The Democrats (Still) Long Odds in the Senate

Sens. Susan Collins & Thom Tillis

Donald Trump has spent much of the past few months tearing up the US government, and in the past week, destroying the world economy, essentially ending America's reign as the leader of the free world, and for the first time in almost 160 years, risking us being left behind as a first world country.  This is a lot to take in, and lord knows if you've looked at your 401k in the past few days, you'll find out that you've essentially been working free for all of Trump's presidency based on the losses (I know I have at this point).  This is awful, and kind of hard to comprehend, and I don't really have the words for it.  As someone who has lived through two recessions (and if we're being honest, 2014-15 was a uniquely troubling time for my personal finances due to the sector of the economy I work in, so this feels like my fourth) and am only 40, it's harrowing.  Perhaps at some point I will talk a bit about how I now have a Recession Routine (one that has largely been dictated by greedy Republican men who overreached & all of us got punished-and that's true in the case of all of them!).

But today we're going to talk about something more familiar on the blog: the US Senate.  While I am waiting to see if or when the Senate puts forward a bill that will stop the tariffs (so far a bipartisan quartet of Rand Paul/Ron Wyden and Chuck Grassley/Maria Cantwell have put forward competing bills that will likely, in the end, end up being combined-I do feel semi-confident that this will get a vote in the Senate before this is done, even if the House is going to be a challenge, though Rep. Greg Meeks is working on that as well), it's clear that the electoral calculus has changed.  These tariffs, if you believe literally any economist and not a rambling 78-year-old man who has claimed to talk to Joan Rivers & Lee Iacocca (both dead) in the past year, you'll know that the tariffs are going to cause undue harm to the US economy, which historically has been very unpopular.  The US House was already going to be a stretch for the Republicans to hold in 2026 (they only have a 220-215 majority...even a blue puddle would be able to take that out in a midterm, much less a blue wave), but the Senate was always a challenge.  The Democrats badly screwed up in 2022 & 2024 by not beating Ron Johnson & Dave McCormick, and so they have to win 4 US Senate seats in 2026 instead of the much easier 2.  I thought I'd talk a little about that today, and exactly what it would take to win the US Senate.

There are a few ground rules that we should discuss when it gets to the math in 2026.  First, the Democrats need to hold all of their current seats.  This isn't as hard as you'd think it is.  While the offense for the year is brutal, the defense should be easy.  Democrats have open seats in Minnesota & New Hampshire, but this is the right time to do that (a favorable environment for the Democrats is a good place to bring in the new generation, and I'm hoping we see more of it in states like Illinois & maybe even Virginia), so I don't anticipate those move.  Same with the open seat in Michigan, a state Donald Trump won last year, but also that the Democrats held in the Senate (a miracle in retrospect), and in a traditional environment, this should hold.  The most vulnerable seat in theory would be Georgia, but that's predicated on incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp running (which is no guarantee, particularly with Gov. Chris Sununu declining this week in the wake of the tariffs...does Kemp want a career-ending loss on his shoulders when he has clear presidential aspirations?), and even then, Jon Ossoff is staking a very early money lead that will help him.  I think the Democrats are in a good position to hold all of their seats (there are no contests like Joe Manchin in 2024 where a loss is a foregone conclusion, or where they're even underdogs), which they'd have to do to have any shot at winning a majority.

The next phase is two specific states that are must-flips, both with their own set of problems but imminently winnable in the right situation: North Carolina & Maine.  North Carolina is probably the easier of the two to win, even if it's the redder state.  Sen. Thom Tillis, fighting for a third term, has never faced a blue wave year (North Carolina didn't have a Senate election in 2018), and there's still the possibility that he'll face a primary challenge, one endorsed by President Trump (who can't be happy about some of Tillis's comments about tariffs).  Tillis also is likely to face Gov. Roy Cooper in the general election (Rep. Wiley Nickel is clearly pushing himself as a Cooper alternative, but I doubt he stays in the race if Cooper runs, which I suspect he will).  Cooper is a very good opponent, one who won statewide twice with Trump on the ballot, and is different than the slew of governors trying quixotic bids for higher office (Larry Hogan, Phil Bredesen, Steve Bullock...it's a long list) in the past 15 years mostly because Cooper is doing so in a purple state.  I'll say this-at this point in the race I think Cooper would be favored to win.

Sen. Susan Collins in Maine is the only Republican representing a state that Kamala Harris won in the Senate, which should make her vulnerable.  Collins, though (unlike Tillis) has won in blue years-she managed to win races with both Obama and Biden winning her state, and while she avoided the one cycle she might've genuinely been vulnerable (I think she loses in 2018), she's going to get its sequel this year.  I think the biggest problem for Democrats against Collins isn't her very strong retail politicking skills (she's absolutely the most impressive politician in Congress in terms of crossover appeal), but that her inevitable ability to beat Democrats becomes self-fulfilling prophecy.  Already two high-profile Democrats (Secretary of State Shenna Bellows & Senate President Troy Jackson) have skipped her race, and are running for governor instead.  It's possible that others like Rep. Jared Golden soon follow.  Gov. Janet Mills has been flouted as a name, and she'd be an impressive candidate...if she wasn't 77-years-old (five years Collins' senior).  I maintain that, given Trump's unpopularity and Collins' being the only way for Maine voters (aka Harris voters) ability to send Republicans a message, that Collins is much more vulnerable than conventional wisdom dictates...but you can't beat her with nothing.  One of the major stars in the Maine Democratic Party needs to smell the opportunity (in a similar way to Chris Coons circa 2010) and try to get a promotion here (perhaps like Coons, jumping ahead of a candidate who would have been the nominee in an open seat circumstance).  Democrats have no realistic shot at the Senate without beating Collins (and honestly, they don't have a realistic shot of a majority in 2028 or 2030 without it either...this is too blue of a seat to let it be held by even a moderate Republican in a Senate that already doesn't give them any advantage).

Let's assume, though, that the Democrats pull this off-they hold every seat, and they beat both Tillis & Collins (if I was predicting the election as of right now, that would be my guess).  If this was all it would take, I'd say they were the favorites at this point...but they need two more seats to get a majority thanks to those aforementioned losses against Johnson & McCormick (the two states that stand out in the past 6 years as ones they badly biffed).  Beyond North Carolina & Maine, it's honestly slim pickings.  There are no other Republicans in states that Harris won by less than 5-points...hell, there are no other Republicans in states Harris won by less-than 10 points.  It is possible during midterms to win states that the other party won by more than 10-points but it's rare.  The last time it happened was in the 2010 midterm bloodbath for the Democrats, where they lost a gargantuan 7 seats leading up to & on election night, but only 3 (Mark Kirk in Illinois, Scott Brown in Massachusetts, & Ron Johnson in Wisconsin...yes, in 2008 Obama won Wisconsin by 14-points, it was a different era) were in states Obama had won by more than 10-points.  So if there are flips of this nature , they'll happen in states that are unexpected (Brown & Kirk, in particular, were not expected to win those races this far out), and likely in states that the party has little chance to hold onto in a subsequent election (i.e. flukes).

This means that it could end up being in states that were much kinder to Joe Biden than Kamala Harris (Florida, Ohio, Iowa, & Texas are all states Biden lost by less than 10-points but Harris didn't, and all four have Senate seats up next year).  It could be a situation where the tariffs hit agricultural states worse than average, and you see places like Iowa, Ohio, Kansas, & Nebraska get hit hard.  There's also the possibility that the "threaten to turn pink" (i.e. red states that have shown some blue-trending signs in the past decade) states could flip as well.  This occurred in Virginia in 2006 to flip the Senate, and there are a few of them this cycle (Texas, Kansas, & Alaska, specifically).  And of course, Massachusetts being on the 2010 list is telling because they could happen in states that aren't open yet; an unexpected death or resignation of a senator in a purple state would upend the map in the way Ted Kennedy's did in 2009 or John McCain's seat did when it flipped & got Democrats a Senate majority in 2020, two years before it would've been up normally in 2022.

Recruitment will play a role here-Democrats, in particular, probably need high-profile candidates in Ohio & Texas just to keep up from a money perspective if nothing else as a fluke in those elections would still require tens of millions of dollars compared to cheaper states like Alaska or Iowa...but it won't matter as much as you'd think.  No one thought of Scott Brown, Ron Johnson, Kay Hagen, or Jim Webb as particularly standout candidates, and indeed in all of those races there were other candidates who would've been the first-choice.  Waves sometimes find rockstars (Hagen & Johnson, in particular, were clearly more talented than a fluke candidate usually is), but they also carry all boats, and in a situation where a wave is big enough to win a Senate majority for the Democrats (something I still see as unlikely), it will probably bring along some names that we don't know yet.  So while I don't think the Dems can take the Senate...I'm now watching those long-shot states to see if some random state legislator or city councilor is about to become one of the most powerful people in America.