The US midterm elections in November continue to take shape after this week’s slew of run-off votes for nominations on both sides of the political divide. In Texas – a state that is increasingly purple and has been eyed as a target for flipping House seats – anti-Trump activist Laura Moser lost out to Lizzie Fletcher in the Democrats’ seventh-district vote. Many in the party think playing it safe is their best bet for scooping up disaffected Republican moderates. There was also a breakthrough in Georgia, where Stacey Abrams won the Democratic party’s gubernatorial nomination – the first black woman to win a major-party nomination for governor in any state. Republicans in Arkansas are also breathing a little more lightly after incumbent governor Asa Hutchinson saw off a challenge from the controversial former TV reporter Jan Morgan – whose outlandish rhetoric, she’d hoped, would tap into Trumpian sentiment at play in the state.