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• State Sen. Joni Ernst overwhelmed her rivals in Iowa, easily surpassing the 35 percent total needed to win the nomination outright. She will take on Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley this fall for a Senate seat long in Democratic hands.
• In South Dakota, former Gov. Mike Rounds won the Republican nomination and quickly became a favorite to win a seat held by retiring Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson. Rick Weiland is the Democratic candidate in the heavily Republican state.
• And in Montana, appointed Democratic Sen. John Walsh and Republican Rep. Steve Daines won nominations en route to a fall campaign that the GOP is expected to target as an opportunity to gain a seat.
• Mississippi officials said the vote tally in their state did not include provisional ballots, at least some of them cast as a result of the state's new voter ID law. Those voters have five days to furnish proof of residence. An official canvass could take longer, until June 13.
• The contest was a race between a pillar of the GOP establishment who has helped funnel millions of dollars to his state and a younger state lawmaker who drew backing from tea party groups and former Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. The incumbent stressed his seniority and proven ability to help Mississippi, while his challenger called for term limits and a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.
• The campaign took a turn toward the sensational when four men, all McDaniel supporters, were arrested and charged with surreptitiously taking photographs of Cochran's 72-year-old wife, who suffers from dementia and has long lived in a nursing home.
• The race was arguably the year's last good chance for the tea party wing of the GOP to topple an establishment favorite in a Senate primary, following losses in Texas, North Carolina, Georgia and Kentucky.
• The stakes in the overall struggle for control of the Senate loomed larger in Iowa, where Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin's retirement created an open seat that Democrat Braley, a fourth-term lawmaker, seeks to fill -- as does Ernst.
• She fashioned her rise in the race on memorable television commercials.
• "I grew up on an Iowa farm castrating hogs, so when I get to Washington, I'll know how to cut pork," she said in one of them, concluding with a smile, "Let's make 'em squeal." She was able to transcend many of the intra-party divisions that flared in other races, gathering business groups, abortion foes, the Senate Conservatives Fund and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- groups not always on the same side in a season of struggle for the GOP.
• Republicans eyed another fall pickup opportunity in South Dakota, where Democratic Sen. Tim Johnson is retiring and Rounds easily eclipsed his rivals for the

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