May is an important month for Donald Trump.

Every Tuesday is a Republican primary that could bring the former American president one step closer to making a political comeback.

When they go to the polls, the voters are not only deciding on the candidates who have a chance of moving into Congress in the midterm elections in November.

They also show how much power Trump has in the Grand Old Party, two years after his defeat in the presidential election.

Will the candidates he advocated win?

Sofia Dreisbach

North American political correspondent based in Washington.

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Trump should be extremely satisfied with the outcome of the first test run in May, the Republican primary in Ohio on Tuesday.

His nominee-of-choice prevailed late tonight by a margin: JD Vance will face Democratic primary winner Tim Ryan in November and could succeed Senator Rob Portman, who is retiring from politics.

"Thank you, Ohio," Vance wrote in capital letters on Twitter the evening after the election results were announced.

Three minutes later, he added a second thank you - not to his well-known supporter Trump, but to "Patrick on our team who has kept us safe and entertained over the past year."

From fierce critic to follower

Trump had taken a risk with the short-term support of Vance.

The 37-year-old author and investor was trailing in the polls before Trump made him his man on April 15.

For his competitors, he offered a particularly easy target in the election campaign.

Not only because he was the most politically inexperienced - above all because a few years ago Vance was a fierce critic of Trump.

In the fall of 2016, for example, he tweeted that Trump "scares people I care about," such as migrants and Muslims.

He condemns that.

"God expects better things from us."

Vance's purification was all the more effective for that.

Last summer, as he entered the Senate race, he apologized for his comments and sided with Trump.

During the campaign, the author of Hillbilly Elegy (a bestseller about growing up in the white precariat of Ohio and Kentucky), who once said of Trump that he was leading the white working class "to a very dark place," became a staunch supporter of the complained about the "fake news" of the media.

Vance, an Iraqi veteran and Yale law graduate, spoke of "scumbags" in the media and "idiots" in Washington.

He vowed to continue "Trump's fight to secure our borders, protect the unborn, get rid of corrupt politicians and stop Biden."

Trump hit back "and I will do the same".

Attempts from among his challengers to blacken him with expensive campaigns because of his criticism of Trump have come to nothing.

Asked about the earlier comments, Trump said after his decision that Vance "may not have said great things about me in the past," but now he's undoubtedly on board.

If it came down to whether someone had ever said something bad about him, he couldn't support anyone, Trump said in the "New York Times".

He sees Vance as a candidate who could actually beat the Democrats in November.

Ohio, formerly a classic swing state, has been Republican-dominated in recent years.

Trump had won here twice, the last time in November 2020 by far.

An incident at a rally in Nebraska showed that Trump's numerous support for the primaries is less about the candidates and more about his own political agenda.

Then the former president confused his candidate from Ohio with one of the challengers.

"We support...JP right?" Trump said.

"JD Mandel.

And he's doing great."

Can the success be repeated in other primaries?

With the result in Ohio, Trump has achieved his first political victory in the primaries for the midterms, which will last until late summer.

His stakes were high, but the result was clear: Trump's power with the Republicans seems unbroken.

The coming weeks and months will show how much this applies to the whole country.

In Ohio, meanwhile, even without a win for Vance, the primary could hardly have been a real crash landing.

Hoping that might be the decisive step, six of the seven Republican candidates had campaigned increasingly aggressively for Trump's approval until Trump decided at the last moment in favor of the refined Vance.

So the former president might not have been a kingmaker, but he could have had great influence either way.

Even if Vance did not explicitly thank him publicly after the election: As a confidant reported, Trump is said to have congratulated his candidate on the phone on Tuesday evening.