2012 United States Senate election in Indiana
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The 2012 United States Senate election in Indiana took place on November 6, 2012, concurrently with the U.S. presidential election as well as other elections to the United States Senate and House of Representatives and various state and local elections.
| |||||||||||||||||||||
Turnout | 58.5%[1] | ||||||||||||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| |||||||||||||||||||||
Donnelly: 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% Mourdock: 40–50% 50–60% 60–70% | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
Incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Richard Lugar ran for reelection to a seventh term, but was defeated in the primary by Tea Party-backed Richard Mourdock. U.S. Representative Joe Donnelly, a Democrat from Indiana's 2nd congressional district, was unopposed in his party's primary, and then defeated both Mourdock and Libertarian Andrew Horning in the general election.
As of 2024, this is the last time Democrats won any statewide election in Indiana, and the most recent Senate election in which an elected incumbent was defeated in the primary.[lower-alpha 1][2] This election is also the most recent time a party would flip a Senate seat in a presidential election year without carrying the state in the concurrent presidential election.[lower-alpha 2] In addition, with Republicans flipping Indiana's other Senate seat two years earlier, this election is the last time a party would flip a Senate seat in a state whose other seat was flipped by the opposition party in the previous election cycle.