A lot has changed since the start of the year when I conceived of a diary about the state of the race for control of the US Senate and painted the pictures above. At that time, Manchin was a lost cause and West Virginia was going to go over to the Republicans. That left the control of the Senate more or less up to the hard cases of Jon Tester in very Republican Montana, Sherrod Brown in very Republican Ohio, and an unpopular Kyrsten Sinema having switched to independent because she would have had trouble winning a Democratic primary for renomination either splitting the ticket with a more popular Democrat or forcing the Democrats to carry her (unenthusiastically) across the finish line.
At the time, it looked like Tester’s likely match with a wealthy out-of-touch carpet-bagging opponent would make things a little easier on him. In the words of Monica Robinson from the Montana Democratic Party:
However, Sheehy has proven to be a harder nut to crack, with a background in the military (Naval Academy, Navy SEAL) he has been playing up as public service, and as founder of an aerospace company headquartered in Montana that allows him to run as a successful businessman against Tester’s down-home multigenerational farmer roots. According to RCP, Sheehy is currently leading Tester by a wider margin than Tester has ever won and 538 does not really have any better news. While Trump has been lethargic in campaigning for himself, he did show up in Montana, which he will surely win, in order to sink Tester and buoy Sheehy’s chances. All of this makes it look tough for Tester to pull off reelection to a fourth term in the Senate. Help him out if you can. It would be really nice if the Democrats could count on this Senate seat.
Fingers crossed, but Tester is not the biggest hope for saving the control of the Senate. Right now, Sherrod Brown is looking a lot better than he did at the start of the year. Everyone rated this race as a toss up but he has been pretty consistently polling about five points ahead of his opponent, Bernardo Moreno. Don’t pop the champagne corks yet, but the Harris boost is not hurting. Further, many of the policies Walz passed in Minnesota, not to mention his similar fighting style, echo Brown’s politics and probably give Democrats in general and Brown in particular an easier time running in Ohio.
Sherrod Brown's Senate Races
| Year |
Democrat |
Vote |
Republican |
Vote |
| 2006 |
Sherrod Brown |
56.16% |
Mike DeWine (I) |
43.82% |
| 2012 |
Sherrod Brown |
50.70% |
Josh Mandel |
44.70% |
| 2018 |
Sherrod Brown |
53.41% |
Jim Renacci |
46.57% |
| 2024 |
Sherrod Brown |
47.70% |
Bernardo Moreno |
42.70% |
The stats for the current election come from the RCP aggregation, but it says about the same as 538.
So far there is a split among the three I had pegged as must-holds at the start of the year. I had assumed then that Kyrsten Sinema and Arizona would be causing us the most problems by this time and it is completely the reverse.
Kyrsten Sinema in 2010 in the Arizona Senate back when I still had hopes for her
Kyrsten Sinema started as an outsider, a Green activist supporting Nader in 2000. She ran non-partisan for city council in 2001 and as a Green for the Arizona House in 2002. She lost both races and came in after the Democratic and Republican candidates and within a few hundred votes. At that point she seems to have made the reasonable calculation that winning a Democratic primary for the nomination would easily win her elective office. She did just that in 2004 and won an Arizona House seat.
Here is Sinema in 2013 when she was complaining about the US Democratic House Leadership holding back the base
I was vaguely aware of her at the time as she was well-known for antiwar activism, organizing and leading protests. I definitely approved as she seemed to be parting with ineffectual tactics in order to get progressive things done.
She apparently moderated between more militant activists favoring direct action and more moderate mainstream activists wishing to operate within the establishment, pushing for win/win solutions that would satisfy people across the spectrum. She made plenty of friends, in other words, willing to follow her into the Democratic Party, or willing to support an apparently more progressive Democrat in the primary.
At the same time, she sent other signals that she would be on the left of the party, garnering liberal and progressive support. She talked about her impoverished background and empathized publicly with the clientele she encountered as a social worker who shared many elements of her own background. She continued to have access to student activism as an ongoing grad student studying subjects with a social justice tint.
“Prada socialist” Sinema elected to the US Senate in 2018
Furthermore, she cultivated the support of loyal Democrats who might otherwise be skeptical of her as an outsider running in the party by vocally attacking Joe Lieberman for his conservatism and active courting of Republican support, which had caused his Democratic support to plummet, even within his own state. Sinema seemed like a budding Democrat who had seen the error of her independent ways who was going to become a reliable Democrat so as to pursue similar goals within mainstream politics. The combination pulled enough votes to deliver her first electoral win.
She started as sort of a punk rock Green, got elected as a left Democrat, served as a liberal, got elected to the Senate as a moderate Democrat, and is now "the most effective freshman Senator I've seen in 40 years" according to Mitch McConnel, always brokering a deal with the corporate conservative Republicans who are not overt ideologues, socializing a lot with Portman and Romney. Polling says she would easily lose her primary to almost any Democrat with a statewide reputation.
Sinema now tragically in full Disney villain attire at Davos in 2023 as Democratic voters were tired of her blocking the Biden agenda
Sinema when she was still threatening Democratic control of the Senate
While I preferred the left activist who rallied people across the spectrum against the war in Iraq, a moderate Democrat in the House who spoke up for doing things now and then was a good thing, and I am sure Arizonans were happy with the apparently moderate Democrat they elected in 2018, the first Democratic Senator from Arizona since DeConcini left office in 1995, mot than twenty years earlier. However, she made something of a famous production of flamboyantly blocking a wildly-popular increase to the minimum wage and went on to spend much of the early Biden years clipping his agenda down to moderate Republican size, while spending considerable time with Mormon Mitt Romney, having shared a Mormon upbringing. This is fine, of course, though she did seem to move much more in that political direction as well.
By the time she announced she would not run for reelection on March 5, she really had very little constituency left in Arizona. Most of the activists from her youth were not interested in her ever rightward turns. The Democratic base was not interested in someone best known nationally for stymieing the most popular parts of a Democratic president’s agenda. Where Manshin might be excused for overzealously supporting his energy interests in order to keep a Democratic seat in a state where the party was increasingly unpopular, Sinema was abandoning a Democratic Party on the upswing in Arizona where being a moderate Democrat could have given her a long career. She was popular among Republicans, but only for blocking Democratic policies and making Biden look old and hapless, and not enough to vote for her and certainly not enough to nominate her in their party.
In the end, her polling consistently put her in third place, behind the potential Democrat and Republican nominees polled, but did not even seem to be costing the Democrat the race, just narrowing the margin.
Recent Arizona Senate Races
| Year |
Democrat |
Vote |
Republican |
Vote |
| 2006 |
Jim Pederson |
43.50% |
Jon Kyl (I) |
53.34% |
| 2012 |
Richard Carmona |
46.20% |
Jeff Flake |
49.23% |
| 2018 |
Kyrsten Sinema |
49.96% |
Martha McSally |
47.61% |
| 2024 |
Ruben Gallego |
50.30% |
Kari Lake |
43.00% |
Looking at the trend in Arizona, it appears that moving in the direction of standard Democrats is helping while Arizona is trending away from standard Republicans. It is also possible that the quality of the Republicans in the state is also on the decline.
All-in-all, this was always going to be a rough year for Democrats defending 21 seats along with 2 allied independents. Most of the time, I have been paying attention to polling, there have been six or seven Democratic seats as toss ups after already losing Manshin’s seat. Things have improved somewhat, with Nevada and Wisconsin and Arizona looking safer, but still, Democrats have no margin for error. Before Biden dropped out, it appeared that several Senate races in tough states were outpolling his campaign. The transition to Harris has helped overall, with the new strategy of painting Republicans as weird and out of touch, which is not hard to do given some of their choices. Harris also seems to be more effective at communicating some of the Biden Administration successes, particularly in the economy.
Biden delivered the goods but faced a press that refused to report good economic news...
...Harris seems to be better at communicating the good news on the economy even to a skeptical press
State of the Race for Control of the US Senate
| State |
democrat |
Vote |
Independent |
Vote |
Republican |
Vote |
| Arizona |
Gallego |
50.30% |
- |
|
Lake |
43.00% |
| California |
Schiff |
57.30% |
- |
|
Garvey |
33.00% |
| Connecticut* |
Murphy (I) |
59.53% |
- |
|
Corey |
39.35% |
| Delaware** |
Blunt Rochester |
59.95% |
- |
|
Hansen |
37.81% |
| Florida |
Mucarsel-Powell
|
42.00% |
- |
|
Scott (I) |
46.30% |
| Hawaii** |
Hirono (I) |
62.60% |
- |
|
McDermott |
37.40% |
| Indiana |
McCray |
22.00% |
- |
|
Banks |
31.00% |
| Maine |
Costello |
9.00% |
King (I) |
43.00% |
Kouzounas |
33.00% |
| MAryland |
Alsobrooks |
46.7% |
- |
|
Hogan |
42.30% |
| Massachusetts |
Warren (I) |
47.00% |
- |
|
Deaton |
24.00% |
| Michigan |
Slotkin |
46.70% |
- |
|
Rogers |
41.90% |
| Minnesota |
Klobuchar (I) |
49.00% |
- |
|
White |
36.50% |
| Mississippi** |
Pinkins |
40.60% |
- |
|
Wicker (I) |
57.20% |
| Missouri |
Kunce |
43.00% |
- |
|
Hawley (I) |
53.00% |
| Montana |
Tester (I) |
44.80% |
- |
|
Sheehy |
50.00% |
| NEbraska-A*** |
- |
|
Osborn |
38.80% |
Fischer (I) |
39.80% |
| Nebraska-B |
Love |
33.00% |
- |
|
Ricketts (I) |
50.00% |
| Nevada |
Rosen (I) |
50.50% |
- |
|
Brown |
39.80% |
| New Jersey |
Kim |
44.00% |
- |
|
Bashaw |
38.00% |
| New Mexico |
Heinrich |
48.00% |
- |
|
Domenici |
38.50% |
| New York |
Gillibrand (I) |
56.00% |
- |
|
Sapraicone
|
33.00% |
| North Dakota |
Christiansen |
33.00% |
- |
|
Cramer (I) |
58.00% |
| Ohio |
Brown (I) |
47.70% |
- |
|
Moreno |
42.70% |
| Pennsylvania |
Casey (I) |
48.00% |
- |
|
McCormick |
45.00% |
| Rhode Island** |
Whitehouse (I) |
61.44% |
- |
|
Primary 9/10 |
38.33% |
| Tennessee |
Johnson |
33.00% |
- |
|
Blackburn (I) |
50.50% |
| Texas |
Allred |
42.00% |
- |
|
Cruz (I) |
48.00% |
| Utah |
Gleich |
25.50% |
- |
|
Curtis |
63.50% |
| vermont |
- |
|
Sanders (I) |
66.00% |
Malloy |
25.00% |
| virginia |
Kaine (I) |
50.00% |
- |
|
Cao |
37.80% |
| washington |
Cantwell (I) |
42.00% |
- |
|
Garcia |
26.50% |
| west virginia |
Elliott |
28.00% |
|
|
Justice |
62.00% |
| wisconsin |
Baldwin (I) |
50.60% |
|
|
Hovde |
44.20% |
| wyoming** |
Morrow |
30.10% |
|
|
Barrasso (I) |
66.96% |
| Totals |
15/21 |
|
2/2 |
|
10/11 |
|
* I found no polling yet this year, but it is a rematch so I used the numbers from 2018
** I found no polling yet this year, but it is rated a safe race so I used numbers from 2018
*** No one rates this as a toss up, but all the polling has said essentially the same thing, except for a single idiosyncratic result from an internal Fischer poll, which seems to have had an odd emphasis so I took the average of the other five polls from a variety of pollsters and marked it as a toss up
The good news is that Florida has been named a toss up, and Texas and Missouri are not as safe Republican as they should be. The really big news, though, is that while unpopular Republican incumbent Deb Fischer is still rated everywhere as safe, she has been polling neck and neck with an independent labor leader. Democrats did not field a candidate against Fischer so independent Dan Osborn may help reduce the Republican caucus by one.
Fischer only got 80% in her primary where her opponent was a barely-funded sort of Bob LaFollette Republican running on liberalizing immigration and addressing climate change who had previously only generated single digits in primaries against Adrian Smith. Her own poll showed her up by 26% in July, but every other poll has her and Osborn tied in the margins. The Legal Marijuana Now Party declined to replace their nominee after she dropped out and endorsed pro-weed Osborn in a year with a medical marijuana initiative on the ballot. The Democratic Party has declined to endorse a write-in campaign in the race. The state AFL-CIO endorsed Osborn and some Democratic funders have been lending support. In addition, it is looking like Harris is increasingly likely to take the electoral vote for Nebraska’s CD2, while Democrat Tony Vargas is in the margin of error or pulling ahead of Republican Bacon.
At the very least, it appears that Republicans are going to need to spend resources on races that should be safe, while enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket is opening up new paths to holding a Democratic Senate.
