contentious crowd of GOP candidates, as well as several hopefuls on the Democratic side. Minnesota Democrats will pick a candidate for a House seat left open by retiring 14-term Democratic Rep. Martin Sabo.

Many races won’t be close, but they will set up important November contests that include Senate seats in Arizona and Minnesota, and the race for governor in Maryland, Minnesota, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. Other states holding primaries are Delaware, New Hampshire, New York and Vermont, while the District of Columbia will select mayoral candidates.

Election day glitches delayed the voting in a few districts.

Some polling place judges were late in Baltimore. In Maryland’s Montgomery County, officials said the key cards to activate electronic voting machines weren’t delivered in time for the 7 a.m. opening. One New York City voter, St. Johns’ University criminal justice professor Howard Abadinsky, said the machines at his polling place were missing levers for some candidates, and when he was given a paper ballot, there was no box to put it in.

Observers will be eyeing the Rhode Island race in particular to gauge the strength of the anti-incumbency mood. Connecticut’s Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman was beaten in the primary by anti-war candidate Ned Lamont, though Lieberman is still running as an independent. Michigan Rep. Joe Schwarz, a moderate Republican targeted by the anti-tax Club for Growth, also was defeated.

Patrick Casey reports on Rhode Island election day activity at the Sixers blog:

As I don’t travel in the same ‘elite’ circles as Chafee, Whitehouse, and Providence Journal reporters, I went out to a few local Warwick pizza parlors and a popular Chinese restaurant this weekend to gauge people’s feelings on the race. Overwhelmingly they’ve been critical of the tone of the campaign, focusing their disappointment at Chafee. The last series of ads by the Chafee campaign itself was mentioned as one of the basest, most personal negative attack on one candidate against another that anyone’s seen before in this state. People aren’t as stupid as many politicians and their consultants think – I constantly heard things like “Well that part of Chafee’s ad just isn’t true”, and “Who cares about an old stockbroker job”.
Even if Chafee wins this primary, he has lost a lot of his luster and the respect that many in Warwick (where he was Mayor) had for him, let alone the rest of the state. Were it not for the NRSC poll done by POS that said that Chafee had a huge lead over Laffey (countering a RIC poll that said exactly the opposite), I’d say that Laffey was going to win, even in Warwick. But we shall all see, at around 9:00pm tonight.

Stay tuned.

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John Hawkins at Right Wing News looks at three biggies and GOP blundering in Arizona.

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