In Senate Races, Democrats Aim to Exceed Expectations

Senate Democratic candidates are outpolling their party's presidential nominee in competitive states. Can they keep it up?

As was the case on the previous iteration of this newsletter, from time to time I’ll publish a post on Senate elections and the overall orientation of the chamber. But before I do a necessary methodological disclaimer.

I use senate election data — not presidential election or national data — to gauge the partisan orientation of U.S. Senate seats and the states. I do not forecast elections. I cite statewide polls from established polling aggregators to offer analysis on the state of upcoming elections. I’m compelled to say this because the modus operandi in electoral data journalism is to treat presidential results or national polling as a proxy benchmark in designating partisan orientations in states and districts. Given the structural nature of the United States as a federated democracy with no legally-binding national electoral metrics, I believe the most accurate way to capture the partisan orientation of a state or district for a specific office is to simply apply the historical state or district election results data to the corresponding office. Presidential data for presidential races, Senate data for senate races, gubernatorial data for gubernatorial races, and so on. Additionally, national nor presidential election data will be used as a baseline in producing an index score for the partisan orientation of a state or district.

With that out of the way, this year the 34 Class 1 seats are up for election. One special election will take place in Nebraska, a Class 2 seat. Nine sitting senators are retiring, two Republicans and seven Democratic caucus members. Democrats are defending 23 seats to Republicans’ 11 seats. Currently, Republicans lead by 0.5 points in the median Senate seat, and Democrats lead by 0.4 points in the median state. The index scores for each seat are based on the average net Democrat two-party margin for the last two full-term general elections for each seat.

Seven seats are considered the most competitive this years in Arizona, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — all of which are held by Democrats. One seat in West Virginia, occupied by retiring Democrat-turned-Independent Joe Manchin is already forecast to be won by governor and Democrat-turned-Republican Jim Justice. Based on RealClearPolitics’ forecast, Republicans would need to pick up one of the competitive seats to earn a 51-seat outright majority. This assumes Republicans retain their existing seats. Alternatively put, Democrats would need to run the table and win all seven races to win 50 seats — and manage an upset either in Florida or Texas to retain their 51-seat majority. While an outright majority seems much less likely, splitting the chamber appears more achievable than meets the eye.

Though an outright Democratic majority seems like a tall order and the party is defending more seats in competitive states (in presidential terms), Senate Democrats are holding up much better than expected.

Senate Democratic candidates in competitive races have been retaining consistent leads that are for the most part larger than their index scores. That stands in contrast to the Democratic presidential ticket which is struggling in these competitive states but that has seen a modest shift toward Democrats since Kamala Harris became the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.

Jon Tester in Montana, first elected in 2006, stands out as the most vulnerable Democrat trailing his challenger by an average 1.5 points. Tester won his 2018 and 2012 elections by under 3 points, and was first elected by unseating a Republican by under one point. Montana, like West Virginia, today, has long been viewed as a quintessential Republican state, largely because of the facile way states are designated purely based on presidential voting patterns. But these states were each fully represented by Democrats in the Senate as late as 2012. If Democrats lose in Montana, it’ll be the first time ever two popularly-elected Republicans represent Montana in the U.S. Senate, and for West Virginia the first time since 1931.

Among the most competitive seats, the median seat leans Democrat by 3 points. The median competitive Senate election leans 5 points toward Democrats, according to RealClearPolitics’ average. In contrast, the Republican presidential nominee holds an average 4 point lead.

Like Tester, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Sherrod Brown of Ohio were both first elected in 2006. Both senators consistently outperformed the Democratic candidates running for the other senate seat in their states. Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin was first elected in 2012 and re-elected six years later by similar margins. In Nevada, Jacky Rosen is the junior-most incumbent Democrat having comfortably gotten elected in Democrats’ 2018 blue wave by about five points. Democrats in states with open seats in Arizona and Michigan involve incumbent U.S. House representatives. Rep. Elissa Slotkin is leading in the polls by an average margin larger than the seat’s index score and in a state with a longer history of leaning Democrat. In contrast is Rep. Ruben Gallego who facing a familiar statewide figure, Kari Lake, who narrowly lost a bid for governor two years ago. Gallego appears to be outperforming the seat’s index score in a state with only a very recent history of pivoting slightly toward Senate Democrats, and to a lesser extent presidential and gubernatorial Democrats.

It’s also worth mentioning that in recent history this class of senators have enjoyed running their campaigns in favorable political environments. The 2018 elections were a blowout for Democrats, 2012 elections were held concurrent with Barack Obama’s re-election, and 2006 represented a backlash to incumbent Republican leadership. In 2000, Democrats wound up effectively splitting the Senate making 1994 the last bad Class 1 elections for Democrats. Polling right now forecasts an outcome closer to 2000 than 1994. Another year, another narrowly divided country.

Political analysts for some time had gotten used to the idea that partisan polarization and geographic sorting of the electorate would indefinitely make Senate elections easier to forecast. After all, there are fewer states with split partisan representation in the Senate than at any time in modern American history and a state electing a senator belonging to a party opposite of the party the state cast for president has become rarer. Tester and Manchin are examples of this, winning re-election in 2018 after Trump carried their states two years prior. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin eked out a re-election win in 2022 after Joe Biden carried the state in 2020.

If the polling averages in 2024 hold up, we could witness an incredibly sharp break from this conventional wisdom, not in succeeding elections but on the same ticket. A renaissance of ticket-splitting!

This stands in contrast to electoral expectations one prominent progressive pollster posited in 2022 that was picked up by the NYTimes opinion section. I cite it because the forecast is representative of a larger narrative among progressives, including journalists and Ivy League academics, that the U.S. Senate is rigged against Democrats and that Republicans are on the cusp of winning an outsized number of Senate seats than their national vote shares.

The forecast makes plausible estimates but concludes with Senate projection that seems out of step. Specifically, because of factors including geographic sorting, education and race polarization, the pollster’s forecast posited that if Democrats earned 49 percent of the two-party national congressional vote in 2022 (which they did) and 51 percent of the two-party presidential vote in 2024 (which is plausible), the party would have a 39 percent chance of winning the presidency in 2024 (again, a fair estimate not far off from existing forecasts) but would only be expected to earn 42 Senate seats. For this forecast to be accurate, Republicans would need to sweep all seven competitive seats and pick up one more seat in comfortably-though-not-solidly Democratic seats in Virginia, Maryland, or New Mexico. This forecast likely presumes a closer partisan alignment between the presidential and senate races than either index scores at the time or current polling indicates.

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A 58-seat Republican Senate majority would be unprecedented in modern times, the last attained was after the 1928 election, the only time the GOP ever held a filibuster-proof supermajority. Since then, Republicans have never exceeded 55 percent of Senate seats. Democrats, conversely, have attained several and frequently concurrent filibuster-proof supermajorities since 1928, most recently after 2008. Democrats also exceeded 55 seats three times since 1990.

After much of the mid-twentieth century in the minority, Senate Republicans around 1980 started to chip away at the Democrats’ broad midwest-southern coalition that delivered the party lasting majorities. During the 2000s and into the 2010s, Republicans had picked up long-held blue seats in Louisiana, Iowa, Florida, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, South Carolina, Georgia and Missouri. Today, the partisan composition of the U.S. Senate is closely aligned with the national congressional vote.

If Senate Republicans did wind up earning a share of seats markedly disproportionate to their share of any given national vote, the chamber’s excesses would be checked by a much more evenly divided, and possibly Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. Further, the perfectly excusable disparity wouldn’t only be a product of the very purpose of the U.S. Senate but also reflective of a privilege Senate Democrats had enjoyed for most of the time they were in the majority, including today, as the party that retains control of the Senate despite having lost the most recent national congressional vote.

I’m expecting Senate races to tighten as early voting begins (starting with Pennsylvania in mid-September!) but absent any truly seismic shift, I’m anticipating that Senate Democrats to outperform their presidential nominee as they did in 2020 and 2016, regardless of whether they split or lose control of the chamber.

In a political media dominated by national narratives, That Patchwork is a first-of-its-kind newsletter about democracy from a decentralist angle. To preserve democratic pluralism will mean dispersing power and challenging the primacy of national narratives and the presumption that central power knows best.

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Beyond That Patchwork

Here’s drummer Art Blakey’s recording of “Minority” from sometime in the 1950s with Clifford Brown on trumpet, Lou Donaldson on alto saxophone, Horace Silver on piano and Curly Russell on bass. I would give this track a supermajority.