The State of the Senate

In all likelihood, by the time that this article is published, at least some of the earliest ballots will have been cast not just in the US, but in one of the most important states in the country (North Carolina absentee ballots went out a week ago-it’s likely some are already mailed back).  As a result, I wanted to get out one more State of the Senate out before we do our extensive look at every state in late October.

 

From the last time that we did this, the biggest change has been the Dobbs Supreme Court decision, which totally upended the race for the Senate.  When I did this last, I had the race still at a tossup, but it was clear that the Republicans were gaining ground to the point where the Democrats were underdogs. All of the Top 3 seats were held by Democrats, and it appeared that they were looking at a difficult climb to keep seats in marginally Biden states.

 

Now, we’re in a completely different situation-Democrats appear not only in a sunnier position, but increasingly it looks probable that the party will hold the Senate majority, potentially even netting a seat or two.  This is driven by a variety of factors (the declining price of gas, a bevy of legislation passed this summer, President Biden’s recovering approval numbers), but the biggest ones are abortion rights and candidate quality.  Abortion rights have given Democrats a huge surge in special elections across the country, and while it is impossible that they’ll get that kind of gain in November, it does look likely that women voters, favoring Democrats, are going to mitigate at least some of the problems that should be facing Democrats in a normal midterm environment.

 

Secondly, candidate quality is a huge issue.  While Democrats largely avoided nominating any mistakes in major races (indeed, with the exception of Wisconsin where I've found Mandela Barnes' fundraising undrwhelming, they appear to have nominated the best candidate possible), Republicans created a who’s who of terrible candidates.  JD Vance, Herschel Walker, Blake Masters, Don Bolduc, & Mehmet Oz are all running awful campaigns-staking hard right claims in swing territory, and all have been lackluster fundraisers & retail politickers.  No Republican candidate (not even incumbents Ron Johnson & Marco Rubio) are running great campaigns, but these five are truly awful, and it’s entirely possible that the Republicans could lose a couple of seats this fall they would’ve won with better options.  With that said, we’re going to jump into the race-here’s a look at the Top 10 seats most likely to switch parties, with #1 being the one that is most likely to switch. 

 

Honorable Mention: Honestly, there’s not a lot of evidence of anything really interesting here-even #10 on this list is something of a stretch.  If you ask Rick Scott, he thinks that Washington is in play, but given Sen. Patty Murray’s strong performance in the primary, I doubt that she’s at any risk of losing such a blue state (oh how Mitch McConnell wishes that he wasn’t wasting arguably his biggest star recruit of the cycle, Tiffany Smiley, on a race like this instead of somewhere she’d be useful like Arizona or Ohio).  The only other race worth mentioning is in Alaska (sorry, but I don’t buy the Evan McMillan buzz in Utah-I went to that dance in 2016 & I got stood up), where Sen. Lisa Murkowski, similar to Murray, seems like she won enough votes in the primary to win another term with ease, though her contest is less important for Democrats looking at the Senate and more at the ones looking at the House, where Democrats are trying to find a way to catch lightning-in-a-bottle and reelect Mary Peltola to a full term.  A strong Murkowski turnout oddly could help Peltola since both could win over pro-choice moderates in the famously independent state.

 

Joe O'Dea (R-CO)

10. Colorado

 

As I mentioned, this is on the list less because I think it’s competitive and more because I need ten seats.  Republicans certainly have a strong candidate in Joe O’Dea (similar to Smiley, he’s being wasted in a tough race), but Sen. Michael Bennet is battle-tested, and more importantly, he’s got abortion rights on his side.  Colorado is an increasingly progressive state, to the point where you have to wonder if this is one of the last Senate races for a while that Republicans even try to make a play here before it essentially becomes Illinois, and Bennet isn’t going to lose when a national abortion ban is being trumpeted by Lindsey Graham. (Previous Ranking: 8)

 

Rep. Val Demings (D-FL)

9. Florida

 

We took this state off of the list last time, but Republican fortunes have shifted enough that I’m moving Florida back onto the menu.  Similar to Colorado, I don’t think this is a race that can actually be won by the party out-of-power, but unlike Colorado I do think this could get close.  Rep. Val Demings (D) has run a magnificent campaign while Sen. Marco Rubio continually makes unforced errors, particularly when it comes to abortion rights & gay marriage.  It also doesn’t help Rubio that Ron DeSantis is literally shipping Venezuelan migrants out of Florida on taxpayer money; Rubio has long enjoyed strong support with the Latino community in Florida (which in part delivered recent victories for Rick Scott & Donald Trump there), but this is a swingy area of the country, and they certainly went for Hillary Clinton in 2016-Demings would be smart to make a play for Miami-Dade after DeSantis’ stunt.  Rubio remains the favorite, as I said, but his polling (regularly up just 2-4 points) and the unusual dynamics of this race make him more vulnerable than he should be. (Previous Ranking: N/A)

 

Gen. Don Bolduc (R-NH)

8. New Hampshire

 

Only three states on this list are going to be moving 3+ slots (in-line with my increasingly optimistic view of Democrats’ chances in the Senate, all are helping the Democrats), and one of them is New Hampshire.  This past week, Republicans nominated Gen. Don Bolduc, an election-denying conspiracy theorist who has been publicly criticized by pretty much every major New Hampshire Republican that are now shamelessly backing him, but Bolduc’s public comments (he called the 2020 election “rigged” in Biden’s favor, he called Gov. Chris Sununu a “Chinese Community sympathizer,” he claimed the Covid-19 vaccines were a plot by Bill Gates to put microchips in people) make it near impossible for him to be able to gain a leg-up on the well-liked, well-established Sen. Maggie Hassan (who is not only a sitting senator, but also a former governor well-known to New Hampshire voters).  Even with Republicans earmarked to spend $20 million on this race in the coming weeks, this feels like a waste-of-time, particularly in one of the most pro-choice states in the country. (Previous Ranking: 5)

 

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH)

7. Ohio

 

I was talking to a friend about this race the other day, and he said “what would it take for you to declare Tim Ryan favored, or even at even odds, with JD Vance” and my response was basically akin to “no matter what the polls say, I will not call this anything bluer than ‘Leans R’ for the GOP unless Tim Ryan gets a blue checkmark next to his name on Election Night.”  I have been burned too many times in Ohio in recent years (Clinton, Cordray, Biden), to assume that Tim Ryan is the one who can live up to the polls…but it sure is tempting to pretend this race is a tossup.  After all, Ryan regularly leads in polls against Vance, who might be running the worst Senate campaign in the country by someone who wasn’t once a regular on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Vance refuses to campaign, he refuses to fundraise…basically he thought once he got Trump’s blessing in the primary he got to be a senator.  Meanwhile, Ryan is running the best Senate campaign in the country, and will keep this closer than Biden did in 2020.  I just don’t think it’ll be enough-I keep seeing visions of Jason Kander in my head.  Ryan will make it close, but I don’t see a way he actually wins, and we’re at the point in this race where it’s not just about “doing respectably. (Previous Ranking: 9)

 

Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC)

6. North Carolina

 

The one race that no one can get a handle on.  Unlike other Republican candidates, Rep. Ted Budd is a generally good candidate, or at least not an actively bad one.  His opponent, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, is also a good one, but in a presidential midterm in a Trump state, Budd should have the edge. So why doesn’t he?  Beasley frequently leads by 1-2 points, and while I have to assume that since she can’t seem to get much past 45% (neither can Budd, but she’s go the burden-of-proof), Beasley is losing.  The two reasons why she’s not lower on this list, though are as follows.  First, Dobbs has a pretty stark contrast here between the pro-choice Beasley and the anti-choice Budd (who has cosponsored Lindsey Graham’s abortion ban, which feels like a needlessly foolish thing to do unless his internals show that he needs help with the base), and while North Carolina isn’t as pro-choice as, say, Nevada or New Hampshire, it is still in favor of abortion rights.  The second thing is-this is a state that Donald Trump won by less-than-two points, the only state of that kind.  If the Democrats are truly getting a neutral environment, then North Carolina should be in play in the same way that Nevada is.  I’ve said it before, but it’s hard to grasp what a political earthquake a Beasley win might mean for 2024 & 2026…but she still isn’t quite there yet. (Previous Ranking: 7)

 

Blake Masters (R-AZ)

5. Arizona

 

No state is moving more on this list than Arizona, which in June felt like the most vulnerable race on the map.  There’s a lot of reasons that Arizona is moving down this list, and they all seem to have to do with Blake Masters.  Sen. Mark Kelly (D) is running a superb candidacy, maintaining his popularity as a left-of-middle populist who seems to be able to print money he raises it so frequently, but if he were against a decent Republican opponent, I honestly would still have him in the Top 3 because Arizona is a newly purple state. But Masters is a terrible candidate.  He has publicly endorsed Nazism and the Unabomber, is extremely anti-choice and his views on a variety of fiscal & social policies are well outside the mainstream.  He also is not a good fundraiser, and neither Mitch McConnell nor Masters' former boss Peter Thiel seem all that interested in saving a guy who regularly polls at a gap that might be beyond saving.  This is still Arizona, it still could be competitive, but pretty much no one is saying this is a Tossup the way it would’ve been a few months ago, and Masters doesn’t have a lot of ways out short of an actual Republican wave transpiring. (Previous Ranking: 1)

 

Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D-WI)

4. Wisconsin

 

I debated heavily between whether to put Wisconsin above Arizona or not, and decided to do because unlike Masters, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes actually has led in some recent polls, though the race has tightened in the past week or two (which was inevitable-Wisconsin, like Arizona, is not a place where landslides are born). Democrats seem incapable of thinking that Sen. Ron Johnson can be beat after he polled virtually the entire race in 2016 behind former Sen. Russ Feingold…just to beat him in the end (while Trump took the state).  But Wisconsin has, in fact, elected a lot of Democrats since then (Johnson is the only statewide-elected Republican, and of course it dealt a decisive blow to Donald Trump when it elected Joe Biden in 2020).  I’m of the camp that Barnes has to provide proof that he can win, and right now I haven’t seen it…but a case is being made.  Based on the way this list is structured, a win by Barnes would get the Democrats a 52^nd seat in the Senate, and with that the ability to codify Roe into law.  The question is-is this 2016 or 2020 for the Democrats in the Badger State? (Previous Ranking: 6)

 

Attorney General Adam Laxalt (R-NV)

3. Nevada

 

If I’m exactly right on this list, while Barnes would decide who is the winner of the 52^nd seat, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto is the person who would ensure that the Democrats win a 50^th seat.  I have been pretty bearish about Cortez Masto’s chances all year.  She’s not as well-known as some of the other names on this list, and with the passing of Harry Reid, it’s not clear how well his “machine” can hold up to get Democrats past home in a state that has been swingy for almost two decades now.  Cortez Masto, though, has opened up a small lead here, and while the fact that Biden won the state is helping, it’s more abortion rights that could bring her through to the finish line.  Nevada is very pro-abortion rights, and with Lindsey Graham issuing a nationwide abortion ban, it seems like a perfect way for Cortez Masto run against her Republican opponent Adam Laxalt.  If I had a crystal ball and could only know the winner of one Senate seat to decide who was the majority winner in November, I’d pick this one.  And right now, I’d guess that Cortez Masto ends up winning.  In a sign of how much the election has changed since June, I wouldn’t have been guessing her in June. (Previous Ranking: 2)

 

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA)

2. Georgia

 

If there’s one contest that is clearly giving Democrats heartburn & Republicans some hope, it’s in Georgia.  Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) is by pretty much every definition a better candidate than Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker (R).  Warnock is a gifted orator, years on the pulpit perfecting his ability to be heard in the Senate, and Walker does not seem to have a grasp on even the most basic of political issues (I’m not one to armchair diagnose someone, but the frequent accusations that he suffers from some form of CFT feel like they have some weight given virtually every sentence he utters comes across as word salad). But Walker has led in more polls against Warnock than any other Republican Senate challenger all year. The guy clearly is resonating with the Georgia populace, and Warnock doesn’t seem capable of going for the jugular on him in the way he needs to to shut this down (being a man of god, negative campaigning likely is apparently a struggle for him in a way that it wasn’t for Mike Huckabee).  Warnock seems to have gotten his debate, which will be his best chance to hit Walker (given his ability in interviews, Walker will struggle in a traditional debate setting in a way that could change the tides in election, something most debates simply cannot outside a presidential level).  This race may well go to a runoff given there is a third party candidate…and if it does, once again the Senate majority could be decided by Georgia. (Previous Ranking: 3)

 

Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (D-PA)

1. Pennsylvania

 

Moving all the way back to #1 is Pennsylvania.  There are a lot of reasons that this could go up (Dobbs, declining gas prices, Pennsylvania’s general history as a swing state that usually goes blue, 2016 notwithstanding), but I’m not going to pretend it’s anything other than candidate quality.  Democrats have nominated a uniquely appealing candidate in Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who despite having a stroke a few months ago, has already defeated a sitting congressman in a primary, and has struck a unique profile in the Keystone State as a small-town mayor who looks less like a DC insider and more like a bouncer…which is helping to persuade blue-collar workers who were once the bread-and-butter of Democrats’ Pennsylvania strategy to give him a chance.  On top of Fetterman being a good candidate, the Republicans have nominated a joke. Mehmet Oz, who gained fame as a doctor on The Oprah Winfrey Show, has run the most laughable campaign since Christine O’Donnell in 2010.  Everything from not knowing the number of houses he owns to putting salsa on his celery to his lack of connection to Pennsylvania (he resides in New Jersey, as Fetterman will be quick to point out to you)…it’s all been terrible.  Throw in comments about incest that will make you wince, and his views on abortion in a contest where Fetterman will constantly remind you (correctly) that electing him could codify Roe, and you have a race that Republicans could win…but it’s hard to see how at this point. (Preivous Ranking: 4)