This was very expected among the community in Wisconsin. Schultz represents the 17th Senate District in Wisconsin, which Obama won 61-38 and even Kerry carried. Schultz has been a longtime moderate, and there are a lot of union members in his district. He offered a compromise, since removed, to sunset the collective bargaining restrictions after two years. He has been trying to find a way to bridge the gap here, and with the Republican leadership not budging, he finally had to side with the people and say no.

Blanche Lincoln’s loss was immediately called in Arkansas. John Boozman gave the second pickup for Republicans of the night, though two others were held off. John Raese has lost to Joe Manchin in West Virginia, and Linda McMahon lost to Richard Blumenthal in Connecticut. Republicans held Georgia, New Hampshire and North Carolina Senate seats, the [...]

I hate to disrupt the “GOP goes extreme” narrative the media has latched onto (hampered somewhat by the fact that Christine O’Donnell was the nominee for US Senate for Delaware, um, two years ago), but that wasn’t the only story coming out of last night’s end to the primary schedule. In fact, we saw a fair number of progressive candidates, a mix of incumbents and challengers, knock off opponents running to their right.

Yes, it’s primary night once again in America. Or at least on the Liberal Hippie East Coast… and Wisconsin. And as is so often true, it’s looking like a referendum on each party’s political direction. All three Republican races above feature a Tea Party candidate against a more establishment one, and both Democratic ones feature a conservative Blue Dog type against a progressive.

Think back to 2006. Not only did no member of the Democratic leadership even think about stripping Joe Lieberman of his seniority when he lost his primary, but several Senators openly supported his third-party run.

Today, important primaries are taking place in Michigan, Kansas and Missouri. FDL Elections will be live blogging the results as they come in this evening.

Bill Halter appeared on the morning panel, and I got to steal a few minutes with him. I asked him about the difficulty running against candidates who “progressive-wash” themselves. Blanche Lincoln came out with this derivatives title that she “wrote” right before the primary, blunting Halter’s message of Lincoln as a Wall Street fighter. Halter said that the complexity of the specific issue made it even harder to counteract the message – it was hard to wrap Arkansans heads around the fact that Lincoln left a big loophole in her Section 716 of the bill, for example, or that she didn’t filibuster the bill when Maria Cantwell was doing so precisely because her derivatives title became unenforceable. This is something that progressives need to figure out, because incumbents have done this over and over again to inoculate themselves from criticism from the left.

Arkansas was a loss, but the effort was worth it for the ripples it created and its potential as a model for the future. [I can talk about a lot of these issues in my 5:00 PM EST Sunday FDL book salon conversation on my Soul of a Citizen book]

Tonight is one of the biggest election nights this cycle with primaries in 11 states and one special election in Georgia. For a full list of poll closing times look here, and for a summary of what to watch for tonight, look here. You can find a live update of election results on Politico. You can find part one of FDL’s primary liveblog here, part two here and part three here.

Bill Halter has maintained a narrow lead over Blanche Lincoln in the R2K/Daily Kos poll, shockingly one of the only pollsters surveying the runoff election. I find it puzzling that almost nobody polled this race leading up to the primary election, and nobody’s wading into it now. It’s a tough race to poll, because there are no restrictions on primary voters, making it tough to model the electorate. However, to vote in the runoff you had to have either voted in the primary on the Democratic side or not voted, cutting out everyone who voted in the Republican primary and at least narrowing things down a bit. Markos says that Halter has kept his lead, but turnout will be the key.