Daily Kos Elections is pleased to announce our first set of Senate race ratings for the 2018 election cycle. Republicans currently hold the Senate by a 51-49 margin, meaning Democrats would need to pick up two seats to gain control of the chamber. Thanks to their strong performance the last two times this Senate class was up for election (2012 and 2006), Democrats are defending 26 seats, including two seats held by independents who caucus with the party. Republicans, by contrast, are defending just nine seats. (These figures include two special elections created by vacancies, one in Minnesota and the other in Mississippi.)
Our full chart rating the competitiveness of each contest is below (with Democratic seats in blue and Republican seats in red), along with a description of our ratings categories and an explanation of why we've rated each race the way we have. These ratings are also visualized in the map at the top of this post.
These ratings represent our attempt to forecast the outcomes of this November’s elections, using the best information we have available. As circumstances warrant, we’ll issue changes in these ratings from time to time. To keep up with any changes, please subscribe to our free newsletter, the Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest, which we send out each weekday. And for a comprehensive overview of how our ratings work, please check out our detailed methodology statement.
In brief, here’s how we define each of our ratings categories:
Tossup: Both (or all) parties have a strong, though not necessarily perfectly equal, chance of winning.
Lean Democrat or Lean Republican: One party has an identifiable advantage, but an upset victory is possible for the other party.
Likely Democrat or Likely Republican: One party has a strong advantage and is likely to win, though the race has the potential to become more competitive and an upset cannot be ruled out.
Safe Democrat or Safe Republican: Barring unforeseeable developments, one party is certain to win.
Below are brief explanations of our initial ratings, grouped by category of competitiveness and ranging from most competitive to least competitive. Note, however, that even within each category, not all races are equally competitive: One race in the Lean Republican grouping, for instance, might be on the border of being a Tossup, while another could be closer to Likely Republican.
Tossup
● AZ-Sen – OPEN (R): Donald Trump has buoyed Arizona Democrats twice over. His 3-point win in 2016 was the worst by a Republican presidential candidates in two decades, and his public feud with Jeff Flake left the senator so damaged with GOP primary voters that he was forced to retire. That created an open seat in a state Democrats hope will keep trending away from Republicans, and they think they can capitalize with Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, a strong fundraiser and one of Team Blue’s best possible recruits.
Republicans, on the other hand, have a messy and potentially dangerous primary between the establishment choice, Rep. Martha McSally, and two problematic candidates: disgraced former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and loony-toons former state Sen. Kelli Ward. If the GOP is lucky, Ward and Arpaio will split the base and McSally will emerge as their nominee. But even if she does, they’ll have a massive fight on their hands to keep this seat.
● FL-Sen – Bill Nelson (D): Nelson, a former astronaut, is the only Florida Democrat who’s been successful statewide in the last decade, but now he’s facing his toughest re-election campaign against term-limited GOP Gov. Rick Scott. Scott is worth $150 million and has already pumped eight figures into attack ads. No matter how much help Nelson gets, he’ll have to hope he can endure the onslaught and find a way to damage Scott. As befits the king of all swing states, exactly half of the polls this year have shown Scott ahead, and the other half have found Nelson in front.
● IN-Sen – Joe Donnelly (D): Donnelly lucked out enormously by winding up with a truly terrible Republican opponent in 2012 (Richard Mourdock, who said shortly before Election Day that pregnancies resulting from rape were a “gift from God”). This time, he won’t be so fortunate, as businessman Mike Braun is a more adroit campaigner, and he also has personal wealth to draw on if need be. Indiana also moved sharply to the right in 2016, helping to make Donnelly one of the most endangered Democratic incumbents in the land.
But there’s one thing we haven’t seen yet: a single Republican poll. That’s something we’d expect to surface if Donnelly’s situation were as dire as the GOP acts it is, but there are no numbers to found. And while Donnelly will of course be subject to all the usual Republican attacks on red-state Democrats, Braun himself is potentially vulnerable thanks to some black marks in his business career. While this race could slip out of reach, at this juncture, Donnelly’s chances cannot be written off.
● MO-Sen – Claire McCaskill (D): McCaskill is another Democratic senator who looked extremely at-risk heading into the 2018 election cycle, especially since Republicans were sure they found the right guy in state Attorney General Josh Hawley. But while Hawley doesn’t face any serious primary opposition, he’s had his share of stumbles on the campaign trail, and anonymous Republicans have regularly sniped about his less-than-stellar fundraising in the press.
And unlike in Indiana, we have seen a fair bit of polling here, and it doesn’t show that McCaskill is doomed. To the contrary: In April, when Hawley’s campaign released its own internal poll, it showed him up just a single point. That’s not a sign of strength, especially in a state this red. Hawley did catch a break recently when Gov. Eric Greitens resigned amidst a series of scandals, but Democrats may still be able to bludgeon him with the disgraced former governor. And McCaskill is a wily operator who famously found a very unorthodox way to win re-election in 2012 and is unafraid of combat.
● MT-Sen – Jon Tester (D): While Montana’s a tough state for any Democrat, Tester’s carved out an independent brand for himself during his two terms in office, and he might even have a small edge on state Auditor Matt Rosendale, the newly minted Republican nominee. Rosendale has tried to portray himself as something of a mirror-image version of the incumbent: a rancher to Tester’s farmer, they even sport the same flat-top haircut. But while Tester has actually worked the land continuously, even as a senator, Rosendale’s ranching bona fides look thin, and his ties to his home state of Maryland keep calling into question his Montana roots.
The problem is we have no hard data to work with whatsoever—there hasn’t been a single public poll of this race. Once we do finally get some, we’ll reassess, but for now, Montana’s lean and the general uncertainty here compel us to start this one off as a Tossup.
● ND-Sen – Heidi Heitkamp (D): Six years ago, Heitkamp pulled off a miraculous 1-point victory to keep this seat blue, but not only will she need to do everything flawlessly win once again, she’ll need a number of things to go right that she doesn’t have control over. Fortunately, two already have. For one, there’s the favorable political environment for Democrats, which should help just about everyone on the blue team.
But for Heitkamp in particular, she also drew a flawed opponent in Rep. Kevin Cramer, whom GOP leaders initially spurned—and who even declined to run at one point—but who wound up being the default choice after every better option passed on the race. And it so happens that Cramer’s biggest weakness amplifies Heitkamp’s greatest strength: He simply can’t stop himself from saying hostile things about women, which only serves to emphasize Heitkamp’s “North Dakota Nice,” a key trait that helped her prevail in 2012. The state’s lean might ultimately prove too much, but Republicans have managed to surface just one decent poll, and that was back in February.
● NV-Sen – Dean Heller (R): Heller is easily the most vulnerable Republican senator up for re-election, and he seems to have done an excellent job pissing off everyone in sight over the last couple of years. Heller started off the cycle trying to portray himself as a moderate, saying he opposed his party’s efforts to repeal Obamacare, but later, faced with a primary challenge on his right flank, he flip-flopped and got on board with the GOP’s last-gasp repeal attempt that collapsed last year. The whole debacle left him looking good to no one.
In the meantime, he drew a strong Democratic challenger in Rep. Jacky Rosen. Rosen is only a freshman, but her successful 2016 campaign was a tough one, and she carried a district that’s actually a bit to the right of the state as a whole. We wouldn’t be surprised if we found ourselves moving this race into the Lean Democratic column before Election Day.
● WV-Sen – Joe Manchin (D): After Trump won West Virginia by 40 points, Manchin has made sure to align himself with the White House as closely as he can, and Trump’s even done him some favors, like floating his name for a possible cabinet post. But Manchin still has a “D” after his name, and he’s cast some big votes like one, particularly his vote against the GOP’s tax bill. That gives Republicans more than enough fodder to portray Manchin as an opponent of Trump’s agenda and out-of-step with his state.
Despite everything, though, Manchin’s unique crossover appeal hasn’t yet deserted him. A pair of Democrat polls taken last month put him at or above 50 percent against his GOP opponent, state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, and even a Republican poll only managed to find Morrisey with a 2-point lead. And Morrisey has some big vulnerabilities of his own: He spent years as a D.C. lobbyist for pharmaceutical companies yet now seeks to represent a state ravaged by the opioid epidemic.
But while things look good for the incumbent at the moment, West Virginia is so extraordinarily red, and the GOP has yet to lay down the scorching fire they’re sure to send Manchin’s way. As such, we’re inclined to believe the polls will tighten considerably by Election Day, though there’s still plenty of reason to think Manchin can keep his improbable political career afloat.
Lean Democratic
● OH-Sen – Sherrod Brown (D): Ohio took a nasty turn to the right in 2016, but the improved political environment for Democrats, combined with Brown’s populist appeal and skills as a campaigner (he actually ran ahead of Barack Obama in 2012), give him the edge. Brown will face wealthy GOP Rep. Jim Renacci, whose money could help make this race more competitive, but so far, the incumbent has led in all polls, including those put out by Republicans.
● WI-Sen – Tammy Baldwin (D): Despite the apparent proliferation of far better targets, outside Republican groups have spent far more money attacking Baldwin than any other Democratic senator. It’s not clear whether the barrage has had the desired effect, though: The lone poll of this race (a Democratic survey) showed Baldwin comfortably ahead, and Republicans have never countered with contradictory data.
Two GOP candidates, state Sen. Leah Vukmir and businessman Kevin Nicholson, are still duking it out for the right to take on Baldwin, a battle that won’t be resolved until August. Neither are A-list options, though each has received extensive support from their own personal billionaire megadonor: Richard Uihlein for Nicholson and Diane Hendricks for Vukmir. If that cash flood continues past the primary, Baldwin will be kept busy, but it doesn’t appear as though D.C. Republicans view this as a top-tier race.
Likely Democratic
● MI-Sen – Debbie Stabenow (D): Michigan narrowly flipped to Trump last cycle, but Stabenow is the favorite to win a fourth term. However, two Republicans are running who at least have the resources to put up a fight: Venture capitalist Sandy Pensler has self-funded $5 million through the end of March, while businessman and Army veteran John James raised a credible $1 million during the first quarter of 2018. It’s likely this race will come off the board at some point, but Michigan’s rightward shift in 2016 has us just a bit cautious—for now.
● MN-Sen-B – Tina Smith (D): Smith was elevated to her post earlier this year by Gov. Mark Dayton when Al Franken resigned, and the Democratic Party immediately consolidated around her. She faces a primary challenge from Richard Painter, a former White House ethics counsel for George W. Bush who’s emerged as a vocal Trump critic, but he’s unlikely to prove an obstacle for Smith.
She could, however, face a tougher time against Republican state Sen. Karin Housley, particularly given Minnesota’s sharp shift toward the GOP in the last presidential election. But incumbent senators who belong to the party that doesn’t control the White House rarely lose in midterms—something that should hearten every Democrat up for election this year—and even though Smith was appointed rather than elected, she doesn’t present a particularly appealing target for outside Republican groups.
● NJ-Sen – Bob Menendez (D): New Jersey loves to make us sweat. Though it hasn’t elected a Republican to the Senate since 1972, the Garden State manages to cough up flawed Democrats with enough regularity that it always feels like one day, one of them’s going to lose. Menendez, of course, went on trial last year on corruption charges, and while his case ended in a hung jury (after which prosecutors declined to re-try him), the entire ordeal damaged his standing with voters.
That was brightly visible in the results of the recent Democratic primary, which Menendez won by just a 62-38 margin over a penniless, unknown rival—the hallmark of a protest vote. In the general election, he’ll face wealthy former pharmaceutical executive Bob Hugin, who’s already self-funded $7.5 million and has reportedly said he’ll go as high as $20 million. Despite everything, Menendez still has healthy leads in the polls, and 2018 doesn’t seem like the right year for a GOP upset, but we’re gonna keep an eye on this one, just in case.
● PA-Sen – Bob Casey (D): While Pennsylvania voted Republican for president in 2016 for the first time in nearly three decades, the GOP isn’t particularly high on the chances of Rep. Lou Barletta beating Casey this fall. A long-time anti-immigration zealot, Barletta has tried to tie himself very closely to Trump, a strategy that comes two years too late. Anonymous Republican operatives have repeatedly sniped about Barletta’s poor fundraising in the press, and the NRSC is unlikely to pay much attention to this race.
Likely Republican
● MS-Sen-B – Cindy Hyde-Smith (R): GOP Sen. Thad Cochran’s resignation prompted a special election for his seat, and it will be conducted in an unusual manner: All candidates from all parties will run together on a single ballot in November, but no one will have party labels displayed next to their name. If no one wins a majority, the top two vote-getters will advance to runoff three weeks later.
Democrats are hoping that extremist state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who nearly beat Cochran in the 2014 Republican primary, can somehow slip past Hyde-Smith, who was appointed succeed Cochran earlier this year. That could set up a second-round face-off with Democrat Mike Espy, a former congressman and one-time secretary of agriculture under Bill Clinton. In that scenario, there’s a chance Espy could prevail, which is enough to keep this race at Likely Republican. However, Hyde-Smith has led in limited polling so far, and there’s almost no way she’d lose a runoff.
● TN-Sen – OPEN (R): Former Gov. Phil Bredesen is the only Democrat capable of winning a Senate seat in Tennessee, and though he’s 74 and left office in 2011, he must’ve seen sufficiently good private polling to convince him to run. But for all Bredesen’s strengths—his supporters like to note that he won every county in his 2006 re-election bid—Tennessee is incredibly hostile to Democrats and has moved further to the right in every presidential election since 1996.
The public polling has shown Bredesen ahead, but that’s because he has much greater name recognition than his likely GOP opponent, Rep. Marsha Blackburn. In a state as red as Tennessee, we don’t expect that advantage to last, and moving from the mid-40s (where most polls have found Bredesen) past the 50 percent mark is going to be exceptionally tough. If, closer to Election Day, Bredesen remains ahead, we’ll certainly revisit, but the trajectory of races like these usually plays out in favor of Republicans.
● TX-Sen – Ted Cruz (R): Dreams of turning the Lone Star State blue have gone nowhere for ages, but Rep. Beto O’Rourke looks like one of the strongest statewide candidates Texas Democrats have put forth in quite some time. He’s already raised a ton of money and even finished the most recent quarter with more cash in the bank than Cruz, who’s never faced a competitive general election and doesn’t have much experience connecting with voters outside of GOP primaries. Of course, this is still Texas, and Cruz will have all the resources he needs. But if a large enough wave gathers, it might just knock Cruz out to sea.
Safe Democratic
● CA-Sen – Dianne Feinstein (D): With California voters sending both Feinstein and Democratic state Sen. Kevin de Leon to the general election following June’s top-two primary, there’s literally no way Republicans can win this seat—not that they’d have had much better luck even if one of their candidates had in fact advanced. Feinstein’s 44-12 victory in the primary shows she’s the strong favorite in the fall, but it’s a Democratic win no matter what.
● CT-Sen – Chris Murphy (D): Murphy overcame heavy self-funding from a deep-pocketed Republican to win his first term by a comfortable margin in 2012, but he faces no such vigorous challenge this time. With Connecticut strongly favoring Democrats in federal races, he should easily prevail over whichever unheralded candidate the GOP puts forward.
● DE-Sen – Tom Carper (D): Carper hasn’t won by anything less than double digits in his three elections to the Senate, even when he ousted GOP Sen. Bill Roth to win his first term in 2000, and that’s not about to change this year. With Delaware turning dark blue during Carper’s time in office, he’s the odds-on favorite over the eventual Republican nominee.
● HI-Sen – Mazie Hirono (D): After cruising to a landslide over former GOP Gov. Linda Lingle to win her first term in 2012, Hirono only faces nominal opposition from several little-known Republicans seeking to challenge her this time. Given how staunchly Democratic the Aloha State is, another landslide is all but guaranteed.
● MA-Sen – Elizabeth Warren (D): Warren won a fiercely contested and expensive contest to oust GOP Sen. Scott Brown in 2012, but while they enjoy attacking her on the national stage, Republicans have shown no interest in making the progressive icon a target in 2018. Attorney John Kingston hasn’t been afraid to spend millions of his own money to secure the GOP nomination, but even if he prevails, his mountain of cash still won’t be enough in the ocean-blue Bay State.
● MD-Sen – Ben Cardin (D): Maryland hasn’t sent a Republican to the Senate ever since liberal GOP Sen. Charles Mathias won his final term back in 1980, and Cardin is in no danger of ending that streak in this heavily Democratic state.
● ME-Sen – Angus King (I/D): Maine took a sharp turn to the right in 2016 thanks to the defection of working-class white voters who’d voted for Obama but switched to Trump, and its Senate race could have been competitive without an incumbent seeking re-election. But King, an independent who caucuses with the Democrats, has long been broadly popular in a state that has often given unusual levels of support to third-party candidates. GOP state Sen. Eric Brakey has also struggled to raise enough money to mount a serious challenge. He’d need a credible Democratic candidate in the race to even be able to threaten King, but there isn’t one.
● MN-Sen-A – Amy Klobuchar (D): Minnesota lurched to the right in 2018, like much of the Midwest, but Klobuchar has always been broadly popular with swing voters in her campaigns for Senate. She faces a nominal challenge from GOP state Rep. Jim Newberger, but he hasn’t raised anywhere near enough money to run a viable race, even in such a swingy state.
● NM-Sen – Martin Heinrich (D): New Mexico leans toward Democrats, but not by such a huge margin that Republicans couldn’t win under the right circumstances. Nevertheless, Heinrich has made no obvious missteps during his first term, and the GOP has made no effort to seriously target him after he won a heavily contested race to earn his first term in 2012. Businessman Mark Rich is running for the Republicans, but he’d need a lot of unforeseeable changes to happen for this race to even become competitive.
● NY-Sen – Kirsten Gillibrand (D): New York is one of the bluest and most expensive states to campaign in, and Gillibrand is in no way vulnerable. Republicans have backed private equity executive and GOP fundraiser Chele Farley, who has promised to raise $10 million for her campaign, but even if she succeeds at that goal, she’ll have a hard time convincing voters to ditch Gillibrand in a state where Republicans haven’t won a Senate seat since 1992.
● RI-Sen – Sheldon Whitehouse (D): Republicans have had little hope of winning federal races in Rhode Island ever since Whitehouse knocked off then-GOP Sen. Lincoln Chafee in 2006. Team Red has no candidate who appears able to give Whitehouse a stiff challenge, leaving him nothing to worry about in this solidly blue state.
● VA-Sen – Tim Kaine (D): Republicans struggled to find an even potentially acceptable candidate to run here, and they ended up nominating Prince William County Supervisor Corey Stewart, an openly pro-Confederate extremist. While voters in some dark-red states might accept that kind of platform, Virginians soundly rejected Ed Gillespie’s thinly veiled racist appeals in last year’s gubernatorial election. Indeed, the NRSC has refused to endorse Stewart, and Republicans are even openly worried that he could lose so badly he damages the ticket in more winnable House seats.
● VT-Sen – Bernie Sanders (I/D): Vermont is one of the bluest states in the nation in federal elections, and the independent Sanders is still overwhelmingly popular there. (He’s said he’ll run for the Democratic Party’s nomination but won’t accept it.) With Republicans having no candidate who can even begin to run a credible race, Sanders will have no problem prevailing in November.
● WA-Sen – Maria Cantwell (D): Washington has become solidly blue in federal elections in recent decades, and Cantwell has had little trouble winning re-election ever since narrowly ousting GOP Sen. Slade Gorton in 2000. Her most prominent Republican opponent is former party chair Susan Hutchison, who may start off with a measure of name recognition as a former longtime Seattle TV news anchor, but there’s no sign that Cantwell is vulnerable.
Safe Republican
● MS-Sen-A – Roger Wicker (R): Wicker is the prohibitive favorite in a state that hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate since segregationist John Stennis won his final term in 1982, and any Democratic hopes of flipping Wicker’s seat vanished the instant that right-wing lightning-rod Chris McDaniel decided to run in the special election for Mississippi’s other Senate seat instead.
● NE-Sen – Deb Fischer (R): While limited available polling has shown Fischer’s popularity to be relatively modest, Nebraska’s solid-red hue makes her the commanding favorite. Democrats nominated Lincoln City Councilor Jane Raybould, who has struggled to raise enough money to run a competitive race in such a hostile state.
● UT-Sen – OPEN (R): Despite its unusually weak support for Trump in 2016, Utah has shown no signs of abandoning its status as one of the most Republican states in the nation. As the first Mormon presidential nominee of a major party, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney is the overwhelming favorite to prevail in his newly adopted state, though he first has to get past state Rep. Mike Kennedy in the GOP primary, and Salt Lake County Councilor Jenny Wilson gives Democrats a more credible candidate than they usually get in races like these.
● WY-Sen – John Barrasso (R): Wyoming is one of the reddest states in the country, and while presumptive Democratic nominee Gary Trauner almost captured its lone House seat in 2006, that came during a massive Democratic wave against a flawed incumbent in an era when voters were much more willing to split their tickets. Barrasso should have no trouble winning his second full term in November.