Welcome back to My Senate Ratings! It’s been awhile since the last edition of this piece, all the way back in January as a matter of fact. Since then, there have been a number of changes and the overall complexion of the national picture has been altered too, as we’ve gotten more polls, new fundraising data, and the nation has been struck by a pandemic and an economic meltdown. With now just under 6 months until Election Day 2020, let’s review where everything stands and what to expect moving forward:
Safe D (9): DE, IL, MA, NH, NJ, NM, OR, RI, VA
The only change here from last time is that New Hampshire has been moved off the board. The combination of Trump’s poor approval ratings in the Granite State (-13% in the Civiqs tracker), incumbent Jeanne Shaheen’s popularity and fundraising strength ($11.3 M cash-on-hand), and the lack of a real viable Republican challenger mean that unless something changes with the polling, I am rating Shaheen as safe.
Likely D (1): MN
Minnesota: Tina Smith
Republicans’ biggest recruiting failure by far, Minnesota had the opportunity to be a competitive race but is drifting towards uncompetitiveness as incumbent Senator Tina Smith (D) seems headed to a full term. Republicans look likely to nominate Jason Lewis, a former US Rep. who was defeated from his swingy House seat in 2018 after just one term in the lower chamber. Lewis is a controversial former talk radio host who was beaten soundly two years ago in a seat that is to the right of the state as a whole and is now struggling to raise money for this race. Smith has nearly a 6x advantage in cash-on-hand over Lewis, and after winning comfortably in the special election for this seat in fall 2018, Tina Smith seems to be in a commanding position in Minnesota, a state Trump is unpopular in and seems favored to lose in the fall.
Lean D (3): AZ, CO, MI
Arizona: Martha McSally
I don’t want to write a lot about this race since I did so weeks ago in a longform piece that you can read here. The long story short is that Arizona is a state that President Trump is narrowly unpopular in, is trailing Joe Biden in the polls in, and is overall trending blue. That is bad news for appointed incumbent Martha McSally in this special election to replace John McCain. McSally is facing an uphill battle due to the rock-star status of former astronaut Mark Kelly, husband of former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. Kelly has been printing money in his basement and calling it fundraising, somehow raising $11 M in Q1 2020 (!!!!!!), to McSally’s $6.4 M and now has $19.7 M in the bank (!!!!!!!) to McSally’s $10.3 M. Kelly has opened up a sizable lead in the polls, leading an average I’ve compiled by 7 points, and matching or surpassing 50% in two of the last three polls of the race, which is a clear marker of who has a real lead. This race then moves from tossup (where it was in January) to Leaning Democratic and giving Democrats a second race where they are favored to gain a seat from the Republicans.
Colorado: Cory Gardner
This is probably the competitive race where things have changed the least since January. We have little new polling and the fundraising data only confirms our priors about the race, that former Governor and Presidential candidate John Hickenlooper (D) should be considered a clear favorite over incumbent Senator Cory Gardner (R) in this blue-leaning swing state. Colorado has been fertile turf for Democrats in recent years, something that Cory Gardner is apparently oblivious about as the first-termer has remained a hard line conservative vote in the Senate in lockstep with President Trump. This has hurt his re-election odds in a state where Trump is extremely unpopular, with a net approval of -21% in the Civiqs tracker. Hickenlooper lapped Gardner in fundraising in Q1, $4.1 M to $2.5 M, building to a fundamentals edge. Also, we recently received two polls of the state, neither of which seem terribly high quality, but for what it’s worth they show Hickenlooper up by 18 and 17 points (!!), meaning he now leads a polling average by well in the double digits. There’s not much else to say here, other than that Colorado is quite clearly the most obvious pickup opportunity for the Democrats on the 2020 map and that this race may be closer to Likely D than Lean D.
Michigan: Gary Peters
The only real Republican pickup opportunity besides the obvious in Alabama, Michigan pits incumbent Gary Peters (D) against challenger John James (R). Peters is a first-term Senator, having beaten an empty suit known as Terri Lynn Land in 2014 by 13 points despite the pro-GOP national environment in this purple state. Peters capitalized against a weak opponent in 2014 and in 2020 he draws James, who is a rather controversial candidate when it comes to candidate strength among election pundits. Conservative election watchers contend that James’ 6.5% loss to Debbie Stabenow in a race for the other Michigan Senate seat in 2018 was an impressive over-performance and James should be considered a strong challenger. More liberal election watchers argue that Stabenow’s huge initial lead in the polls resulted in her running a relaxed campaign that refused to attack James or counter the endless stream of anti-Stabenow attack ads, since the election was never in doubt. Regardless of which side you fall on, as a native Michigander who watches quite a bit of major network television in the fall (thanks, football), I did not see a single anti-James attack ad, as opposed to dozens of anti-Stabenow ones. That’s going to change in 2020, as both Peters and James are raising gobs of money, with the challenger narrowly outraising the incumbent ($4.6 M to $4.1 M), though the incumbent still has the edge in cash-on-hand ($8.8 M to $8.6 M). It’s going to be a pricey race given the limited map for Republican attack opportunities, and will likely come down to the presidential margins. Peters currently leads the polling average by 7 points but is nowhere close to 50% as a rather anonymous incumbent and so we turn to the presidential numbers, which show Joe Biden with a consistent, mid-to-high single digit lead in Michigan, a state that according to many prognosticators (including myself) leans Democratic. If Biden is carrying Michigan, it’s hard to imagine an incumbent Democratic Senator losing that state in this partisan era, and so long as Biden is favored in the Wolverine State, so is Peters.
Tossup (2): ME, NC
Maine: Susan Collins
Back in January, I rated the Maine Senate race as a tossup, at a time when some other prognosticators had it favoring the incumbent Republican, Susan Collins. I made the move despite any public polling of a Gideon-Collins head-to-head race simply because of Collins’ declining approval ratings in the state and the dismal approval in Maine of President Trump. Three months later, my decision seems to have been validated, as Collins appears to be in significant trouble and there is no way to consider this race anything other than a tossup right now. Back in January, Collins’ approval in the Morning Consult numbers had already sank to -10 (42% approve, 52% disapprove), and while we’re still waiting on updated data from MC, numbers from two other sources have corroborated Collins as not just unpopular, but very unpopular. The pollster Critical Insights, which has conducted a poll of Maine for the Bangor Daily News twice a year for the past few years, recently put out their spring 2020 data and it shows Collins with a dreadful 37% approve, 52% disapprove rating. For reference, she was at 42%-42% back in Fall 2019 (!). Meanwhile, PublicPolicyPolling, which is known for its polls giving Senators very low approval ratings relative to other pollsters, released a poll in early March with Collins at 33% approve, 57% disapprove.
We have also gotten some real data about head-to-head matchups between the two, and that also isn’t pretty for Collins. Colby College put out a poll in mid-February with Democratic challenger Sara Gideon leading Collins 43% to 42%, which is alarming for the Republican because incumbents, let alone four-term incumbents, should never be in the low 40s if they want to be on track to win re-election. In that same PPP poll from early March, Gideon was found to lead Collins 47% to 43%, meaning that the Democrat now leads the polling average. In response to an article I wrote nearly a year ago titled “Just How Vulnerable is Susan Collins?”, the answer now in May 2020 is “extremely”. I’m not ready to declare a 20+ year incumbent who hasn’t faced a competitive race since the 90s and who as recently as three years ago was one of America’s most popular Senators dead in the water, or even an underdog (yet), but Collins needs to turn the ship around fast. Compounding her polling problem is the fact that (like most Republicans in this article) Collins is getting smoked in the fundraising game by Gideon. Gideon obliterated Collins in Q1 of 2020, raising $7.1 M to the pitiful $2.4 M of the incumbent. Collins still technically has more money in the bank ($5.6 M to $4.6 M), but that doesn’t account for the fact that once Gideon is crowned the Democratic nominee (she faces token opposition in the primary), she will be given an additional $4.1 M pot of money that was raised in the name of “Susan Collins’ Eventual Challenger” in the aftermath of her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
As it stands now, Collins is in major trouble. She’s got bad approval ratings, is trailing in the polling average, and is being badly outraised. President Trump’s approval in the Civiqs tracker is now -19% in Maine and if the President isn’t able to keep Maine close against Joe Biden, that could be the final death knell. For so long, Susan Collins was an unbeatable incumbent because she was wildly popular with independents and even decently popular with Democrats. The moderate shine, removed after the Kavanaugh vote, may not be able to help the incumbent run way ahead of the presidential top-line in Maine anymore. For now, I rate this race as a tossup, but there’s no denying that Collins is now the third-most endangered Republican in the Senate.
North Carolina: Thom Tillis
Welcome to ground zero of the battle for the US Senate in 2020. As it stands right now, North Carolina seems most likely to be the state that determines which party controls the US Senate, with Colorado/Arizona/Maine being to its left and Montana/Iowa/Georgia/Texas being to its right. If this is the 50th seat, then we should pay extra attention to what’s going on here. And what is going on is pretty clearly a tossup race. Thom Tillis has long been labeled a vulnerable Republican Senator due to holding a seat in a swing state, being only a first-term incumbent, having narrowly won his Senate term (1.5%) despite it being a red wave year nationally, and having low approval ratings/maintaining a rather anonymous profile in his home state. All of those factors hold true, as Tillis was perhaps the flukiest Senate winner in 2014, knocking off now-deceased former Senator Kay Hagan (D) in a race that Hagan was narrowly favored in. Tillis was an unheralded candidate in North Carolina politics before his 2014 race and hasn’t done a ton to raise his profile since then, which has left his approval ratings middling, with high amounts of “don’t know” responses in polls.
Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham has mounted a solid campaign that has gained steam since the last time I wrote about the Senate races, winning his primary despite strong Republican funding for challenger Erica Smith. Cunningham, a military veteran/attorney/former State Senator has since outraised Tillis in Q1 of 2020, reeling in $4.4 M to Tillis’ $2.1 M, though the incumbent obviously still has more money in the war-chest. While Cunningham has yet to receive the national attention from liberal groups that Sara Gideon has gotten in her race against villain Susan Collins, once the NC race becomes more widely regarded as the election likely to decide the Senate majority, money will, in all likelihood, pour in behind Cunningham. Knowing this, the McConnell-aligned Republican PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund (SLF), has already reserved $21.8 M in ad buys in the Tar Heel State, $8.2 M more than they have spent in any other state so far. Cunningham also has begun polling very competitively with Tillis, leading a polling average I’ve compiled by 4%, including being up by 7, 5, 5, and 9 in four different polls by PPP (2), Civiqs, and Marist College. Tillis has not polled higher than 44% in a single public (non-internal) poll this year, a rather anonymous sign for an incumbent. President Trump’s approval rating remains narrowly underwater in North Carolina, and he narrowly trails Joe Biden in the polling average in that state, and the Senate race seems more likely than not to closely resemble the Presidential race there. That said, if I had to bet on one side outrunning the Presidential margin, it would be on Cunningham, given that he is currently outrunning Biden in most North Carolina polls in the present. All in all, this will be an incredibly expensive Senate race (maybe the most expensive in history) and given North Carolina’s swing state status, likely a very close one. Neither party holds a major edge in the race at the moment, mirroring the national complexion of the battle for Senate control.
Lean R (6): GA, GA-Special, IA, KS, MT, TX
Georgia: David Perdue
The first race in the Lean R column comes from the Peach State and it may be the biggest recruiting miss that Democrats had this cycle, as they still have a muddled primary between three candidates for the right to take on incumbent Republican Senator David Perdue. That field consists of Teresa Tomlinson, Mayor of Columbus, GA, Jon Ossoff, former congressional candidate, and Sarah Riggs Amico, former candidate for Lieutenant Governor. All three have different appeals, with Riggs Amico being a former Republican who could appeal to moderates, Tomlinson being a black woman from outside Atlanta, and Ossoff, who mostly just has money. While national Dems seemed to want to line up behind Tomlinson, her fundraising has been anemic and with Ossoff the only one who seems to be raising enough money to really compete, he has begun to appear as the favorite for the nomination, although if no one gets 50%+1 in the May primary, there will be a runoff in July. Ossoff’s race for Georgia’s 6th Congressional District’s Special Election back in 2017 made national headlines and gave him a wide donor base, but the performance itself wasn’t terribly impressive and Ossoff was maligned for having a less-than-enthusiastic candidate story and being not charismatic on the stump. After Ossoff lost narrowly in June 2017, Lucy McBath (D) actually did better just 17 months later and flipped the seat. Despite the lacking candidate profile, Ossoff may well make this a real race on the strength of the fundamentals alone, which is why this race still sits in the Lean R category. President Trump appears to be narrowly underwater in Georgia and polls between him and Biden are tight, with Perdue himself sounding the alarms to donors recently. Georgia is a highly polarized and partisan state that almost always has close elections, so I would expect this to eventually become close regardless, but Democrats have not made nearly enough effort to make serious in-roads here yet, so Perdue starts with an edge.
Georgia-Special: Kelly Loeffler
The special election to elect a Senator to fill the final two years of Johnny Isakson’s term is the messiest race you will read about in this column due to both a colorful cast of candidates and a weird electoral system. Starting with the latter, this race will be conducted under a “jungle primary” system, whereby there are no party primaries, instead making all the candidates from any political affiliation run on one ballot on November 3, 2020. If one candidate receives 50%+1 of the vote, they are elected the next Senator and the race is over. But if no candidate gets an outright majority, then the top two candidates, regardless of party, move on to a runoff, which will be held on January 5, 2021. Republicans have two main candidates, starting with the appointed incumbent Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed to the seat at the start of the year following Isakson’s resignation (he is in poor health due to Parkinson’s Disease). Loeffler was chosen by Governor Brian Kemp at the request of Mitch McConnell and his allies due to her status as a young(er) woman and political outsider from suburban Atlanta, who McConnell hoped could spend her own money (her and her husband are immensely wealthy) and appeal to moderates/traditional Republicans who you need to win in Georgia. More importantly, McConnell wanted Loeffler appointed to keep US Rep. Doug Collins out of the race, who Republican allies view as a problematic extremist not unlike Brian Kemp, whose narrow 1% victory in 2018 was an incredibly tight and stressful race. While Loeffler did get appointed, nothing else has gone according to plan for establishment Republicans.
First off, appointing Loeffler did not keep out Doug Collins, who decided to primary challenger. Collins is a hard-right conservative and Tea Party favorite who emerged during impeachment as one of Trump’s loudest and staunchest defenders, who again, establishment Republicans view as toxic to suburban moderates and could make this race even harder for them than it needs to be. Their effort to stop Collins, however, is going terribly due to the newfound reality that the incumbent Senator they appointed seems to be a total crook. Back in mid-March it was revealed that Loeffler had sold millions of dollars worth of stock in companies vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic the same day that she had received a briefing in the Senate about how hard the pandemic could hit the economy. That would appear to be the definition of insider trading and a potentially serious crime and regardless of whether she ends up being convicted of anything, it very much complicates her path to representing the Republicans in a runoff. Collins, who will weaponize this against her, is already up 10-20% over Loeffler in polls of the jungle primary and at this point would seem to be a clear favorite to make a runoff from the red side of the ballot.
The Democrats have a far less interesting fight, though there are still two names in the race, DSCC favorite and Christian pastor Raphael Warnock, as well as businessman Matt Lieberman, the son of that Joe Lieberman. Warnock is the national party favorite, but Lieberman has used his own money to build his name up somewhat, and for the moment seems to be leading the Democratic side, although there are tons of undecideds. Assuming the DSCC can get Warnock the money he needs, a Collins-Warnock runoff seems like the most likely scenario at the moment, given that Lieberman and Loeffler are both likely to receive at least 5% of the vote. And in a hyper-polarized state like Georgia, that would mean that neither Collins nor Warnock would be >50%. History has it that runoffs held after the election generally hurt the party that has just won the main election, and Democrats obviously would love this runoff to be held in the wake of sweeping November wins, where Biden has been elected and Team Blue has cobbled together at least 50 Senate seats and thus the majority. If Democrats have already taken the majority and we’re just 15 days from a Biden inauguration, would Dems have the fire to turn out in the numbers needed to win a runoff in Georgia? A similar phenomenon happened in 2008 between Saxby Chambliss and Jim Martin, where Democrats failed to turn out for a runoff in the wake of Obama’s sweeping landslide and lost decisively. But Georgia was a much redder state then, and overall it’s impossible to predict how things would turn out. There are lots of moving pieces and for now, we are going to start Republicans off as small favorites, but it’s a race worth watching.
Iowa: Joni Ernst
If there’s a race that is not yet in the tossup column (in my opinion) but both national parties seem to be treating it as such, it’s Iowa. While most prognosticators (including myself) give incumbent Republican Joni Ernst a small edge in her fight for re-election, both national Democrats and Republicans are dumping money into the Hawkeye State, seemingly anticipating a tight and bitter fight. Ernst was elected in 2014 in a race where she was long thought to be the underdog before opening a small lead at the end and then eventually romping to a surprising 9% win that somewhat foreshadowed Trump’s similar 9 point win in the state in 2016. 2018 was a mixed bag for Democrats in Iowa, as they carried the statewide house popular vote thanks to strong candidates in all four districts, and they flipped two of those seats (IA-01 and IA-03). They also had their statewide incumbents re-elected and flipped the State Auditor seat, with Rob Sand defeating incumbent Mary Mosiman. Yet, Democrats couldn’t quite topple incumbent Governor Kim Reynolds despite leading in many late polls of the race, as Reynolds hung on for a 2.5% win. For 2020, Trump remains slightly underwater in Iowa according to most approval polls but seems to have a small lead over Joe Biden, leading 48%-46% in a recent PPP poll of the state. Thus, to me, an incumbent Republican Senator in a state that Trump seems slightly favored to carry in the fall, starts off with a fundamental edge (a rule I also apply to Montana below), and that’s why this race is in the Lean R column.
However, the polling for the US Senate race is more mixed and also lacking in data overall. The only publicly available poll taken *this year* was the one referenced above, released within the last week, and it showed Ernst with a one point lead, 43%-42%. Those numbers suggest that many voters are undecided between Ernst and her likely Democratic challenger, Theresa Greenfield. That could be bad news for Ernst, as it could mean that she starts off with little incumbency advantage, polling in the low 40s. In the fundraising, Ernst pulled in $2.7 M to Greenfield’s $2.1 M, with the incumbent also holding an edge in the cash-on-hand metric. Still, as stated previously, a lot of money seems primed to pour into this race from the outside, as the Senate Leadership Fund (R) has booked $12.6 M in ad reservations for Iowa, while the Democratic-aligned Senate Majority PAC countered with $13.1 M in ad buys for the state. Whatever the internal polls are showing the national parties, it is a close race. As a result, this race definitely has the possibility to move to the tossup column, but for now, the previously stated fundamental edge that Republicans seem to have in Iowa deem it Lean R.
Kansas: Open (Roberts)
One of the oft-repeated fun facts of election junkies like myself is that Kansas has gone the longest of any state without electing a Democrat to the US Senate, stretching all the way back to 1932. This year could present Democrats with one of their best chances in years to break that streak, but it is still an uphill battle. Incumbent Senator Pat Roberts is retiring due to old age and it leaves a contentious open seat race that Democrats are attempting to make a play for with a strong candidate, while Republicans have another feisty primary. On the left there is Barbara Bollier, a State Senator and former Republican who switched parties and represents Johnson County, a large suburban county in the Kansas City area that has trended blue in recent years. Her party switch is symbolic of many educated Kansans who have become disillusioned with the Republicans, leading to Trump having a weaker than expected approval rating in Kansas, somewhere in the high single-digits. This has opened a small window for the Democrats to make a play, and Bollier has fundraised well, reeling in $2.35 M in Q1 2020 and now has over $3 M in the bank. On the flip side, Republicans have Kansas State Senate President Susan Wagle, US Rep. Roger Marshall, and former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach running. Kobach is the source of Republican angst and Democratic optimism in Kansas, as Kobach’s brand of hard-right conservatism and obsession with non-existent voter fraud made him a toxic character in Kansas politics, but also a favorite of President Trump’s, whose endorsement of Kobach put him over the top in the 2018 gubernatorial primary, a race Kobach eventually lost by 4 points to Laura Kelly (D). Establishment Republicans are terrified of Kobach winning the nomination for Senate, seeing a potential repeat of that 2018 race, since Bollier is similar to Kelly, being a standard moderate Democratic woman candidate. Polls have both shown that Kobach is currently leading the race for the early August Republican primary and that a Kobach-Bollier matchup would be very tight. If Roger Marshall got the nomination, the GOP would seem to be in much stronger command of this race, and even if Kobach is the nominee, there’s no guarantee that Democrats would win. Bollier still would have to run quite a bit ahead of the Presidential topline to claim victory. Still, Trump is weak enough in Kansas to make it possible and so this race stays in Lean R until future notice.
Montana: Steve Daines
Montana holds the Senate race that has changed the most radically since January’s column. Back then I wrote that Montana has remained surprisingly anti-Trump for a state that is generally as red as it is at the federal level and that the race could be in play if Democrats drafted a strong challenger. At that time, Democrats lacked a challenger with the status and money to legitimately take on first-term incumbent Republican Steve Daines. Fast forward three months, and they landed one, and not just any one: that challenger is incumbent Governor and former Presidential candidate Steve Bullock, who is really the only possible candidate that could have put the state in play. Bullock is a two-term Governor who will be leaving office at the end of the year and after months of wooing from national leaders, that apparently included a call from President Obama, he decided to take the plunge. So where does this race stand right now? Well, it’s first worth noting that Montana is an odd state politically. They voted for Trump 56.2%-35.8% over Clinton, yet on that same night re-elected Bullock to the Governorship against a well-funded Republican challenger by 4%. Despite its apparent redness at the federal level, Montana has a long history of sending Democrats to the US Senate and you don’t have to go far back to find it; just to 2018, when Montana voters re-elected Sen. Jon Tester (D) by 3.5% over a Republican (Matt Rosendale) who Trump campaigned for consistently. Moreover, Montana has a strange history of souring on Presidential incumbents, something my colleague Jacob Smith has written about at length, with Obama, Bush, and Clinton all getting significantly less of the vote in Montana in their re-election bid than their first run.
This seems to have happened with President Trump, as the Civiqs tracker pegs his approval in Montana at just 50% approve, 48% disapprove. The Morning Consult tracker lists net approval at just +6 and the CNN exit poll at the time of the 2018 Midterm had it at +3. Simply put, Trump’s personal ratings reflect a Montana that resembles a swing state more than a red state. Still, he is heavily favored to carry the state at the Presidential level, as a mid-March PPP poll showed him with +4 favorability and +8 over the “Democratic candidate” (Biden was not named directly). The question then becomes whether Bullock can outrun the Democratic topline by around 10 or so points against Daines, which is something that is very up in the air. We have a few polls of this race since Bullock got in, one of which is the poll mentioned above, showing the race deadlocked at 47% a piece. Two other polls from The Progress Campaign, and Montana State University, put Bullock up 49-46% and 46-39%.
What is also abundantly clear is that Bullock will not be lacking in money in the race, as he raised over $3 M in just three weeks after declaring in early March (!!!). That means he outraised Daines for the entire quarter by over $2 M, despite Daines getting three months to raise money and Bullock getting three weeks to do it. Montana is a cheap state to run a campaign in given its small population, and the $3.3 M Bullock raised would be a lot for Montana even in Q3 of 2020 (the one before the election). But for Q1? It’s very high. Lastly it should be noted that Bullock’s own personal approval numbers seem to have gone up in light of the Coronavirus outbreak, as almost all Governors have seen a bump for their handling of the crisis. While he was always a moderately popular Governor, the MSU poll showed that 70% (!) of Montanans approved of Bullock’s response to COVID-19, an astronomically high number. In some ways this race does not look unlike the 2018 Florida Senate race, where an incumbent Governor (Rick Scott) used his perceived positive handling of a crisis (Hurricane Irma) to get a bump in his approval rating and thus a springboard to a Senate race against an incumbent. That’s a good comparison for Bullock, because Scott narrowly won that race.
So if Bullock is a popular Governor with tons of money and the polls are either tied or have him slightly up, then why isn’t the race a tossup yet, you might ask? Well, I simply think we need more data. Daines is an uncontroversial incumbent in a state that Trump is likely to win by high single digits/double digits. Those sort of fundamentals strongly favor an incumbent, and he starts out as a small favorite to begin with, given Montana’s overall partisan lean. Bullock will have to work to fight his associations with national Democrats after running for President (especially on issues like gun control) and make it clear he still cares about Montana, but this is a fascinating race to watch, and the blueprint of how to win has been written many times. Bullock has done it before, but state races /= federal races. There’s a strong chance this race could end up in the tossup column, it’s just not quite there yet.
Texas: John Cornyn
Perhaps my most controversial rating is this one in Texas, where I peg John Cornyn as only a leaning favorite, as opposed to a likely one, which is where most prognosticators have it. Why? Well, much like Iowa and Montana, where the fundamentals favor Republicans more than the conventional wisdom might, the reverse is true in Texas, where the conventional wisdom remains strongly in favor of Cornyn, but the underlying numbers may not be. Cornyn is a three-term incumbent Senator who is also the Senate Majority Whip, which would in theory make him a giant figure in Texas politics, but in reality, he remains rather anonymous. This is especially in comparison to their other (well-known) Senator, Ted Cruz. Cornyn’s approval numbers, while positive, contain far higher proportions of “don’t know” responses than Cruz’s do and that suggests that opinion is both malleable and that Cornyn may not have all that much of an incumbency edge, especially since he has not faced a competitive race since 2002. He will take on either MJ Hegar, a former Congressional candidate from 2018 who lost a narrow race in a red district, or Royce West, a State Senator, though Hegar leads the primary runoff polls by quite a bit.
Another factor helping Democrats is that Texas is not nearly as red as it used to be, with Trump only holding a narrow lead in the polling average over Biden, and Biden has actually led Texas polls from decently reputable pollsters in the past few months, including one from PPP a couple weeks ago, and one from CNN back in late February. A Marist poll from February showed Trump leading 49-45, as well as Cornyn leading Hegar 49-41, suggesting that as I suspect, Cornyn is receiving little incumbency advantage in his vote share, instead being tied closely to Trump. And thus, my thinking is that if Texas is quite close at the presidential level, there’s no reason to think it also won’t become quite close at the Senate level, given how tied together Presidential and Senate partisanship has become. The one hurdle for Hegar is simple: cash. With the runoff not happening until July 14, Hegar then has only just over 100 days to run a general election campaign, and her fundraising at the moment is not enough to seriously compete in the many expensive media markets in a massive state like Texas. That said, she proved to be a very strong fundraiser in her tight 2018 race, and it was a major reason she came so close in a tough district like TX-31. If Democrats can get Hegar serious cash, and the Presidential race remains tight in Texas, I suspect this is a race that will “suddenly” get quite competitive in September or October. The fundamentals suggest as much, hence my Lean R rating.
Likely R (3): AK, AL, KY
Alaska: Dan Sullivan
I have long considered Alaska to be the sleeper Senate race, one that surprises by being close at the last minute. Pitting incumbent Republican Senator Dan Sullivan against independent (but Dem-aligned) surgeon and fisherman Al Gross. Alaska is a rather odd state politically, like Montana, with a strong third party streak and it had a Democratic Senator as recently as 2014, when Mark Begich (D) was subdued by Sullivan by just over 2%. Since then, Sullivan has mostly coasted along as an unknown incumbent and few people have been paying attention to this race until recently, with Gross’s fundraising starting to draw attention. He outraised Sullivan in Q1, raising just over $1 M and now having $3 M in the bank, compared to Sullivan’s $6 M, suggesting that there could be some sort of race developing here. Gross is the sort of quirky political outsider who could strike a chord with the Alaska electorate and Trump’s popularity is roughly +8-10 in the net approval, meaning that Gross would have to run about as far ahead as Bollier in Kansas or Bullock in Montana to put the race in play. Can he do that? It’s not particularly likely, but as the approval rating suggests, Alaska isn’t that red and it can elect left-aligned candidates in the right circumstances, and Gross seems strong enough that things could get interesting. Again, not likely, but it remains on the radar.
Alabama: Doug Jones
The only Democratic incumbent in serious trouble is Doug Jones in Alabama, where “serious” is probably an understatement. Jones won his three-year term in the Senate via a Special Election back in 2017 against right-wing nutjob and accused pedophile Roy Moore, one of the most incredible results in a Senate race in the last 10 years, given how red Alabama is. Jones will not get to face Moore again in 2020, which is more or less why he’s in trouble. Jones will either face former Senator and US Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is running to get his old job back, or former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville, but more likely Tuberville, who leads the polls for the July 14 primary runoff. The reason Jones is a massive underdog despite tons of money and solid approval is simply the reality that Alabama may be one of the two or three reddest states in the union. While it went for Trump by “only” 27.73% in 2016, its inelasticity makes it ruby red. Simply put, the Jones-Moore race notwithstanding, it is nearly impossible for a Democrat to hit 45% in Alabama, let alone 50%, with how sharply polarized voting is by race in the south and Alabama especially. There just aren’t enough black voters or white moderates for Democrats to compete in Alabama with any sort of consistency, and Jones will frankly be lucky to hit 40%. It took the perfect storm to elect Jones in 2017, a random special election a few weeks before Christmas, an ideologically extreme opponent, and then allegations of pedophilia, and Jones still only won by 1%. Absent a revelation that the Republican candidate committed a similarly heinous crime, Jones is a goner. Neither party is spending much on this race right now, and don’t expect it to be terribly close in the end. It’s not the fault of Jones, just simply a fact about Alabama.
Kentucky: Mitch McConnell
Democrats would love nothing more than to topple Mitch McConnell, the vaunted Senate Majority Leader of their nightmares. Unfortunately, he hails from Kentucky. While it’s true that McConnell’s approval numbers are atrocious, they were very bad in 2014 as well and McConnell still won re-election by over 10% against a well-funded challenger. Democrats have another well funded challenger in Amy McGrath to face McConnell, but it is not likely to make much of a difference. McGrath raised an absurd $12.9 M in Q1 2020, but money will never be her problem. Any Democrat from anywhere in the country will give money to try and beat McConnell. Her problem is that not enough of them actually live in Kentucky, which is a blood red state. The Bluegrass State voted for Trump by just under 30% in 2016 and it seems likely to do so by a decently similar margin in 2020. Basically, McGrath would have to win an astounding amount of Trump voters to knock off McConnell, and no matter how much many Republicans dislike Cocaine Mitch, they are not all that likely to vote for a Democrat. McGrath ran for Kentucky’s 6th Congressional District in 2018, losing by a narrow margin in a district that is well to the left of the state overall. If she couldn’t flip that seat, one she’d need to carry decisively to win statewide, I’m not sure where the logic is that she can win this Senate race. Republican PACs are spending quite a bit on behalf of McConnell for some reason, but that is perhaps the best argument about what this race could be for Democrats: a reason to make Republicans burn unnecessary money. Otherwise, left-leaning cash would be better off spent in a state not this red. The spending lands Kentucky in Likely R, but don’t expect it to get any more competitive. If you want Mitch McConnell to no longer be majority leader, don’t give money to Amy McGrath, give it to Sara Gideon or Cal Cunningham or Theresa Greenfield, who have much better shots at beating Republicans that could flip control in the Senate.
Safe R (11): AR, ID, LA, MS, NE, OK, SC, SD, TN, WV, WY
The Safe R pile remains unchanged from last time. Democrats continue to pour grassroots money into Jaime Harrison’s uphill battle against Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, but I remain very skeptical of his chances. Polling still shows Graham as a considerable favorite and South Carolina is an inelastic red state. While Democrats have made gains in the Palmetto State in recent years, they are slow-moving gains and still awhile away from really competing. It wouldn’t shock me if Harrison could get within 10, as Dems did in the gubernatorial race in SC in 2018, but even getting within 5 would be a herculean achievement for Harrison. He has money, but all other indicators are stacked against him.
Thoughts on the battle for control six months out
With just under 6 months to go until Election Day 2020, where do things stand in the overall battle for control in the US Senate? Well, unlike 2018, where Democrats never really had a shot at winning control, they very much do in 2020, with the best way to characterize the current state of affairs being more or less “a tossup”. The seats that Dems need to win back the Senate are in the tossup column, with the obvious path to control being the Presidency/Vice Presidency + CO/AZ/ME/NC = 50. At this time, Team Blue seems to have an edge in Colorado and Arizona, as well as perhaps a small edge in Maine, while North Carolina remains roughly a coin flip right now. In some sense, the test of how good the odds of a Dem Senate majority are on Election Day 2020 is dependent on how many of the seats currently rated as Lean R become tossups. If Dems can put Montana, Iowa, either of the Georgia seats, Kansas, or Texas in serious play, then their paths to a majority get wider and the probability of taking control also increase. It is not hard to see how a narrow Joe Biden win over Trump could result in Republicans keeping the Senate, but also how a wide Joe Biden win over Trump could on the other hand produce a big night in the Senate, stretching to as many as 53 seats, with some of the current Lean R seats falling like dominoes.
One thing that is clear is that Dems will have no shortage of cash in their pursuit to flip the upper chamber, as the Q1 fundraising was an unambiguous success. This has to likewise be the most worrying component for Republicans, as the flood of blue money into tightly contested house races in 2018 was one of the biggest factors that pushed a number of Democrats to victory in the Midterms. Republican incumbents simply getting overwhelmed in small states like Maine, Montana, Iowa, and Kansas by progressive grassroots fundraising, as well as potential Bloomberg money, is the nightmare scenario for team red at the moment. Furthermore, the ability for Democrats to put away states like Colorado, Arizona, and especially Maine early on would free up their ability to pour resources into the states currently rated Lean R, opening up the map and blowing the battle for control wide open. Republican grip of the Senate is currently in real doubt, but there is a long way to go, and they are by no means out of it. A resurgence in a state like Michigan would go a long way towards helping the Republican momentum get jump started again. For now, Democrats are on almost complete offense, and they would like to keep it that way into November.