Our series rolls along to the First State, which will be our shortest writeup: Delaware’s Senate. Democrats hold an 11-10 majority and only 10 of the seats are up. And of those 10 only a few are competitive, so there’s not a lot to say here. But let’s take a look:
Delaware State Senate Ratings
Likely D |
Lean D |
Tossup |
Lean R |
Likely R |
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4 (R) |
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6 (R) |
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Lean R: 4, 6
4th District: Gregory Lavelle
Lavelle served over a decade in the State House before running for State Senate in 2012. That year he knocked off a Democratic incumbent by a small margin, before defending his seat convincingly in 2014. Now he’s back for re-election in 2018 and he will not be easy to oust, despite the D+2 PVI of the seat. Democrats have teacher Laura Sturgeon running and she seems fine. This is one of those races that could flip if a blue wave swallowed up the incumbent, but it just isn’t likely right now.
6th District: Ernesto Lopez
Here’s another situation with a strong incumbent in a swing seat. The PVI of SD-6 is R+3, yet Incumbent Ernesto Lopez won by nearly 30 points in 2014. A worse national environment for R’s will hurt him in 2018, but it alone can’t topple Lopez. Democrats do have a good candidate in longtime (33 years) Sussex County Administrator David Baker. He’s the type of candidate that could really push Lopez but right now, the incumbent is the favorite.
Path to a Republican Majority
The seats that are up this fall are pretty boring. Democrats hold 5 of the 10 seats up and 4 of those 5 have PVI’s of D+double digits. The one other is a D+7 seat that Democrats just recently held via special election early last year. The 18 point margin in that race pretty much indicates that SD-10 isn’t flipping in 2018, yet that’s probably the seat that the GOP would have to flip to get a majority. As of right now, that path looks very slim.
Conclusion
So given how narrow the path to a Republican majority is, we have to rate the chamber as Likely/Safe D.
Chamber Rating: Likely/Safe D
Estimate if election were held today: no change