Fight for the Senate: The Majority Makers

Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-TX)

Yesterday, the Senate Leadership Fund pulled funding for the North Carolina Senate race.  This was not entirely unexpected.  The polling averages in the race have former Gov. Roy Cooper up by an average of 9-points, and as far as I can find, there has not been a single, solitary poll showing Cooper behind former RNC Chairman Michael Whatley.  This move is as close as you can get to national Republicans basically admitting that they are not going to win this race (though they'd never say it publicly), but if we're being honest, this race was lost pretty much the instant that Thom Tillis announced he was retiring (Tillis would've been an underdog in this environment, but he'd be doing much better than Whatley is).

But this move does something to the math for the Senate Democrats-it gets them one step closer to winning back a Senate majority, which they lost two years ago when Donald Trump won a second term.  North Carolina has long been the easiest pickup of the bunch, but easy pickups still count, and in order for the Democrats to get a Senate majority, they need a minimum of four seats; the Republicans basically giving up and conceding this race to Cooper means that we only have three to go.

What's weird is that while (for months) it's not been clear exactly what the Senate majority would look like given (other than North Carolina and Maine) there were no pickup opportunities in states that Trump won by less than ten points up in 2026, to me the map is pretty simple now.  The Democrats, should they win the majority probably need to win four specific seats: North Carolina, Texas, Alaska, & Maine.  If they win these seats, the majority feels assured...if they miss even one of these seats, I'd argue that they probably didn't get a majority.

This isn't to say these are the only competitive seats, because they're not.  The Republicans are unlikely to pickup a seat (though they seem to have at least a theoretical chance in Michigan, New Hampshire, and Minnesota, though all states the Democrat is clearly favored, albeit in Minnesota the Democrat's campaign is so bad the lousy polling feels self-inflicted in the way it isn't in MI/NH...for my money Peggy Flanagan is running the worst Senate campaign from a Democrat that we'll probably still win in at least a few cycles).  More likely, there are other Democratic pickup opportunities, with the most-commonly cited ones being in Ohio, Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska (probably in that order).  Any of those four seats could counter if the Democrats lose one of these contests.

But if you asked me to pick the easiest path specifically to 51, it'd be NC/TX/ME/AK.  Polling and logic bear this out.  North Carolina we've already discussed, but in most public polling Texas & Alaska have shown the Democrats in a strong position.  There's differing reasons for this, with Alaska getting there by the Democrats nominating the only person who possibly could've won (former Rep. Mary Peltola) while in Texas the Republicans chose literally the only person who could possibly have lost (AG Ken Paxton), but polling shows Peltola and Talarico in a very strong position, with Talarico arguably in a better spot.  Polls can be wrong (don't I know it), but polls would need to be basically catastrophically wrong at this point for Talarico to lose.  Unless a late-breaking scandal busts (and with over $100M in ad spending and still no movement in Texas, I doubt one is coming), I think Talarico has to be called the frontrunner, as uncomfortable as that makes me saying in Texas.

But this also poses a dilemma.  In the same way that California & New York have become synonymous with Democratic politics, Texas is a Republican state.  It is, in fact THE Republican state.  It is also, thanks to having so many dense population centers across San Antonio, Austin, Houston, & Dallas, a very expensive state to have a Senate campaign in, so trying to turn the tide in the state costs gargantuan sums of money.  As a result, if they actually care about their Senate majority, the GOP would do the smart thing and triage TX in the same way that they are North Carolina.  It's clear at this point that money isn't going to help the cause on ads in TX...instead, if Paxton wins, it'll solely be because angry-at-Trump Republicans in the state couldn't ultimately vote for a Democrat, even against a Republican they hate.  But there are states like Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, & Ohio where the Democrats are in much closer-to-tossup races, and those states surely could use the money more than in Texas.  And if they care about the majority, they should be giving that money to help Susan Collins.

In my mind, as hard as it is to believe given the state's voting history, the tipping point state has shifted not to Alaska or Texas, but to Maine, a state the Kamala Harris won in 2024, and hasn't voted for a Republican for president since 1988.  Sen. Susan Collins (R) is an electoral juggernaut, and Senate President Troy Jackson (D) is running an underwhelming campaign.  I said this at the time, but I did say that picking our nominee to face Collins (a shrewd retail campaigner) from a pile of people Hannah Pingree had just vanquished was a bad idea, but no one listened to me, and now we're stuck with Jackson and need to get him across the finish line.  Unlike Paxton & Dan Sullivan in Alaska, Collins regularly shows up in decent shape in polls, and you'd argue the race is probably a tossup.  I place it as the tipping point state over Ohio (which honestly has more consistent Democratic leads) largely due to the state's inherent blue bias-even the tied polls between Collins & Jackson give Jackson more upside to gain, because literally all he has to do is convince Harris voters to elect a Democrat (also...why the hell hasn't Kamala Harris campaigned with him yet...one of the few races she'd make a difference & I'm seeing nothing).  Both sides could use money and support here...and it's hard to argue at this point that triaging Texas, which could well be a lost cause, is the smart decision both for the majority and to prevent a bloodbath (and majorly hurting their 2028 chances) in other R-held tossup seats.  That the Republicans aren't willing to do this either says to me that they don't seem to have a gage on what is happening right now, or are unwilling to cede Texas because of its synonymous status with the GOP brand...even if that means that they might be giving up the Senate majority with that stubborness.