What Does Success Look Like in 2024?

Success is a weird word in politics, particularly since it's a word synonymous with elections.  In an election, either you win or you lose.  There's no binary, there's no situation where you get to cast 40% of the votes even if you won 40% of the votes-you either win the office, or you don't.  But success goes along with the concept of expectations, and frequently you'll run into situations where you win, but you didn't win by enough, or where you lose, but you out-performed with that loss.

There are two good recent examples of this, both in the contests to win the majority of the US House of Representatives in the past two cycles.  In 2020, the Democrats won the House majority, winning 222 seats.  But most pundits, including me, assumed that they would win a lot more; the Democrats actually lost 13 seats, and while they had a majority (the most consequential House majority since at least 2009), they did it while presumably safe incumbents like Donna Shalala, Harley Rouda, & Gil Cisneros all lost races they were expected to win.  On the flip side, in 2022, the Republicans did win a majority, but left numerous seats on the table as Democratic incumbents like Susan Wild, Jahana Hayes, & Pat Ryan all kept their seats despite the supposed promise of a Republican wave.

Success shifts as cycles progress.  There are races today that we think of as relatively safe that will be much more competitive in November (and vice versa).  So I thought it would be interesting to capture, as of right now, what success will look like between the two parties for the White House, Senate, House, & Governors' races.  You'll note as you're reading this that there's a clear grey area between most of these.  I have marked "success" not as a binary, but as something of a scale.  For example, there's a decent chance that the race for the White House becomes something in between a straight-up success for Donald Trump and a straight-up success for Joe Biden.  For something like this, ultimately it won't matter when it's Election Night (and the only point is who gets to 270), but in terms of actual analytics of the race after the fact, I think it's worth noting that Biden could, say, still win, but have a night that underwhelms.  With that said, let's try this out and see what you think-if I see comments saying that this is a good idea, I might try a sequel around Labor Day to talk about how the races have shifted.

President Joe Biden (D-DE)

White House

Republican Success: First off, Trump needs to win.  Given his current polling, anything short of a win would mean he absolutely was unsuccessful (for the second cycle in a row).  Beyond that, I think that Trump needs to ebb the tide in at least some states.  Three states stand out to me as states I think Trump needs to do better than he did in 2020 for it to count as a true success.  The first is Georgia, his closest state, and one the Republicans lost a Senate election in in 2022; if the media claims about Black voters being friendlier to Trump are real, they need to prove it with an actual success in Georgia.  Second is Michigan, and here it's because the media (and to a lesser degree, Republicans) have made such a big deal about Biden "losing support" here in the primaries, I think if Biden wins, it'll prove they were wrong (the whole time), and part of success is actually being right.  And third is Nevada.  Republicans picked up a governorship there in 2022, and it is a demographically-challenging state for Democrats (large rural population, low college graduate rates).  These three states together would get Trump to 272 electoral college votes, and in my opinion need to be red to count as a success for Trump.

Democratic Success: On the flip side, I think a success for Joe Biden would be to largely maintain his 2024 margins in the electoral college.  Biden is down in polling right now, and honestly his supporters would be fine with just getting the bare minimum to 270 (me, I'm supporters in this scenario).  But that'd be a "win without success" as we illustrated above.  If he wants to be a success, I think he needs to outperform current polling which would mean winning at least 25 states.  I also think he needs to show at least some fear to Republicans by showing noticeable gains in at least one of the following four states: North Carolina, Texas, Florida, or Alaska.  If the Democrats ever really want to have the kind of advantage Republicans do in the Senate or House, they're going to have to start making plays for more than 25 states...making a gain in one (or more) of these four states on a presidential level, even if it doesn't mean a win (though in North Carolina, it'd basically have to) would be a big deal, especially as all of them have Senate races in 2026 where a Biden gain would help with recruitment.

Senate Leaders Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

Senate

Republican Success: Here's a good case of where the Republicans could win the majority and still find themselves underwhelming.  So for me, I think it means that the Republicans have to win a majority with at least 1-2 states that Joe Biden won in 2020.  The Republicans have done really, really well at tying up loose ends in red states in the Senate-just look at 2014 & 2018 for examples.  But they have been terrible at winning in states that they barely lost in 2020.  Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, & Nevada all had open seats or Democratic-held seats in 2022...the Republicans lost them all.  The only Biden state they won in the Senate in 2022 was with an incumbent, which is a much easier pull.  So they need to take out at least one Democratic Senate seat in a state Biden won in 2020 (in addition to winning a majority) to be called a success.  If Jacky Rosen, Ruben Gallego, Tammy Baldwin, Elissa Slotkin, & Bob Casey are all getting sworn in in January, the Republicans disappointed even if one of the many John's is the Senate Majority Leader.

Democratic Success: For Democrats, this one is a lot simpler-it's just a majority by any means.  Thanks to the retirement of Joe Manchin (who, let's be clear, would've lost even if he'd run as an Independent), the Democrats are already down to 50, and they're going to have to keep their majority by winning at least two states that Donald Trump won in 2020 to get there.  There are only four possibilities of how they get there.  The best are Sens. Sherrod Brown (OH) and Jon Tester (MT), both proven vote-getters (they're both running for a fourth term), but both are in states that have trended away from the Democrats since they first ran.  It's possible that if one of them loses the Democrats still have a shot in two "pink" states: Texas with Rep. Colin Allred and Florida with Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.  If either one of these two win, it would be a huge help to Chuck Schumer's bottom line for a majority, but basically-success means that two of these four would win AND bring a majority with them.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) with House
Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)

House

Republican Success: First off, a majority.  I personally don't think either side is winning a huge House majority at this point-either side getting to over 230 seats would stun me, and 225 would raise an eyebrow.  But what I do think they need is a majority that stems the tide of a few of the trends we saw in 2024.  There's opportunities for the Republicans to keep at least some of the blue seats that they took in 2022 in California & New York.  Both of these states are solid blue, but they are solid blue states that shifted rightward in 2024.  If the Republicans could prove that these areas are, in fact, trending red (not necessarily the states, but sections of them), it would provide fertile playing ground for the remainder of the decade, and become something the Republicans were able to hold over Democrats as it appears increasingly likely that there will be more "Dem POTUS-won" districts in 2024 than Republicans with Trump on the ballot.

Democratic Success: Again, first off, a majority.  Regaining the majority is what qualifies for success from the start.  After that, I think the House Democrats need to show the opposite of Senate Democrats.  Senate Democrats need to show that they can still convince voters to split their ballots.  House Democrats need to prove, even against impressive incumbents, that they can win based solely on getting the D behind their name across the finish line.  There are currently nine Republicans who won a district in 2022 that Joe Biden won by 5+ points in 2020: John Duarte, David Valadao, Mike Garcia, Michelle Steel, Don Bacon, Anthony D'Esposito, Mike Lawler, Brandon Williams, & Lori Chavez-DeRemer.  Not a single, solitary House Democrat holds a seat like that without the help of ranked-choice voting, and these are not the kinds of seats that the Democrats can just sit around and waste.  Success would look like the DCCC knocking out most of these (Steel would be the hardest).  I also think it would behoove the Democrats to get rid of a few first-term incumbents who are in marginal Biden seats (specifically looking at Juan Ciscomani, Tom Kean, & Jen Kiggans) as they're going to get entrenched really quickly if Democrats aren't careful-if all three of these incumbents get a second term, Democrats should be a little ashamed even if they were able to cobble together a majority with just the more Biden-leaning districts.

Governor

Success for Both Sides: With so few races this year, there are really only two places I can point to where it's clear both sides are competitive: New Hampshire & North Carolina.  Unless Phil Scott decides to retire in Vermont (he hasn't announced yet, and part of me wonders if he's waiting to see if Bernie Sanders retires to see if a Senate run is in the cards), these are the only two seats that will be competitive this cycle.  And what do you know-they are evenly split, and both with outgoing incumbents: Roy Cooper (D-NC) and Chris Sununu (R-NH).  So success is honestly pretty easy to measure here-if the Republicans take both, that's success for them, if the Democrats take both, that's success for them...and a split would be a draw.  Looking at these races, it's worth noting that while North Carolina is settled, and between two polar opposite candidates (the left-of-middle Attorney Genereal Josh Stein versus maybe the most extremist Republican on the map in a major 2024 race, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson), New Hampshire is still not settled, though limited polling so far shows this to be a likely race between former Sen. Kelly Ayotte and Manchester Mayor Joyce Craig.  With only two competitive races, both sides have very little room for error if they want to call this year a success.