Welcome back to My Senate Ratings! Since yesterday marked the 100 day countdown until the elections on November 3rd, I thought I’d use this special milestone to update my ratings in the battle for the US Senate. The last time I did so was in early May, which you can read here, meaning it’s been about three months since I last checked up on the Senate. Since then, as with the overall national environment, there’s been some significant movement towards the Democratic Party. In this article three new races move to tossup, while one race moves from lean D → likely D, and another moves from likely D → Safe D. As always, I will be using the Civiqs Approval Rating Tracker, which measures President Trump’s standing in each state, as a proxy for the president’s popularity and will reference it frequently throughout this article. Let’s dive right in:
Safe D (10): DE, IL, OR, MA, MN, NH, NJ, NM, RI, VA
The first change in this article is the movement of Minnesota from Likely D → Safe D, joining New Hampshire and Virginia as other Senate races to move off the board. Republicans never really tried to contest this race, running failed former US Representative Jason Lewis, who is known for his controversial comments on a host of hot-button issues, and who served just one term in the House before losing soundly in 2018 in a swing district. He’s raising almost no money compared to the incumbent Tina Smith, who glided to a 10.6% victory in 2018’s special election for this seat against a similarly flawed Republican candidate. With the national environment looking to be similar, if not better for Democrats than it was in 2018, Smith seems to be on track for another easy double digit victory, especially in a state where the President trails Joe Biden by 11 points in the polling average. Expect Smith to easily win her first full term in the US Senate this fall.
Likely D (1): CO*
Colorado: Cory Gardner
Our first race to discuss is also the first that is moving columns, shifting from leaning Democratic to likely Democratic. Republican incumbent Cory Gardner has long been the most endangered Senate Republican, pretty much since this cycle began. Gardner’s only real hope entering this cycle revolved around a strong Trump performance nationally leading to a close race in Colorado, one that Biden carries by maybe 5 points, and Gardner’s incumbency carries him to victory. That, let’s just say, does not seem to be coming to fruition. Instead, as the President remains on a path of self-immolation, Trump seems likely to lose Colorado by double digits and with Gardner facing a popular former Governor in John Hickenlooper, his condition at the moment is very, very bad. There have been relatively few polls of this Senate race but the state of play has remained pretty consistent. Here’s every poll taken of this race since August 2019, when Hickenlooper announced his campaign: Hick +13, Hick +10, Hick +13, Hick +11, Hick +17, Hick +18, Hick +11. I don’t know how you can justify any other rating for this race other than likely Democratic, especially since Trump is 25 points underwater in Colorado in the Civiqs tracker, in addition to Biden’s strong numbers against Trump. Hickenlooper outraised Gardner $5.2 M to $3.6 M in Q2 and though the incumbent has more money in the bank, no amount of cash is going to fix Gardner’s problem in this race, save for some massive, Access Hollywood-type scandal hitting Hickenlooper. The fundamentals, and the fact that Gardner has never even attempted to moderate his image in the Senate, are severely stacked against the Republican in this trending blue state. We should stop pretending that Gardner isn’t supremely f***** in this race, hence our ratings change.
Lean D (2): AZ*, MI
Arizona: Martha McSally
I’ve written extensively in the past about Martha McSally’s deep problems in her bid to hold onto a Senate seat she was appointed to at the start of this Senate session in January 2019, and not much has changed since I have written previously. Democratic challenger Mark Kelly continues to raise money like it grows on trees and continues to lead McSally by high single digits, almost always with over 50% of the vote. McSally’s problems are profound, as Arizona is not a state that has slipped away from Trump. Instead it is much like North Carolina, where Biden’s lead remains steady and modest, as opposed to other swing states like Wisconsin that have seen the former Vice President surge in recent months. Biden is only leading by 3-4 points in the Valley of the Sun, yet McSally trails by far more, as voters seem to have a particular disliking of her. This is combined with Kelly’s unique strength as a challenger, which has greatly helped Democrats focus their resources on other targets, thanks to their confidence in this race. McSally has done better in recent months to consolidate more of the President’s base behind her but as long as Kelly keeps polling above 50% and leading her by 5-10 points, this rating isn’t going to change. Kelly’s cash advantage also will allow him to overwhelm McSally on the airwaves, and it’s not hard to imagine national Republicans cutting the incumbent loose. They can afford to lose Arizona and keep the Senate so long as they salvage one of Maine or North Carolina, and since this is a special election to replace the late John McCain, this seat will be back up in 2022. McConnell & Co. may be inclined to triage McSally in say, September, to focus on other states and then try and flip this seat back when it’s up for a full term in 2022, which at the moment looks probable to happen in a Biden midterm, where the winds would likely favor the GOP. So, our leans Democratic rating remains consistent and McSally remains in deep, deep trouble.
Michigan: Gary Peters
Incumbent Senator Gary Peters remains the only Democrat up for re-election facing a real challenge at this stage, with the exception of the unique Doug Jones in Alabama. But, as a sign of the overall national environment, he remains a favorite. If the national picture were one that saw President Trump seriously fighting for re-election, Peters could very well be in a tossup race, as conservative media darling John James continues to raise legitimate amounts of money in his quest to end Peters’ Senate tenure. Unfortunately for James, that national environment is not the one that’s going on right now. Instead, Trump remains double digits underwater in his approval in Michigan, and trails Joe Biden by high single digits in the state. When you mix those presidential numbers with the incumbency of Peters, it gives Gary a clear leg up on John at the moment. I’ve written in this column before my mixed opinions on whether John James is a strong candidate or not, due to the unusual nature of his 2018 campaign, but one thing James is undeniably good at is raising money. He again raised slightly more than Peters in Q2, and both men have lots of money in the bank, with Peters sitting at $12 M and James at $9 M. This will be an expensive race in what is a pretty populous state, but again, it’s also a state that remains pretty Democratic-leaning in this national environment.
As stated previously, the 2020 national environment looks pretty darn similar to the one that James ran in back in 2018 when he lost to Michigan’s other Senator, Debbie Stabenow, by 6.5%. If the election were held today, I would venture to guess that James loses by somewhere around that number this year. Peters leads most polls by high single digits, which aggregates to Peters +9, and though he’s only a first term incumbent, his numbers are starting to creep closer to 50% in polls, which puts James further behind the eight ball. No matter how much James raises, this underlying factor remains supreme: so long as Joe Biden is favored to carry Michigan over Trump, Peters is favored to carry Michigan over James. That first condition is still true, and so is the second condition, which is why we assign it a Lean D rating.
Tossup (5): GA-A, IA, ME, MT, NC
Georgia: David Perdue
The first race to move into the tossup column is the Peach State, where the Senate race has followed the Presidential race in crystallizing into a tossup. When I last wrote about this race I noted that Democrats needed Jon Ossoff to win their primary outright in early June, as opposed to going to a runoff, since that would’ve taken place in August. Ossoff did just that, taking 52.82% in the Democratic primary against several opponents and because he crossed 50%+1, a runoff will not be necessary, meaning that he is now set to do battle with incumbent Senator David Perdue (R). Ossoff is perhaps best remembered from his 2017 campaign when he narrowly lost a high profile special election for Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District despite raising absurd amounts of money. Though he lost that race, he gained a valuable tool: contact information for thousands of Democratic donors across the country. As a result, though Ossoff raised $3.93 M to Perdue’s $2.2 M in Q2, I would expect the Democrat to raise close to double that number in Q3 now that he’s his party’s nominee officially. Ossoff will need the money, and Democrats will need to make a significant investment in Georgia to seriously win, as Republican groups are not messing around, having already booked nearly $26 M worth of ad buys for the race, while Democratic groups have booked just $4 M, the only Senate battleground where Democrats are set to be seriously outspent (for now).
As for the polls, Perdue maintains a small lead but the fact that he is not close to 50% suggests that he is undefined with the electorate and may not benefit from much of an incumbency advantage. Ossoff was given small leads by PPP and Civiqs, as well as in his own internal data released last week, while Perdue led 45% to 42% in a June Fox News poll of the race, which is the best pollster to have surveyed it. As it stands, neither candidate is terribly close to taking a commanding position and so the complexion of polling doesn’t inspire tons of confidence in the Republican. It’s important to remember that like the primary, the general election is also contested under runoff rules, which means that if neither candidate surpasses 50% in November, a runoff would be held in early January. That is not a terribly likely scenario given that there is only a Libertarian candidate on the ballot besides the two major party nominees, but Georgia typically has close elections and if it’s razor thin, this one could well go to January, which would introduce another variable to the picture. When the cycle began, Republicans felt good about Perdue’s chances, as he is an uncontroversial incumbent with solid approval ratings, but like most Senate races, this one has been swept up by the national environment. As Joe Biden and Donald Trump closely duke it out at the presidential level, this race has gotten close too. As Kraz Greinetz explained in this Elections Daily article, the political trends in the state are very bad for the GOP, Trump’s approval is firmly underwater in the Civiqs tracker, and so Perdue has been sucked into a tight race as well. With Perdue seemingly little-known by the electorate, if Ossoff gets the necessary cash and Biden surges in Georgia, it’s not hard to imagine this race toppling for the Republicans, which is why it moves to tossup.
Iowa: Joni Ernst
The second of three races being moved to the tossup column in this edition of the Senate ratings comes from Iowa, where Sen. Joni Ernst (R)’s bid for a second term has run into significant trouble from businesswoman Theresa Greenfield. When we last discussed this race in May I noted the lack of public polling, but also how both national parties seemed to be treating the race as a tossup, booking huge ad buys in the Hawkeye state. The public polling we have gotten since then has more or less given us clear reason why both parties were treating the race as a tossup: because it is one. Greenfield was crowned as her party’s nominee in early June and since then we’ve gotten several polls of the race. First there was a survey from PublicPolicyPolling (PPP) showing Greenfield leading Ernst 45% to 43%. Then Civiqs showed Greenfield up 48% to 45%, followed by the Des Moines Register’s Selzer Poll, long considered the gold standard of polling in Iowa, which gave Greenfield a 46% to 43% lead. To end the month of June, GQR Research, which is a much more pro-D firm than PPP, released a poll with Greenfield leading 49% to 47%.
These polls taken altogether show a race that is very tight, given that Greenfield led all four narrowly, and a juicy nugget from a recent Cook Political Report article notes that “both GOP and Democratic polling are now showing the same statistically tied race”, which lines up with the public data. In Q2 fundraising Greenfield obliterated Ernst, raising $6 M to the incumbent’s $3.6 M, though Greenfield had a rather high burn rate, giving Ernst a larger stockpile heading into the final four months of the campaign. Still, the $6 M that Greenfield raised is a very large amount for a small state like Iowa and her fundraising capabilities have clearly put Ernst in danger. The state is a tossup at the presidential level as well, with Trump and Biden also statistically tied, though in the public data Greenfield has been running a tiny bit ahead of Biden. In the latest Civiqs numbers, Donald Trump is 10 points underwater in his approval rating in Iowa, and while some of those voters who disapprove of his performance seem primed to still back him over Biden, they may be swayed to support Greenfield over Ernst. Iowa has trended Republican since 2014 but with 2020 increasingly looking possible to end up being a strongly pro-Democratic year, in addition to Greenfield’s prodigious fundraising, that could be enough to erase the edge in fundamentals that Ernst has. For the moment, this race is a clear tossup and probably will be that way until the finish line. With Iowa being a cheap state to run ads in, expect huge amounts of funding into November, as this race develops into one of the most closely contested in the battle for the Senate.
Maine: Susan Collins
The Maine Senate race has long been a question of how much lingering strength from 24 years in office does Susan Collins have. The answer to that question increasingly looks like “maybe not that much”. Since we last left this race, a few developments have taken place. First, Democrats officially nominated Sara Gideon to represent the party, as she coasted in the primary earlier this month. That was to be expected, but the significance of this development is that Gideon now has access to the $4 M pot of money that was raised to defeat Collins after the Kavanaugh vote back in October of 2018, and frankly, it’s not like she needs the cash. That’s because Gideon already raised *NINE-POINT-FOUR MILLION DOLLARS* in Q2 of 2020, which is nearly 3x what Collins raised in the same period. Maine has just 1.34 M residents and no major media markets! How do you even spend that amount of money a Maine political campaign? Start paying lobsters and moose to go vote? Let’s just say that the liberal fury against Collins is still burning and Gideon is flush with cash to try and nuke Collins off the face of the earth. If Gideon doesn’t win, it won’t be because of money.
In terms of polling, we have just two public, nonpartisan polls since May (*sigh*), both commissioned by PPP and released without the affiliation of any Democratic groups, and they showed Gideon up 46%-42% and 47%-42%. We do have quite a bit of internal polling too, one Democratic poll that showed Gideon up 51% to 42%, meanwhile the Republicans dropped two internal polls, one in early June (that was conducted in April), showing Collins ahead 48% to 47%, and another in late June showing Collins ahead 45% to 37%. Republicans continue to claim, as reiterated in the Cook Political Report piece I referenced earlier, that their data shows Collins in a stronger place than she was previously, but that may be more a comment about how bad of a spot she was in earlier than anything else, because neither of those Republican polls are that great for Collins. We first have to consider that internal polls generally overestimate the candidate they are released by of a magnitude of around 4-5%. Secondly, the first poll is alarming because it was conducted in April but released in June, which normally means that the June data is not as good as the April data, hence why you release the April data. Thirdly, the second poll is alarming because even in Republican sponsored data, it shows Collins, a giant of Maine politics and a four term incumbent, at just 45%.
What all of the polling, non-partisan and partisan, seems to suggest is that Gideon probably has a 3-4 point lead, but not over 50% yet, with her in the mid-40s and Collins in the low 40s. Though Susan Collins is not dead yet, I would think it would be harder for Collins to climb over 50% than Gideon, simply because Collins needs to win over voters who already know her and have known her for decades and who, as of just three years ago, uniformly approved of her. But now those voters have yet to support her. Other than attempting to make Gideon look worse by comparison, I’m not quite sure what Collins can do to win them back. Gideon on the other hand is still introducing herself to the electorate and has the money to both define herself positively and continue to assault the incumbent on the airwaves. Generally speaking it’s easier to win over undecided voters who don’t know much about you yet than it is to win over voters who know you well but don’t like you. So, I remain of the opinion that Gideon is favored, but it is too early- and there is not nearly enough data- to move this race. Collins should not be underestimated, as she is a veteran and a crafty politician, but I often feel that some pundits give her too much credit. She’s in a bad spot at the moment, being outraised and trailing in the polls to a still-little-known challenger and running in a state where her party’s presidential nominee is 25 points underwater and trailing by double digits. The underlying factors, other than her four term incumbency, do not favor Collins right now.
Montana: Steve Daines
This is the other race moving into the tossup column, as the clash of Montana political titans heats up, pitting incumbent Governor Steve Bullock (D) against incumbent Senator Steve Daines (R). The Battle of the Steves has seen several polls released in the past month, two showing Bullock leading and one showing Daines leading, but in no poll was either candidate leading by more than 4% and neither was above 50%, leaving the polling average incredibly tight at the moment. Bullock significantly outraised Daines in Q2, reeling in $7.8 M to Daines’ $5 M, but those are both huge hauls for Montana given that it is, like Iowa and Maine, a sparsely populated state where it takes little money to run a campaign. Simply put, both men will have all the money they need to run a winning campaign. This race is in many ways a clash of competing fundamentals, as Daines is helped by incumbency and the fact that Trump is very likely to carry Montana in November, a pair of factors that has consistently led to incumbent Senators getting re-elected. But Bullock is the most popular political figure in the state, has gotten good marks for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Trump’s approval rating has sagged in Montana, currently underwater in the Civiqs tracker, and narrowly above water in the available polling. Republican operatives acknowledge in the aforementioned Cook article that even though Trump won Montana by 20 in 2016, their data currently shows him with only a single digit lead, matching up with public data.
For Bullock, the biggest challenge will be getting those last couple percentage points, as it seems quite likely he will garner 45% of the vote in November. But getting over that hump of 50% to actually win the race will be the biggest question. While I maintain that Daines is favored in this race due to the fundamentals, the polling is too close and Bullock’s fundraising is too good to call this anything other than a tossup. A big question will be about how the race shifts as we head in to November. Daines will try to nationalize the race and hitch his wagon to President Trump, which generally works in red states, but Montana voters are funky. 2018 Republican candidate for Senate Matt Rosendale tried the same thing in the midterm, holding rallies with Trump, and still lost to Senator Jon Tester (D). Daines is helped by incumbency compared to Rosendale, but Bullock’s stature as Governor may erase some of that edge. Ticket-splitting has become increasingly rare in recent years but Montana showed as recently as two years ago that they are willing to send a Democrat to the US Senate, despite their red state status. The question is whether it will happen again this fall, and the answer to that question is currently murky enough that the race merits a tossup rating.
North Carolina: Thom Tillis
I have consistently described North Carolina as ground zero for the Senate majority and I’m sticking with that description as we enter the dog days of summer. Even as more races are deemed as tossups and the Republican battle lines are stretched more thinly, for me it all hinges on the Tar Heel State. If incumbent Republican Thom Tillis goes down, in all likelihood, Democrats will have taken over control of the upper chamber. If he is still standing, it is rather unlikely that power will have changed hands. At the moment, this race is incredibly tight but a slight advantage seems to be favoring Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham, who has led most polls over Tillis and outraised the incumbent in the most recent reporting period. Since the start of June there have been 14 polls released of North Carolina’s Senate race, and Cunningham has led 11 of them, with 2 being a tie, and the lone showing Tillis in the lead was a poll released by the extremely conservative OAN, which has more or less only released polls showing the best imaginable results for Republicans. That’s not a great track record for Tillis but the good news for him is neither candidate is that close to 50%.
Of course that’s not all that good of news for an incumbent, as Tillis seems to have no real incumbency edge. He’s not well known by the North Carolina electorate and when any candidate has gotten close to 50%, it’s uniformly been Cunningham, not Tillis. Cunningham hit 51% and 49% in two recent Change Research polls, hit 47% and 48% in two recent PPP polls, touched 47% in a Cardinal Point Analytics (R) poll, and hit 50% in both a May Civiqs poll and a recent Marist poll. Tillis on the other hand has cleared 42% just *three times* since May, and all three were Republican-sponsored polls. Therefore, we should probably treat this race like an open seat race and if that’s the case, the fundamentals probably slightly favor Cunningham. He nearly tripled up Tillis in Q2 fundraising, hauling in $7.4 M to Tillis’ measly $2.6 M and the two candidates now have about the same amount of money in the bank. In nearly all polls of North Carolina, Donald Trump is below water and though Biden’s leads haven’t been big, even as his national lead has swelled, the Democratic challenger has consistently led the President by 3ish points since March in the state. North Carolina almost always has close elections and don’t expect this race to be any different, but the small edge favors Cunningham at the moment, though there is far too long to go and far too many undecided voters to call NC anything other than a tossup.
Lean R (3): GA-B, KS, TX
Georgia Special Election: Kelly Loeffler
The messiest Senate race stays quite messy. I explained the dynamics of the contest back in May but the TL;DR is the following: it’s a jungle election in November, meaning all candidates of any party run on one ballot and if one candidate gets over 50%, they win outright and if not, a runoff is held in January (like the other Georgia race). There are two Republicans running, the McConnell-backed, appointed incumbent Kelly Loeffler, who has a lot of ethics baggage, and the Trumpy Congressman Doug Collins. There are also three Democrats running, the DSCC-backed Christian preacher Raphael Warnock, businessman Matt Lieberman (son of that Joe Lieberman), and former US Attorney Ed Tarver. Because there are multiple candidates for both parties, the chance this race goes to a January runoff is almost certain. The question is about who the two candidates will be. The Republican side remains a tighter dogfight than I expected, as Collins and Loeffler have yet to separate from each other, in spite of Loeffler’s earlier insider trading scandal. I maintain that Collins is more likely to make the runoff than Loeffler though. The Democratic side is still very muddled, with the candidates undefined and though Warnock is polling first among them, many Democrats are still undecided leaving lots of polls like this one from PPP in late June: Collins 23%, Loeffler 21%, Warnock 20%, Lieberman 11%, Tarver 3%, undecided 22%.
While that poll shows Democrats being locked out of the runoff, I still believe that it is very unlikely to happen for two reasons. The first is that the DSCC gets what it wants, currently batting 1.000 in Senate primaries in 2020. Democratic primary voters follow cues from their party and Warnock raised $2.8 M in Q2. If he starts cutting ads with Stacey Abrams, Elizabeth Warren, or even someone like Barack Obama, the Democratic votes will follow. Secondly, in those polls, the majority of the undecided voters are Democrats. We know that Georgia is a tightly contested state, very close to 50-50 Democrats to Republicans. In the above poll, the Republicans combined to account for 44% and the Democrats combined to account for 34%. Thus, of the undecided 22%, we would expect almost ¾ of it to be Democratic voters and those votes alone should push Warnock into the runoff, even if Collins and Loeffler stay neck-and-neck, which I’m still skeptical will happen. So, assuming this is a Warnock vs. Loeffler/Collins runoff, I’m not sure who it favors. The conventional wisdom has long been that runoffs favor Republicans in Georgia but I’m not so sure, something that Greinetz argued in another Elections Daily article you can read here. Much of the debate over runoff possibilities revolves over the enthusiasm level on each side. In a scenario where this runoff takes place in January, as Democrats are toasting a Biden victory and a take over of the Senate, you can make the case it would favor Republicans, because of depressed Democratic urgency, which is what happened in 2008. But on the flip side if this were god forbid to be the race that determines Senate control, with both sides juiced into a frenzy, it could be incredibly unpredictable. Since the dynamics of this election depend on what happens on November 3, we are leaving this race in Lean R indefinitely until the election and then will re-evaluate when we see which candidates advance to the runoff.
Kansas: Open (Roberts)
Kansas is home to the last interesting Senate primary in a competitive state, where in just over a week Republicans will make the hugely consequential decision of who to nominate in the race to replace retiring Senator Pat Roberts (R). The primary race pits US Rep. Roger Marshall against former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the latter of whom is seen as incredibly dangerous by Republican operatives should he get the nomination. Why? Well because Kobach was their party’s nominee for Governor just two years ago and lost that race by mid-single digits to now Governor Laura Kelly (D), even in this conservative state. Kobach is a hardline anti-immigration politician much in the mold of Donald Trump, who also has some extremely non-fact based views on voter fraud, and Trump likes him enough to have made him the chair of the “voter fraud commission” back a few years ago. Kobach’s brand of politics is seen as toxic and extreme even in Kansas, and Republicans worry that Kobach could cost them this Senate seat much the way he cost them the Governorship two years ago, even though the GOP hasn’t lost a Kansas Senate race since 1932.
Unfortunately, the strategy of Republicans to stop Kobach seemed to be- until recently- getting down on their knees and begging for United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to run for Senate. Pompeo had no interest in giving up one of the most powerful positions in American government to be McConnell’s pawn and rebuffed the NRSC’s offer, leaving establishment R’s without a coherent strategy to stop Kobach. Their candidate now seems to be Marshall, which is slightly problematic because Marshall is a relative moderate within the party, who won his seat in 2016 by ousting hardline conservative Tim Hueslkamp from the left. His realtively moderate ideology has angered conservative groups like the anti-tax Club For Growth that spent months hammering Marshall for not being conservative enough. Once it was clear the NRSC was going to back Marshall they convinced the Club For Growth to stop attacking Marshall but the damage had already been done. Meanwhile, Democrats have sensed an opportunity and pulled a page out of the Claire McCaskill playbook and have started running pro-Kobach ads as a way to meddle in the GOP primary. We have little public polling of the primary, but according to a recent National Journal article, Republican polls now show Kobach with a narrow lead in the primary.
Democrats have a far less dramatic situation, having long supported Barbara Bollier, a former Republican State Senator who is now a moderate Democrat. She has been rolling in the dough, raising $3.7 M in Q2 and now having over $4 M in the bank. This underscores the other problem the GOP faces in Kansas: neither Kobach nor Marshall have much money, both raising under $500K in Q2 and will both empty their bank accounts to win the primary, meaning that Republicans will have to infuse the eventual winner with lots of cash that could be going other places. Furthermore, contrary to popular belief, Kansas is not just all empty farms. In fact, it’s above the national average in education and is trending Democratic, as Trump did slightly worse in Kansas in 2016 than Romney did four years earlier, despite doing better nationally. Republicans are hemorrhaging votes in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area and Trump’s approval rating is just six points above water, with GOP operatives acknowledging that the President may only win the state by single digits this fall. Thus, Kansas is still red, but like Montana, it may be close enough at the Presidential level for a Democratic Senate miracle if everything falls right for the Democrats. Notably, that would consist of a Kobach primary victory and Bollier’s strong campaign. It will be an uphill battle because of how many normally conservative voters there are in Kansas, but this race could very well end up in tossup if Kobach wins on August 4th. But even if Marshall wins, it will likely remain competitive because of Bollier and the relatively close presidential top-line, albeit not a top tier pickup opportunity.
Texas: John Cornyn
I remain one of the only people in elections forecasting/analysis that believes that the Texas Senate race is going to be very come close in the fall, but I continue to stick to my guns about that prediction. As I’ve explained in previous articles, my thesis is pretty simple: Texas is a tossup at the presidential level, with Biden and Trump polling dead even and the Biden campaign is beginning to seriously contest the Lone Star State, starting to run ads last week. Given the increasing presidential partisanship in Senate races and the extent to which ticket splitting has declined, a good general prior for Senate races in presidential years is “if a state is close at the presidential level, it will probably be close at the Senate level”. Since we’ve established that Texas is likely to be close at the presidential level, we should expect it to be close at the Senate level. The only possibility that could derail that is if the Republican incumbent is particularly strong or the Democratic candidate is particularly weak.
I’m not sure that applies in either case. Sure, John Cornyn is a three term incumbent, but his approval ratings are low and he’s yet to poll above 50% in a single poll this year, and has polled above 46% just twice. As for recently crowned Democratic nominee MJ Hegar, I would argue that her electoral history suggests she’s a strong candidate, but that what she lacks is money. In 2018 she ran for Texas’s 31st Congressional District and lost the seat by 2.9%, while Beto O’Rourke lost the seat to Ted Cruz in his statewide Senate campaign by 2.2%. That 0.7% gap was actually the closest any Democratic House candidate came to matching Beto’s margins in any battleground Texas House race, and she was facing an incumbent no less. She did 9.8% better than Hillary Clinton in the 31st district and if she were to do 9.8% better than Clinton did statewide, she would carry Texas. Her problem is that she is not well known outside of her native Round Rock area in central Texas, as Hegar just became the Democratic nominee a few weeks ago and doesn’t have the money needed to get her name out there in what is the second most expensive state to run a campaign in. If I were a top Democrat with millions to spend on one Senate race (like say, Michael Bloomberg) I would spend it on Texas, because it’s the one state where a rapid and sudden infusion of cash could suddenly create a tossup contest.
Take a poll from Quinnipiac University released last week: it showed Biden leading Trump in Texas 45-44, and Cornyn leading Hegar 47-38. In the crosstabs, the groups that were the most undecided in the Senate race were voters under 45, Hispanics, and African Americans, three demographics that all favor Joe Biden in the presidential race. This suggests that Hegar has a lot of room to grow by consolidating voters who dislike Trump are are planning to vote for Joe Biden. Simply put, Cornyn’s support is soft enough and Biden is competitive enough that if Hegar can get her name out there, we could have a tight race on our hands. But unfortunately because of how long Democrats waited on this race, she doesn’t have a lot of time to do that. More interestingly, a political reporter for Vice News tweeted over the weekend that both GOP and Democratic internal polling show Hegar stronger than public polling shows and that if Trump loses Texas, that Cornyn would be in major trouble too, which more or less is what I have argued in this section. For the moment, Cornyn is still favored, but this is a race I’m watching intently.
Likely R (4): AK, AL*, KY, SC
Alaska: Dan Sullivan
If you want to know the Senate race in the Likely R column that is most likely to move into Lean R, then welcome to Alaska. I wrote extensively about Alaska’s Senate race for Elections Daily a few weeks ago, which you can read here, but since I published that piece we actually have a window into what’s going on up in the Last Frontier. What is going on is that the Civiqs tracker showing Trump under water in Alaska is not incorrect: two polls we have gotten have shown Trump up 3 and 1 point in Alaska, which is a flashing red light of warning. Alaska is a red state, but one with lots of voters who think of themselves as independents and it’s worth noting that Trump only took 51.28% of the vote in Alaska in 2016, as most of his 14.5 point win over Clinton came from high third party totals. That leads us to the Senate race, where first term incumbent Dan Sullivan remains undefined and mostly unknown with the electorate. There are two polls of the race, a famously crowd-funded poll by my good friends on Twitter, which showed Sullivan leading Democratically-aligned independent candidate Al Gross 39-34%, with over 25% of the electorate undecided. The other was much better for Sullivan, showing him with a 53%-40% lead over Gross, but Alaska polling can often be all over the place. Gross has been raising solid money and with him starting to get more recognition nationally, expect that rate to kick up. Gross just went up on the airwaves and so it’s quite possible this race could tighten as we get into the fall, though Alaska remains a red-leaning state and so it stays Likely R. Still, watch for how it develops into November.
Alabama: Doug Jones
Democratic Senator Doug Jones remains likely to lose that November, but now we know who he will likely lose to: Tommy Tuberville. The former Auburn University football coach put an end to Jeff Sessions’ humiliating political career in the Senate runoff earlier in July and he is now the Republican nominee in this blood red state. Jones of course won in 2017 thanks to the disastrous special election that saw Republican nominee Roy Moore credibly accused of child molestation. Despite his opponent’s supreme flaws in that race, and the nature of the race as a random special election held a few weeks before Christmas, Jones still only won by 1%, which is pretty indicative of how red Alabama is. With much higher presidential turnout this fall, Jones is likely to lose simply because Alabama is not hospitable to Democrats. Even while President Trump’s numbers have sagged nationwide, he is still 15 points above water in Alabama, as it is one of the five or ten reddest states in America. Jones himself has a large warchest and his numbers aren’t terrible. In fact, he’s likely to do better than any Democrat running for Senate in that state (besides himself) this century, as polls currently only show him down high single digits. But that’s about as close as he can probably get because Alabama is just that conservative.
Kentucky: Mitch McConnell
Democrat Amy McGrath won a highly competitive Senate primary against State Rep. Charles Booker and now she enters the general election, still raising silly amounts of money against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. McGrath raised $16 M in Q2, but cash is not her problem. Her problem is that the race is taking place in Kentucky, which is the sixth most pro-Trump state in the nation per the Civiqs tracker. In all likelihood, McGrath will have to win something like 15% of voters who will vote for Trump over Biden in the fall, and there simply is not a ton of evidence that that degree of split ticket voting exists anymore. In 2014, Democrats put up a stronger candidate than McGrath against McConnell in Alison Lundergan Grimes and she lost by 15.5 points. Sure, that was a red midterm compared to a brewing blue wave this year, but even more split ticket voting existed then than now. A Civiqs poll of the race gave McConnell a 53-33 lead and that feels about right. The money that McGrath raises and McConnell’s relative unpopularity as a congressional leader puts this race on the board, but in no way is it highly competitive at the moment.
South Carolina: Lindsey Graham
Similar to Kentucky, angry liberals from across the country have relentlessly poured money into Jaime Harrison’s campaign to unseat Lindsey Graham in South Carolina and while that may have a greater chance of happening in South Carolina than in Kentucky, it still isn’t likely. The Palmetto State gives Democrats a high floor, and it would not surprise me if Harrison were to hit 44% of the vote. The problem is that getting to 50% is a very difficult journey, as there are about 54% of voters in South Carolina that are pretty much rock ribbed Republicans. Winning 4% of them over will not be easy, to say the least, and Democrats haven’t won a statewide race in South Carolina since 1998. Harrison has all the money he needs to make it happen though, raising $14 M in Q2 and he’ll be able to run the needed ads to badger Graham and drive down his numbers overall. For what it’s worth, Trump’s approval rating is nearly even in South Carolina in the Civiqs tracker, as the state is one where trends are favoring Democrats ever so slowly, but I wouldn’t put a ton of stock into that. I could see this race moving one column leftward, but the chance it ever ends up in tossup is rather slim, as South Carolina is both inelastic and still pretty darn red.
The bottom line
In January I wrote that the battle for the Senate tilted to the GOP. In May I wrote that the battle for the Senate was probably close to 50-50. Now, in mid-July, I will write that though the battle for the Senate is still a tossup overall, for the first time all cycle Democrats are more likely than not to take control in November. If I had to peg odds on it, given current polling I’d put it close to Jack Kestering’s Senate model, which currently has Democrats with a 55.9% of taking Senate control. They’re not solid favorites at all (yet), but we do have to acknowledge where things are at the moment. The Senate is currently 53-47 Republican and the GOP, even with their current national polling debacle, are still very likely to gain a seat in Alabama. So Democrats need to flip four seats and at the moment it’s pretty clear where the quest for that stands. They are extremely likely to flip Colorado, continue to be clearly favored to flip Arizona, and are favored by some mild extent in still-tossup races in North Carolina and Maine. Meanwhile, they are probably slight underdogs in tossup races in Iowa, Georgia, and Montana and have real chances in 2-3 other races in Georgia (Special), Texas, and Kansas. At the moment, there are 48 seats favoring Democrats and 47 seats seats favoring Republicans, with 5 tossups. That means that the most likely scenario is either 50 seats Democratic and 50 seats Republican, with Vice President Harris/Demmings/Bottoms/Warren breaking the tie to give Democrats control of the chamber, or a 51-49 outright Democratic majority.
This is of course not to say that Republicans are out of it. Their chance of holding control of the chamber is very real and should not be discounted, and at the moment, is the party’s best chance of having any say in Washington this time next year. But at the same time, the chance that Democrats end up with 52 or 53 Senate seats should not be discounted either and the probability of that scenario is demonstrably higher than it was just a few months ago, as Trump’s numbers have sagged nationally and Democratic fundraising is pouring into key races. Given current ratings, all Democrats would have to do is sweep the tossups to hit 53 seats, and that doesn’t account for the fact that some of the leaning Republican races could move into the tossup column by November. To that end, if Democrats want to feel good about their chance of capturing control, the biggest thing they can do is put away Maine. If Team Blue can bury Susan Collins and put that race in the leans Democratic column by November, their chance of taking over will be very good, because a scenario where Democrats need to win just 1 of 4-5 tossups is a fruitful scenario. But if Maine remains a clear tossup into November, then the picture will remain murkier.
Overall though, the reality is that the battle for the Senate is really just an extension of the national picture overall. Democrats are leading by 8 or so points in the generic ballot and Biden leads Trump by 8-10 points nationally in the presidential race. That combination of factors, alongside the wave of green cash flowing into Democratic Senate campaign accounts, is the #1 reason why the party has put themselves into a real position to take over the chamber. Thus, a Trump resurgence is the biggest thing that could help give the Republicans a better shot, but if he remains far, far behind, GOP Senate control will grow to be even more on the ropes. That’s the state of play in July and we will be back sometime in October.
