Far from being a bellwether for the contentious and momentous November general election, experts say national politics has had a cooling effect locally on this year's primary elections, scheduled for Aug. 13.

Quinnipiac University political science professor Scott McLean said the rush to extremes in the national political landscape has made it more difficult for Republican challengers to get a foothold in Connecticut.

So, while there are primary elections now being held for U.S. Senate and House seats, it may not matter who wins.

"Republicans are on the verge of irrelevance in the state, and it's not because they don't have some good candidates, and not because of the awesome power of the Democrats," McLean said. "It's that their party has been hobbled by Donald Trump, and by a primary system in which the more extreme candidate has the advantage when they have such a small and insulated primary voter base."

"The only place that they are still relevant is in the state legislature, maybe taking some more Senate seats," he said.

Beacon Falls First Selectman Gerry Smith is up against Manchester resident Matthew Corey in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, the winner of which will face Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., in the fall.

"I don't know who's going to win that primary, but Chris Murphy is going to win, probably, his Senate seat again," said Gary Rose, political science professor at Sacred Heart University.

In the primary for the 4th Congressional District, voters will decide if Michael Goldstein, a Greenwich opthamologist, or Fairfield resident Bob MacGuffie will face Democratic incumbent U.S. Rep. Jim Himes.

"Himes has a very, very strong chance of reclaiming that seat," Rose said. "In fact, it's rated as the strongest Democratic district in the state right now. I don't make definitive predictions, but it's pretty well understood that Himes will probably win his seat back, and that Murphy will be reelected."

These local primaries, he said, "will have no implication at all for what's going on in the presidential race."

But that's not how Ben Proto sees it. The state Republican party chairman said the primary is about "the conversation that needs to be had about what Chris Murphy and Jim Himes are doing, or, more importantly, not doing, to help the people of Connecticut."

"It's about who's going to take a message to the people of Connecticut and to the people of the 4th district, and hold Chris Murphy and Jim Himes' feet to the fire for their failures over the last number of years that they've been in office," Proto said.

Even so, Proto acknowledged that "turnout in primaries on either side tend not to be tremendously high."

"At the end of the day, I don't think the primaries so much are going to dictate or be a bellwether as to a November election," he said.

At the state government level, there are a few contentious races. In Bridgeport, Ernie Newton, previously a state representative but convicted of corruption in 2005, is attempting to unseat 23rd Senate District State Rep. Herron Gaston.

Also in Bridgeport and parts of Trumbull, former Mayor Bill Finch is one of four candidates for the 22nd Senate District, the seat from which Sen. Marilyn Moore is retiring.

That is one of few open seats up for grabs this year.

"I think 23 of our 24 senate incumbents are running for reelection, which is an unusual number," said state Senate President Pro Temp Martin Looney, D-New Haven. "There's usually more voluntary turnover than that with retirements. But so we think that we will basically have almost the identical compliment of people coming back with, we hope, some additions."

McLean asked rhetorically: "Why are Connecticut primaries so uneventful and boring?"

"I think that's partly by design," he said. "I think our elected officials want maximum amount of time to delay it. They flirted for a while with trying to have primaries in line with the presidential primary, and have a little more excitement, and they just didn't want to do that. They wanted to separate it from the presidential primaries. I think it has to do with fundraising, too. But, the result is we end up having state primaries in the doldrums of summer, when everyone's getting their last vacation in or thinking about other things, school, starting sports and so on, and so they don't become high participation processes at all."