Ben Thorpe

A majority of incumbent Indiana senators lost their primary elections after months of political threats and millions of dollars pitted against them.

Incumbents argued their constituents didn't want redistricting during the vote last year.

But now most of them have been voted out.

Laura Merrifield-Wilson is a professor of political science at the University of Indianapolis.

She says in U.S.

politics, incumbents usually win.

Wilson says the night was a win for Trump and could mean Indiana revisits redistricting next year.

For NPR News, I'm Ben Thorpe in Indianapolis.

Good morning.

Yeah, it was very suspenseful.

There were protesters against redistricting in the Capitol, and you could kind of hear them as senators debated for over three hours.

The outcome, I think, was really unknown.

And in the end, the redistricting bill failed by a vote of only 19 in favor and 31 opposed.

It's important to mention that the Indiana Senate is heavily Republican, so of those 31 opposed, 21 were Republicans.

Here's one of them.

This is State Senator Spencer Deary, who said that redistricting just to get political gain went against his conservative values.

He said he'd fight with, quote, his last breath to prevent the federal government from bullying a state.

Others just said their constituents did not want this.

Yeah, so it started months ago.

Indiana lawmakers were brought to the White House.