The 2020 general election is now just fifteen days away. Throughout this election cycle, I’ve updated my thoughts on where the battle for the Senate stood and I have often started these updates with something along the lines of “while all the attention is on the presidency, Senate races still matter”. That isn’t necessarily true anymore. Sure the presidential race gets considerable coverage but with Joe Biden now holding a >85% chance of winning the presidency according to most statistical models, more and more attention has begun to be focused on the Senate, as the outcome of these races hold drastic implications on a Biden presidency. If the GOP can retain the Senate (they currently hold a 53-47 majority), a Biden presidency could be a logjam mess. But if Democrats take the Senate- and depending on how much they take it by- legislative and institutional changes could be sweeping. So it goes without saying that these races are incredibly important and so I’m here to serve up my takes on the current playing field of the race for the Senate here on October 19, 2020. Let’s dive right in:
Likely Democratic (1): CO*
Colorado: Cory Gardner
We begin with the most boring Senate race of 2020, where Republican Senator Cory Gardner has been a clear and decisive underdog basically since his campaign began. Democrats got former Governor John Hickenlooper to challenge Gardner after his Presidential campaign crashed and burned and we haven’t gotten a ton of much polling from this race, mainly because national Republicans have conceded Gardner’s defeat for awhile. There’s just no real buzz in this race, as Hickenlooper has led polls by about 10 points since he entered the race last summer and that hasn’t changed much. There’s been a fair bit of spending, yet Hickenlooper still leads by a considerable margin in nearly every poll. It makes sense really, since Hickenlooper is a popular, known figure and Gardner is a Republican (and one with no moderate credentials) in a blue-leaning state in a potential wave year. That’s a recipe for defeat and Gardner seems to be heading to that near-certain fate. Not much else to say.
Leaning Democratic (3): AZ*, ME*, MI
Arizona-Special: Martha McSally
This has long been the second-most boring Senate race, after Colorado. There was a point in the early spring when former astronaut Mark Kelly (D) surged past appointed incumbent Martha McSally in the polling average and he has really never looked back. Among recent polls, YouGov has Kelly up 11, Ipsos/Reuters has Kelly up 11, Morning Consult has him up 8, Data Orbital 5, High Ground 6, NYT/Siena College 11. Even the notoriously pro-Republican firm Trafalgar Group shows Kelly up 2 points at this stage and Republicans have more or less written McSally off by now. Though she ran a solid, albeit losing, race in 2018 against Kyrsten Sinema, her 2020 campaign has been a disaster and despite positioning herself as a Trump acolyte, she’s lagging far behind Trump in the polls, who still has a fighting chance of carrying Arizona. Part of this has been the obscene amounts of money that Mark Kelly has raised, drowning McSally in ads to the point that she asked her supporters to skip meals in order to give her more money (?!?!). That has not seemed to have happened much and at this point Kelly is just calmly orbiting his way into the Senate (pun intended). It would be a shock if McSally rallies to win at this point, and Arizona gives Democrats the second seat they need to flip.
Maine: Susan Collins
The first ratings change of this article is putting Susan Collins as an underdog in her quest to win re-election. Collins, the legendary 4-term incumbent and giant of Maine politics, is now on the ropes as we head into the final turn of the campaign and an important development has happened since last time: Republicans now admit it. I was always highly skeptical of how much strength Collins retained due to her sinking approval ratings in non-election polls. It seemed entering this summer that the credit she was given by other prognosticators was built on reputation, not data. Well, we’re now just 15 days away from election day and Collins still has not led a single non-partisan poll this entire calendar year. For whatever reason we haven’t gotten much polling of this race in awhile but the data in September was grisly for Collins, trailing by 7 in a Suffolk College poll, 8 in a Data For Progress poll, 5 in a NYT/Siena poll, and 12 in a Quinnipiac poll. More importantly, Collins has polled above 45% just once in a non-internal poll this calendar year, which is rather jarring for a Senator who received a whopping 68.5% of the vote last time around.
Sara Gideon, her Democratic opponent, continues to inch closer to 50% in the averages, holding around a 6.5% lead overall. It was clear last time I wrote about the Senate that Collins was in a ton of trouble, but Republican operatives insisted until mid-September that Collins was still in fine position in their data, data which they conveniently never released to the public. Then roughly around the time that Justice Ginsburg passed they began to concede that Collins was in deep s*** and after a new partisan SCOTUS fight reentered mainstream discourse, re-reminding Mainers of the one thing Collins wants them to forget about, the conventional wisdom quickly moved against her. Her campaign put out an internal with her and Gideon tied at 42% which in no way inspires any confidence in Collins’ campaign. It also doesn’t help that Biden has surged in the polls against Trump in Maine, now leading the 538 average of that state by a considerable 15 points. If Biden were up high single digits, Collins may have more of a chance, but that’s a lot of Biden voters she’d have to flip. Frankly, the goodwill doesn’t seem to be there anymore. I’d still like to see more *new* data from this race since it’s been awhile, but given what we had back in September, Collins may be going down with the ship this November.
Michigan: Gary Peters
Desperate to put a non-Alabama Democratically-held seat in play, national Republicans have turned their attention to Michigan, where Senator Gary Peters (D) continues to hold a solid and consistent, but non-gigantic, lead over challenger John James. It’s the only plausible race they can go after, even if James has led precisely three polls of this race dating back to the start of the calendar year. Peters won his first term by a healthy margin back in 2014, but that may have been more about his weak opponent than him. Since entering Congress Peters has mostly been a back-bench Senator, doing little to stand out. This has left his name ID low with Michigan voters and gave James and the GOP a small crack to try and exploit. James is maybe the only Republican running for Senate anywhere who has consistently fundraised well and that’s turned MI-SEN into a mighty pricey contest, with national Democratic and Republican groups pouring money into the race.
Yet the polling really isn’t all that interesting: Peters has held a lead of around 6% for awhile. If pollsters make little effort to push their undecideds (see: NYT/Siena), then the race is tight, but when undecideds are allocated, Peters surges past 50%. Like with Maine, James struggles to poll above the low-40s, rarely hitting above 45% in a poll not released by his own campaign or by the aforementioned pro-R Trafalgar Group. Joe Biden seems poised to carry Michigan by high single digits or maybe low double-digits at the moment, and I see little reason to believe that Michigan’s Senate race will vary from that right now. Even if Peters runs a couple points behind Biden, which is the most you could reasonably try to claim from the current averages, Biden’s strength in Michigan should get Peters across the finish line and probably by a bit. John James may not be a bad Senate candidate, he just has terrible instincts about what years to run in.
Tossup (4): GA, IA, MT, NC
Georgia: David Perdue
If you want my guess on which key Senate race will most clearly mirror the presidential race, my money would be on Georgia (second guess might be Michigan). Most of the other races have a clear pattern where either the incumbent is running ahead of the top line or vice versa, but in Georgia that doesn’t really seem to be the case. Senator David Perdue’s (R) vote shares consistently match Donald Trump’s in polls of the race, and while challenger Jon Ossoff (D) sometimes trails behind Biden’s, he seems to be beginning to converge with the Vice President in terms of vote share. And thus, just the way that Georgia is razor tight at the presidential level, it is very close at the Senate level. My polling average has Perdue up by just over a point and of the last nine polls of this race, four were led by Ossoff and five were led by Perdue. It’s really close right now and in just one of those polls was either candidate over 50% of the vote, which is important since if neither candidate gets >50%+1, this race will go to a runoff in January. I’m still skeptical that that will happen, because there’s just a Libertarian on the ballot besides those two, and even the hyper-tight 2018 gubernatorial race saw one candidate (Kemp) get over 50% of the vote eventually. Third parties often just don’t draw that many voters. It’s anyone’s guess how Georgia is going to fall, with Biden +1 in the presidential polling and again, I highly suspect the Senate race will follow suit. If it goes to a runoff, I’m not entirely sure who that would benefit, which you can read more about when I discuss the other Georgia race later. This as about as close to a coin flip as you can get right now.
Iowa: Joni Ernst
I entered this cycle as an Iowa skeptic for Democrats. Demographically, Iowa is not a good state for Team Blue, with a nearly all-white population and a very low rate of college education among its electorate. It had been strong for Democrats under Obama but then Clinton collapsed there in 2016 and while Democrats made some gains in 2018, they failed to capture the Governor’s office. Though Joe Biden’s strength with northern whites has pulled him into a dead heat at the Presidential level, it may be the result of Senator Joni Ernst’s (R) poor campaign that has her now as perhaps a slight underdog for re-election. Back in July I moved this race from Lean R → Tossup and I am honestly stunned at how poor of a position Ernst now finds herself in. She has not led a poll of this race since late August and is now lagging nearly four points behind her challenger, businesswoman Theresa Greenfield (D), in the polling average. Ernst has struggled to make much of a pitch to Iowa voters besides casting herself as Donald Trump’s #1 fan and claiming that Greenfield wants to abolish cows. It’s a cluttered campaign lacking clarity besides the undying allegiance to Trump and again is rather surprising for someone once seen as a Republican rising star.
Her 8% win back in 2014 made her a candidate to be Trump’s running mate in 2016, yet just six years later she’s fighting for her political life. This all came to a head in a debate last week where Ernst whiffed on a question about the break-even price for soybeans, which is something that Iowa voters find is important for their politicians to know. Meanwhile, to make matters worse for the incumbent, Ernst is being overwhelmed by Greenfield in the fundraising department. Greenfield raised an unheard of $28 M in Q3, while Ernst raised a pitiful (by comparison) $7.2 M. National GOP groups have rushed into save Ernst and the amount of spending on this race is becoming silly, especially for a small-market state like Iowa. The fact that Trump and Biden remain tight in Iowa could well save Ernst in the end, but it isn’t great for her that she generally runs a couple ticks behind Trump in most polls. If Trump carries the state by just 1%, it’s very feasible right now that Ernst could lose by a point or two. And certainly if Biden carries Iowa you might as well book Theresa Greenfield’s ticket to Washington given current polling. This race right now seems to be the clearest seat #51 for Democrats to get an outright majority and at this moment in time it’s tilting their way. Still, plenty of 3 point leads have not come to fruition and again, the demography and trends of Iowa give Ernst a bit of a fundamental edge, so don’t count her out yet. It’s still just surprising to see her this close to defeat.
Montana: Steve Daines
The All-Steve matchup in Montana between incumbent Senator Steve Daines (R) and incumbent Governor Steve Bullock (D) looks incredibly tight at the moment after a recent run of strong polls for the Governor. Bullock led the first spate of polls in the spring and early summer before Daines seemed to pull ahead as we entered the dog days. But as fall has arrived, things have become very tight. The NYT/Siena poll showed Daines +1, while D-aligned pollsters PPP and Data For Progress found a tie and Bullock +1, respectively. Daines’ best poll continues to be Emerson, who have a strong track record but recently switched their methodology to include a funky online panel survey called MTurk and we should be cautious of their results. Nevertheless, they showed an outliery Daines +9, meanwhile Bullock’s best poll came from the nonpartisan Montana State University-Bozeman last week, who had a strong 2018 showing, and they pegged the Governor up 2 points. Taken together, the last 5 polls of this race have it within two points and Montana isn’t really a state where polls have shown much systematic error, unlike similar demographic states. Democrats beat their polls in Montana in 2012 and 2018 and polls were right on more or less in 2014.
The central question of this race remains how far Bullock can run ahead of Biden. Lucky for him, Biden seems to be rather close to Trump relative to Clinton, around 7 points behind in most of the non-SurveyMonkey polls of the state. Perhaps more intriguing, Republican polls may have the presidential race even closer in Montana, if insider spin is to be believed. Bullock outrunning Biden by 7ish points seems quite possible, but Daines’ incumbency edge is also important to remember. A Senator losing re-election in a state their party carries by 5+ points at the Presidential level is extremely unusual and if Bullock wins, it’ll be a testament to his excellent political might. Montana is the type of odd political state for it to happen in, if it were to happen anywhere, and Bullock is a popular, well-funded Governor. The conventional wisdom still favors Daines here but given current polling, a Bullock win is well within the realm of possibility, hence the tossup rating.
North Carolina: Thom Tillis
Welcome to the most wild and crazy Senate race, where over $150 M is being spent to choose between a guy who is despised by the electorate and may have gotten COVID from Trump and a guy who couldn’t keep his pants zipped up while running in the US Senate’s most anticipated election. Hellooooo, North Carolina! Incumbent Senator Thom Tillis (R) has long seemed like some variation of an underdog, having trailed challenger Cal Cunningham (D) in polls consistently for a long time. On paper, there’s no reason why Tillis should be as unpopular as he is. Sure he is maybe more conservative than you’d expect from a swing state Senator, but Tammy Baldwin is very liberal in Wisconsin and she won re-election easily, for example. He has no major ethics scandals, yet he is quite unpopular and struggles to poll above 44% with any consistency in what is a pinkish state. The Democratic plan to beat Tillis has simply been to a) run a cardboard cutout of a generic Democrat against him and b) hammer Tillis on his efforts to block Medicaid expansion while he was the Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives. That cardboard cutout is Cal Cunningham, picked by Chuck Schumer because he’s mostly a blank canvas and is running a campaign that amounts to “I’m Not Thom Tillis and I Will Give You Healthcare”.
That campaign was going quite successfully until the first of October, when it was revealed that Cunningham had an affair that started with sexting and evolved into a sexual altercation with a woman who was not his wife. Turns out that running a boring, drab campaign apparently gave Cunningham too much time on his hands and those hands typed up some of the most cringy, virginal sexts you will ever see. Republicans began to feel that they had been given new life in the campaign after generally considering Tillis dead in the water. They’ve blasted Cunningham’s character in ads and while Cunningham’s unfavorable rating has risen, his poll numbers have not taken a hit. There is no evidence that the race has moved in either direction despite a deluge of new polling over the past two weeks and now >80% of voters say they’ve heard about the scandal. If it hasn’t stuck yet, I’m not quite sure what will make it stick. Cunningham still leads by an average of around 4-5 points, with himself in the mid-to-high 40s and Tillis still mired in the low 40s. I had considerable internal debate about whether to put this race in Lean D or not. Even though it seems that the scandal hasn’t docked Cunningham, I still am hesitant to move it yet; without the scandal it would probably be in Lean D by now. It also helps Cunningham’s position that Biden has moved clearly in front in North Carolina after the state seemed like a dead heat for awhile, generally leading by an average of 3 points in recent polls. Even if Cunningham is unable to continue running a few points ahead of Biden, he may well still be dragged to victory by the Vice President winning the Tar Heel State. For now, this state remains seat #50 and Democrats may have dodged a bullet with the scandal. The dynamics could still change but with so much spending saturating voters’ minds, I’m not sure how much the fundamentals can really move. I’ll leave it in tossup, but advantage Cunningham.
Leaning Republican (5): AK, GA-Special, KS, SC, TX
Alaska: Dan Sullivan
This race moves from Likely R → Lean R, as the polls have tightened, though incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan (R) retains the edge heading into the last sprint of the campaign. Dr. Al Gross, running as a Democratically-aligned independent, has raised gobs of cash in an incredibly cheap state as angry liberals have poured money into his campaign, much like every other campaign. This has allowed Gross to pull closer in what is an incredibly bizarre state, politically. For example Alaska Survey Research found Sullivan leading Gross by 13 over the summer, but in a more recent update shows it at just a 4 point race. The NYT/Siena College poll recently weighed in and found Sullivan leading 45% to 37%, with 10% going to third party candidate John Howe of the Alaska Independence Party (yes, that’s a thing), and 8% undecided. Sullivan matches the 45% Trump receives in the same poll, but it also shows Trump’s approval at an even 47/47 in the state, suggesting there’s room for Gross to siphon off voters who disapprove of the president and draw closer. Though Alaska loves itself some third parties, it’s a bit hard to imagine an AIP candidate drawing double digit support. The combination of 18% split between third party and undecided generally means higher uncertainty in this race. Gross’ own internals now show him up one point, but the independent surveys again point to a mid-single digit lead for Sullivan, albeit with uncertainty and okay fundamentals for Gross. Alaska is an odd state politically and if I’m looking for one state to get weird and pull an upset, it may well be the Last Frontier. Sullivan’s polling lead and incumbency makes this a Lean R race, but don’t mistake this for safely Republican either.
Georgia-Special: Kelly Loeffler
Things are a bit less messy in this special election since the last time I discussed the race. To refresh the readers’ memories, this race will take place with jungle primary rules, meaning that all candidates will run on one ballot and if no one gets 50%+1, it will head to a runoff in January and because there are multiple candidates from both parties, it’s highly likely to go to a runoff. Since July the Democrats have consolidated their vote behind DSCC-backed Christian preacher Raphael Warnock, as expected, who is now in the mid-30% range in the polling average of the jungle primary. On the flip side, Republicans continue to have a tight and bitter contest between appointed incumbent Kelly Loeffler and US Rep. Doug Collins. That seems to have become a battle of who can pledge their undying loyalty to Donald Trump most effectively. Loeffler’s turn in particular has been rather stunning, as she was appointed with the backing of McConnell to appeal to suburban women disgusted by Trump and 10 months later she’s tweeting out doctored videos of Donald Trump bodyslamming the coronavirus. Seriously. Loeffler realized that in order to make the runoff she has to get by the Trump-loving Collins, who McConnell really didn’t want to run, and so she’s gone all in on Trump.
The inevitable runoff between Warnock and either Collins or Loeffler looks to be quite competitive. Georgia is one of the most polarized states politically and so any race in Georgia will be close, much like the regular election mentioned in the tossup section. We don’t have much data about what a runoff could look like, but I’m actually rather bullish on Democratic odds in a runoff. Both Collins and this new version of Loeffler seem to be rather bad fits for the suburban Atlanta area, especially in comparison to say, David Perdue, and whether they can pivot to the general will be interesting. Of course, hyper-Trump Brian Kemp won the governorship just two years ago, though it’s worth noting that a runoff in early January adds in tons of new uncertainty. Conventional wisdom says that Democrats don’t do well in random runoffs because minority turnout drops off, but there’s not much evidence of that when black candidates are running. Secretary of State candidate John Barrow lost his runoff in 2018 in part due to depressed black turnout, but Barrow is a moderate white Democrat with few connections to the black electorate. Mike Espy, who ran in Mississippi in 2018, got huge black turnout for his runoff by comparison. And given that Warnock leads the a huge black church in the state, I don’t think black turnout should be much of a problem for the runoff. Whether Warnock can win over suburban voters is the bigger question. I’m leaving this race in Lean R until after the November election and then will re-evaluate when we get more data about the runoff.
Kansas: Open (Roberts)
Amazingly, this is the first open seat race I am writing about in this column. Nearly every GOP incumbent ran for re-election this year but one who didn’t was Pat Roberts. Given his advanced age and lackluster 2014 campaign, Republicans may not be unhappy with that decision. Unfortunately, their new candidate Roger Marshall is running his own lackluster campaign, which is matched up with the strong campaign of State Senator Barbara Bollier (D). Back in July my section on Kansas focused heavily on the GOP primary and whether Marshall would defeat problematic right-winger Kris Kobach, which he did. Marshall has struggled getting ready for the general election however, and his campaign has fizzled in comparison to Bollier. She is a former Republican who switched parties and represents the discontented moderate Republican vote, which is quite considerable in Kansas. Bollier raised an astonishing $13.5 M in Q3 and has been able to carpet-bomb the airwaves in Kansas, with Marshall struggling to keep up. Of course this is still Kansas, and there is no blueprint for what a Democratic federal statewide win looks like here. After all, Democrats haven’t won a Senate race in Kansas since 1932, the longest streak in the country.
Trump remains poised to win Kansas, but perhaps only by around 7 points, which means Bollier needs to win a smallish chunk of Republicans not unlike what Steve Bullock is facing in Montana. She also may get a little help, as the presence of a libertarian candidate who could feasibly snare a decent share of the electorate may mean that she only needs say, 47-48% of the vote to win. That’s still an uphill climb and polls are mixed. Marshall’s best poll came from Civiqs, pegging him up 50-43, while Bollier’s best poll came from VCreek/AMG, which has her up 45-42. Ironically, Civiqs is a D-aligned firm and VCreek/AMG is an R-aligned firm. Insiders continue to see a path for Bollier to victory, although again, it’s not a terribly large one. Kansas being such a red state keeps it in Lean R, but if an upset happens, Kansas is a place it could occur.
South Carolina: Lindsey Graham
This race has moved from Likely Republican → Lean Republican since the last update, even though it seems that Lindsey Graham has strengthened his position a bit in the last few weeks. The vulnerable Republican Senator has been in trouble for awhile thanks to a strong challenge from Jaime Harrison (D), who recently announced that he raised $57 M in Q3 (?!?!?!?!!), shattering the all-time fundraising record for a single quarter. Unlike the challenge to Mitch McConnell, listed in the Likely R section, this one is taking place in a state that’s slightly more winnable for Democrats. South Carolina is still very difficult to flip blue, but not Kentucky hard, thanks to the high floor Democrats start with due in part to SC’s black population. Donald Trump leads Joe Biden by mid-to-high single digits in South Carolina right now, and that starts Harrison within striking distance of Graham, but South Carolina is also notoriously inelastic and Democrats tend to run into a ceiling at around 46% of the vote. If you’d like to read more about the dynamics of this race, I published a piece over at Elections Daily back in early September that you can access here. The polling average pegs Graham up narrowly, though the last two non-partisan polls have been stronger for him. That said, two separate Quinnipiac polls in September showed Harrison and Graham tied at 48% and this is a state that like so many of them in this Lean R column, could flip on a tidal wave type of night for the Democrats.
Texas: John Cornyn
I’ve been shouting through a megaphone for months about Texas. Incumbent Senator John Cornyn (R) almost never receives a higher vote share than Trump in polls and since the state is within 2 points at the presidential level, Texas has always seemed like a ripe opportunity for Democrats in the Senate. But they have consistently failed to give nominee MJ Hegar the funds she needs to get her name out there, which is always her biggest obstacle in polls. Cornyn polls roughly even with Trump’s number, or perhaps even a bit behind it, meanwhile Hegar lags far behind Biden with high undecideds because many people just don’t know much about her. Yet when polling firms make strong efforts to push undecideds, the gap narrows to just a couple points, roughly in line with Trump’s narrow lead over Biden in the Lone Star State. Hegar has finally started to raise more money but it may be too little, too late, as many voters are already voting. Still, despite the 7 point polling lead for Cornyn, I could very easily see this race being a 2014 Virginia Senate race redux. That race saw Mark Warner hold a commanding polling average lead but with high undecideds entering Election Day. The GOP had a strong night and the undecideds broke sharply against Warner and he barely hung on by 0.81%. If Democrats have a good night and Biden carries Texas (very plausible), I could see that kind of Senate result being very possible here, too. Senate races and Presidential races have grown to be increasingly correlated and Texas is the kind of state where that works in Dems’ favor, unlike many of the other seats in the Lean R column. It’s been my sleeper race for awhile and I see no reason for that to be any different here in my final update.
Likely Republican (2): AL*, KY
Alabama: Doug Jones
The only seat that Democrats are favored to lose remains down in Alabama, where Senator Doug Jones (D) has been likely to lose his seat since the moment he won it in the stunning 2017 special election. Jones won that race, on a random Tuesday in December, against a man widely accused of pedophilia, by just 1%. It took all the forces of the world conspiring to produce a Democratic Senator from Alabama in the 21st century. Presidential turnout alone may have won that race for Roy Moore, so really all Republicans have to do is put up a not-sex offender and they should win this seat easily. Their candidate is Tommy Tuberville, a former mediocre college football coach, who yes, is not a sex offender. I’m not even sure he’s that great of a candidate but Alabama is one of America’s five or so reddest states and he holds a comfortable double-digit lead over Doug Jones (though Jones’ internals somehow show the Democrat up). Jones’ voting record reflects a man who knows he will be out of the Senate in January 2021, which is why he very well could be in the Biden administration by then (perhaps as Attorney General).
Kentucky: Mitch McConnell
The same thing that happened in 2014 is more or less happening in 2020: Democrats see Mitch McConnell’s incredibly low approval ratings, they field a candidate who raises giant sums of cash and blasts Mitch on the airwaves, and then Mitch wins by 15+ points because it’s Kentucky. That’s the case here. Democrat Amy McGrath has reeled in ridiculous money from national liberal donors but has little base inside Kentucky, barely fending off a primary challenge from Charles Booker. She can excoriate McConnell on TV, and the Senate Majority Leader is genuinely disliked in Kentucky. It’s just that Kentucky, like Alabama, is ruby red at the federal level. Kentucky voters may hate McConnell, but that doesn’t mean they’d prefer a Democrat over him, and that’s basically the predicament McGrath is in. I’ve long kept this race at Likely R because of McConnell’s approval ratings, but it has very little chance of flipping this November.
The bottom line
The story of 2020 is that every time I have written about the Senate, the bottom line projection has improved for Democrats compared to the previous installment. In January I wrote that the Senate tilted to the Republicans. In early May I wrote that the Senate was a 50-50 proposition. In July I wrote that the Senate was tilting to the Democrats. And now I am writing that Democrats are clearly favored to regain Senate control this November. The best analogy to the Republican Senate position at the moment is a ship with a lot of holes, leaking in many different places. Almost none of them, it’s important to add, are trending in the right direction either. Oh and across the board, Democratic fundraising is blowing the GOP out of the water, forcing vulnerable Republican incumbents to beg for cash (remember, skip dinner tonight to save Martha McSally).
The Republicans hold a 53-47 majority at this time, and with Republicans likely to gain Alabama, that means Democrats need to flip four seats for control, provided that Vice President Kamala Harris is there to break the tie. Right now Democrats hold at least 4.5+ point leads in four seats, CO, AZ, ME, and NC. That alone would give them control. Then there’s Iowa, where Democrats hold around a 3 point lead, followed by Georgia and then Montana, two states where polls seem to show a clear coin flip. The existence of the burgeoning Lean R column should be especially worrying to the Republicans. Having to defend all the seats in the tossup column is a lot of work, let alone the holes that are beginning to spring open in places like Alaska, Kansas, and South Carolina, not to mention the headache that the Georgia runoff will pose in January.
The modal outcome then seems to be roughly 51 or maybe 52 Senate seats for the Democrats at the moment. That would mean winning the “core four”, probably Iowa, and then maybe snaring one of the two coin flip tossup states. That seems like a mean expectation right now. As a result, there’s about the same chance that Democrats get to 53+ seats as it is that Republicans hold the Senate. While we focus a lot on the latter scenario, the former is only just now starting to get attention. Just a small polling miss in the Democratic favor and suddenly they win all the states they’re favored to, sweep the coin flip tossups, and boom you’re at 53 seats. And on a good night, they may very well pick off one of Alaska, Kansas, or South Carolina and then 54 seats is in the equation. Just as a big polling miss in favor of the GOP could be a nightmare for Democrats, a big polling miss in favor of the Democrats could be the type of avalanche that puts the chamber out of reach for the GOP for 4 years at least.
So, as we head into the final stretch, Democrats are the clear favorites in the Senate. The FiveThirtyEight model has the odds at 74%, the Economist has it at 76%, and JHKForecasts has it at 70.7%. I concur with those numbers. If Democrats don’t take control, that will be a huge story. But if they do take control, the number of seats they get will be equally important for the trajectory of both policy, but also the chamber’s control for the next four years.