Dunno how it looks up close, but it sounds from here like a lot of people who aren’t usually registered Republicans did whatever they had to do under RI law to vote in the GOP primary and save Chafee’s lukewarm ass. (For now. :))
I gather Laffey’s people were expecting a high-turnout primary of 50-55K voters, and were expecting to win that. Laffey got >29K votes, so they would have. But turnout was >63K - oops.
One is news and the other one isn’t.
The Democratic Party is up for grabs; the confrontation between Lamont and Lieberman and the subsequent elections might foretell which way the party goes for the next generation.
But a moderate Republican being swept aside by a Conservative? Let’s face facts, that train left the station about fifteen years ago. It doesn’t matter whether Chaffee is re-elected or replaced; he’s a remnant of an ideological group that has long since lost control of the Republican party.