For all the valid speculation that this year’s Republican primaries are poised to turn into a political disaster for Donald Trump that knocks him down a peg or two in the party, the former president is on track to score a rather consequential victory in Ohio.

Public polling and private prognosticators point to J.D. Vance winning the Republican nomination for Senate in the Buckeye State this coming Tuesday, when voters in this key Midwestern battleground head to the polls to pick their standard-bearers for the fall campaign. Vance, the venture capitalist and bestselling author who remade himself from bourgeois Trump critic to populist Trump cheerleader just in time to run for Senate, picked up the former president’s endorsement this month and immediately shot to the front of a crowded pack of Republican contenders.