Editor’s note: The Purdue Exponent and The Indiana Citizen are working together on a join project to give in-depth coverage to the race for Indiana Senate District 23. This is the latest in the series.
By Olivia Mapes
Exponent editor-in-chief
May 7, 2026
GOP State Senator Spencer Deery and Trump-backed challenger Paula Copenhaver both announced their victories on Tuesday night in the race for state Senate Seat 23, but officials have still not called the election.
With a difference of only four votes — as of Thursday — a few provisional votes could be what makes or breaks the race for Copenhaver or Deery.
Mike Smith, a member of the Tippecanoe County election board, said Tippecanoe only had one or two relevant provisional ballots for the race. They are still waiting on military ballots which could take until May 15 to be counted because some are coming from overseas.
Fountain County will meet at 10 a.m. on Monday to go over its provisional votes, according to a notice from the county’s election board.
Deery appears to have won Tippecanoe County, home to Purdue University, while Copenhaver is leading in the other five counties comprising the district.
The current vote counts in each of the six counties are as follows, according to the Indiana Secretary of State website:
This is not the first time Deery and Copenhaver have matched up against each other. In the 2022 Republican primaries, Deery captured 30.8% of the vote in the four-way race while Copenhaver had 22.9%.
However, Deery’s vote total in Tippecanoe County in the 2022 primary reached 3,346, outperforming the recent result.
“It’s an extremely rare event to have something this close. The interesting thing is that it was this close,” said James McCann, the interim head of the Purdue political science department. “Normally, what you would expect is an incumbent running for reelection to get in handily unless there is some scandal.”
McCann said he believed Indiana’s open primary system helped Deery as people who might have normally voted Democrat were able to cross over and participate in the GOP primaries, especially in Tippecanoe where the incumbent is more well-known.
“The big contrast is not so much between the two candidates; the contrast is with all the spending in earlier cycles,” McCann said. “There was enormous nationwide investment in a rather small Indiana senate district.”
Copenhaver has challenged Deery in response to his stance on redistricting last year. Deery was one of 21 Republican state senators to vote against House Bill 1032, a piece of legislation that would have redrawn Indiana’s congressional district map to likely flip the state’s two Democratic-held U.S. House seats to favor Republicans.
The highly-volatile campaign between Deery and Copenhaver has seen a slew of attack ads and dark money.
“Money is a powerful weapon in campaigns, and we saw the result of that (Tuesday) night,” Deery said in an email. “Millions were spent by out-of-state groups to manufacture opposition around invented issues because they knew they could not win simply by attacking these senators for listening to their constituents on midcycle gerrymandering.”
An estimated $12 million was poured into campaigns to oust Deery and six other state Republican lawmakers, according to NBC News.
Deery has brought up concerns about the impact Washington, D.C. is trying to make on Indiana politics throughout his campaign.
“In my own race, I was vastly outspent, and even then, the final vote count at the end of the night was a victory,” Deery said. “Now, we must ensure that attorneys and outside influencers do not come to Indiana and attempt to manipulate the will of Hoosier voters to suit their own agendas. I will continue fighting to make sure our elections are fair and that voters’ voices are heard.”
Deery was one of seven state senators who drew President Donald Trump’s ire by voting against redistricting in December. While Deery’s race has not been called, five other incumbent senators lost their primaries and only state Sen. Greg Goode, R-Terre Haute, won his race.
The five GOP incumbents who lost their senate seats in the state legislature are: Daniel Dernulc of Highland, Linda Rogers of Granger, Travis Holdman of Markle, Jim Buck of Kokomo, and Greg Walker of Columbus.
“I think this underscores that Trump is the major player now in Republican party politics,” McCann said.
Copenhaver did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Whoever is announced the winner of the Republican side will face Democrat David Sanders, a professor at Purdue and a current West Lafayette city council member.
Sanders said he believed Deery and Copenhaver announcing victories was inappropriate, and when one person inevitably loses it could raise suspicion among voters that the election was stolen.
“I’m going to claim to win the Republican primary as well,” Sanders said. “I can demonstrate that that is actually true. The two Republican candidates have lost. They have lost their ability to represent their constituents. They have lost their integrity because they have been bought by dark money political action (committees).”
Sanders pointed at the $3 million used in attack ads to illustrate his point. He said many people were voting against Deery or Copenhaver rather than for either candidate.
“The bloodiest wars are always civil wars,” Sanders said. “This is more of a civil war in the Indiana Republicans than a Washington imposition on Indiana politics.”
The Purdue Exponent is the independent student media organization serving the Purdue University community. It is published by the Purdue Student Publishing Foundation, a non-profit educational organization. For questions about the story, contact the editor-in-chief, Olivia Mapes, at editor@purdueexponent.org.
The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. It is operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact the editor, Marilyn Odendahl, at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.
