The US Senate: On the Ballot, Too
We look at not just individual races here, but the institution and its ability to be the "cooling saucer of democracy." It matters.
While all eyes and too many public polls are focused on the presidential contest, partisan control of Congress, both House and Senate, is also on the ballot in almost every state.
Except for a few of the smaller states—think Wyoming, Delaware, and maybe a few others—there is at least one seriously contested election that could tip control of the House or Senate. And given the vast differences between the parties and the array of issues on our dashboards over the next few years, they are big deals.
Today, we look at the US Senate. With Democratic presidential nominee and former US Senator Kamala Harris advocating for the elimination of the filibuster—that pesky Rule XXII that requires a 60-vote (three-fifths) supermajority to end debate and pass things with a simple majority vote on most issues—Senate races matter. The only two now-former Democrats primarily responsible for preserving the filibuster are retiring. I’ve written before about the litany of evils that could become reality if the filibuster goes the way of the dodo bird. As of January, not a single Democratic US Senator will defend it.
Democrats narrowly control the US Senate today with 51 votes. There are 34 US Senate races on the ballot, and this “class” of US Senators is the product of three successive Democratic wave elections in 2006 (Bush six-year itch), 2012 (Obama reelection), and 2018 (Trump midterm). For many incumbents who have been around that long, this is the most challenging cycle they’ve ever faced, and their polling shows it. Twenty-three of the 34 seats up are in Democratic hands - only 11 GOP incumbent seats are on the ballot, and nearly all of them are generally safe (there’s always the potential for a surprise, but it would have to turn into a severe Democratic wave election - again - and that’s not happening).
And that’s even though it isn’t a “Republican” wave cycle. Not even close.
We’re now less than a month away from the election, and right in the middle of debate season for many of the most competitive races. Based on on-the-ground past experience in many of these states and as many credible polls that we can find (not that many), let’s take a quick look at races lumped into three categories: Most likely to flip, most competitive, and “on the bubble.” Any race not listed here is not in doubt.
Most Likely to Flip
Most observers agree that West Virginia’s incumbent Gov. Jim Justice, the Democrat-turned-GOP US Senate nominee, is headed to Washington to replace retiring Democrat Joe Manchin.
Quick, name the Democratic nominee. I bet you can’t. It’s Wheeling Mayor Glenn Elliott.
The once-former Democratic stronghold has joined other states such as Oklahoma, Arkansas, and a handful of others that have flipped from blue to red over the past two decades (almost as many states have flipped in the other direction, including Colorado and to a lesser extent, Virginia).
Montana is another one that looks almost certain to flip, thanks to Montana’s increasingly red hue and the strong support Donald Trump enjoys there. Incumbent Sen. Jon Tester is running consistently behind in nearly every poll to Tim Sheehy, a first-time candidate, ex-Navy SEAL, aerial firefighter, and millionaire businessman, despite being outspent nearly 4:1, not including the gush of independent spending. Sheehy holds consistent leads in most polling beyond the margin of error. Trump carried Montana, which used to be a bellwether state, with nearly 57 percent of the vote. He is likely to do even better here in 2024.
That will give Republicans and the subsequent Republican Senate leader - either current Assistant Leader John Thune (R-SD) or former Assistant Leader John Cornyn (R-TX) a slim majority no matter who wins the presidency (the vice president is the President of the Senate and a tie-breaking vote). No matter how slim, the odds of GOP control are very high.
Several more competitive races could expand the GOP majority. Here they are, with most recently credible public polling placing them all within the margin of error.
Pennsylvania
Former hedge fund manager, Army paratrooper, Iraq War veteran, and second-time GOP Senate candidate Dave McCormick is running one of the best campaigns of this election cycle. His media is terrific; he’s mastered the art of retail organizational politics and has an unparalleled grasp of public policy. He is running an almost mistake-free campaign. Incumbent Democrat Bob Casey Jr. has forever run on the coattails of his late famous father and former Governor, Bob Casey Sr. Casey’s undistinguished career and careening to the left - including largely flipping on the abortion issue that made his famously pro-life father a political legend - has contributed to his vulnerability.
Casey’s overt support for the anti-semitic progressive US Rep. Summer Lee (D-PA) in her competitive primary in Pittsburgh earlier this year is an issue, despite his recent condemnations of their protestations. Also, Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race in a state he’s called home (Scranton) and performed well in (he won here in 2020) for Kamala Harris hurts Casey’s prospects.
This is also the most competitive, if not the most important, state in the presidential contest. The presidential and US Senate races are coin tosses, and turnout will be a deciding factor.
One thing I’ve learned about polling for incumbents is WYSIWYG—what you see is what you get. Towards the end of the election, most undecided voters usually migrate to the challenger. Their lone debate this week showcased Casey’s desperation, inability to defend a weak record, and McCormick’s positive energy.
The GOP vote seems slightly underrepresented in public polling, primarily due to response bias. I’m giving McCormick a slight edge now, but it could go either way.
Ohio
The Buckeye State is another one that has trended red in recent elections, and incumbent Sherrod Brown’s five-decade public service career seems poised to end. Car magnate Bernie Merino, who won a very competitive GOP primary after dropping out of another Senate race two years ago (won by vice presidential nominee JD Vance), is running within the margin of error and trending in the right direction. The political environment favors Merino, who continues to evolve as a candidate, but Brown’s working-class and union appeal can’t be overlooked. It’s not hard to imagine a class of voters supporting Trump and Brown based on each’s unique “working class” appeals.
Brown has tempered his attacks on Trump and played nice with freshman US Sen. JD Vance. The Trump-Vance ticket will comfortably carry Ohio. Brown has stressed bipartisanship in his messaging. Merino is focused on winning as many Trump voters as possible. This is another toss-up, but remembering our WYSIWYG principle, a Merino win is a distinct possibility.
Wisconsin
Businessman Eric Hovde has pulled within a statistical tie with three-term incumbent Democrat Tammy Baldwin. Wisconsin is one of the most competitive states in the nation. Hovde has run a more focused and aggressive campaign after a slow start and a recent shakeup of his campaign. He’s putting Baldwin on her heels with possibly misusing her official Senate office account to pay for travel from Wisconsin to see her partner in New York and a conflict of interest.
“Hovde’s team also believes they’ve found a salient line of attack against Baldwin on insider dealings,” writes Jessica Taylor of the Cook Political Report. “They’ve been hitting her partner Maria Brisbane, a New York private wealth manager, for allegedly profiting off industries Baldwin oversees in the Senate as chair of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services and Education. ‘They spend their time in New York and DC in their multi-million dollar homes, but Baldwin fails to report their jointly owned assets or Maria's clients who get rich off industries that Tammy regulates,’ an ad from Fix Washington PAC, largely funded by Hovde’s brother, says.”
Cook Political Report has just rated this race a “toss-up. " If trend lines continue, Hovde will win. Polling here has proven difficult and untrustworthy. In 2020, a Washington Post/ABC poll just before the 2020 election showed Biden defeating Trump by 17 points. Biden won, instead, by .6 percent. Wisconsin politically looks more like Pennsylvania than Ohio, but the trend lines here favor Hovde, for now.
What's the bottom line of our most competitive races? I think the GOP will win two of these races, losing a third one by the closest of margins. Which ones? I’m not saying; it's too early to tell.
On the Bubble
Several more races are catching my attention in competitive states, especially Michigan, where former US Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) is within the margin of error in most credible polling with US Rep. Elise Slotkin (D-MI). Rogers is a solid recruit and a serious, knowledgeable candidate. It is an interesting race between two national security experts.
If Trump can win in Michigan as he did in 2016 and overcome questionable election integrity issues in Wayne County, the state’s largest, Rogers has a strong chance. It excites me to think of a US Senate with serious and smart policymakers like Mike Rogers and Dave McCormick, among others.
Another “on the bubble” race I can’t read is Maryland’s contest between Democrat Angela Alsobrooks and former Gov. Larry Hogan. The polling has been all over the map, although recent polls favor Alsobrooks in the heavily Democratic state. Still, Hogan has long defied political gravity here as the state's recent and popular two-term GOP governor (2015-2022).
What makes Maryland’s race interesting is Hogan’s style, which focuses on civility, results, bipartisanship (despite his attacks on Alsobrook’s misuse of tax benefits she didn’t deserve), and his anti-Trumpism. He will test the theory that American voters (at least in Maryland) seek genuine bipartisanship in their elected officials. Hogan’s success has come during mid-term elections, and he’s probably hurt by running in a presidential year. Still, kudos to National Republican Senatorial Committee chair and US Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) for recruiting Hogan to run. He’s the only GOP candidate with a chance to win in this deep blue state and would enter the Senate with a ton of leverage as an unreliable Republican.
I’ll briefly mention other races to keep an eyeball on and call it a day.
Arizona seems poised to vote for Trump this time - if Maricopa County can get its electoral act together - but it doesn’t appear to be helping the polarizing pro-Trump GOP candidate, former broadcaster and defeated gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. Despite a progressive voting record, US Rep. Rueben Gallego (D-AZ) seems poised to win unless trends change with polling margins beyond the margin of error, including with one of Trump’s pollsters, Tony Fabrizio.
In Nevada, the race between Democratic candidate Jackie Rosen and GOP challenger and wounded Afghan war veteran Sam Brown was much closer when Biden was in the presidential race. Harris has reenergized the Democratic base here, and most believe Brown’s chances of an upset have dropped. Rosen seems to outperform Harris in the state, and Brown’s campaign seems to be stalled.
California’s Senate race is not getting much attention. Still, my disgust with pathological liar and House-censured US Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) has me cheering for baseball legend and Republican Steve Garvey. Garvey is doing his best, but with so many Republicans having moved out of the state recently, it’s hard to imagine a path to victory. And the likes of Adam Schiff in the Senate will be bad for the institution and the nation. In their debate this week, Schiff spent all his time tying Garvey to Trump while Garvey addressed issues more critical to struggling Californians.
In Virginia, most people seem to have forgotten that Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) was Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016. He proved a weak veep candidate and has been a largely unremarkable Senator and former Governor, best known for being caught on I-95 during a freak snowstorm and sleeping overnight in his car. Also, he claims to be suffering from “long COVID” and has unsuccessfully tried to persuade his colleagues to throw millions of dollars at it. His GOP challenger (and my neighbor) Hung Cao is an impressive Vietnamese refugee, Naval Academy graduate, and 25-year retired Captain and special operations officer. While his personal story is compelling, he’s proving less impressive as a political candidate.
Parts of his recent debate performance against Kaine went viral on social media. Despite his mediocrity, Kaine remains favored in a state that has trended more Democratic in recent years, thanks to an explosion of growth in the government-laden suburbs of Washington, DC. It doesn’t help that Cao’s campaign has no visibility outside social media.
Lastly, I’ve been watching New Jersey’s open seat race between the unremarkable US Rep. Andy Kim (D-NJ) and Cape May hotel developer Curtis Bashaw. Bashaw is running a culturally left campaign - he’s a “pro-choice” married gay man - and as a traditional pro-business conservative. Bashaw is perhaps the hardest-working candidate of the cycle, which unfortunately played out when he froze briefly in last week’s debate hosted by the New Jersey Globe on YouTube. He attributed it to not eating all day on the campaign trail. One recent poll showed it surprisingly close, but Harris will carry New Jersey comfortably. Whether Bashaw can attract enough Democratic cross-over and motivate culturally conservative GOP votes remains to be seen. With Kim’s bold and successful challenge to the scandal-plagued and now-resigned US Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), it’s hard to tell if that dynamic will play out in Bashaw’s favor. It’s also hard to reach New Jersey voters, sandwiched between the expensive New York and Philadelphia media markets.
Still, Andy Kim is not an impressive candidate or Member of Congress. Bashaw offers more to New Jersey voters if they are willing to cross party lines. It’s been a long time since Jersey voters elected a Republican to the US Senate. That would be Clifford Case, who was last reelected in 1972. Case lost the 1978 GOP primary to conservative Jeffrey Bell, who lost to former NBA basketball star and future Democratic presidential candidate Bill Bradley. He passed away in 1982.
Speaking of crossover votes, that may be behind so many House and Senate GOP candidates trailing Trump’s polling in many states. Both presidential candidates are “underwater” on their job and personal approval ratings, and more than a few voters may hold their noses, vote for Trump, and then crossover to vote Democratic to keep a check on a second Trump administration. It also might work in reverse with some Harris voters, who are consumed with hatred for Trump but may vote for GOP candidates down the ballot.
Polling also suggests that voters are deeply divided on partisan grounds, and cross-over votes are less likely to make a difference except in very close contests.
Some pundits point out that polling for GOP US Senate candidates trails Donald Trump's. That is unsurprising since voters have long formulated their views of presidential candidates but are still learning about down-ballot races. The polling will shift following debates, they learn more about the candidates, and the contestants ramp up their efforts. From my experience, I’ve seen dramatic shifts in candidate support during the last 2-3 weeks of an election based on national factors and issues.
After all, most polls had the Carter vs. Reagan presidential contest of 1980 mostly tied until the final debate on October 28th. After Reagan effectively framed the question - are you better off than you were four years ago? - nearly all the undecided votes fell into his camp by the following weekend. Reagan won in an electoral landslide.
Trump needs to do little more than borrow from Reagan’s playbook . . . including behaving more like him.
Democrats are spending heavily on places like Texas, Florida, and most recently, Nebraska, where some polling or unique circumstances seem to give them faint hopes of an upset in one or more of those states. It’s hard for me to see US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who survived an onslaught of over $100 million spent against him in his 2018 race against Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, losing to US Rep. Collin Alred (D-TX). Same with incumbent GOP Senators Rick Scott (R-FL) and Deb Fischer (R-NE), whose opponent is technically an “independent” with solid Democratic support.
But all these races matter. If Harris wins and Democrats can keep control of the Senate, then the filibuster will be a thing of the past. And when that goes, so will voter integrity, an expanded US Supreme Court, and much more. Still, it looks favorable for the GOP to capture at least 51 and possibly as many as 54 or more seats. That would be good for America, at least for two more years, if it did nothing more than preserve the filibuster and make it harder to confirm bad judges.
And the 2028 presidential campaign will begin on November 6.
Excellent rundown. Over the last two presidential election cycles, states with Senate elections have tended to go with whoever won the Presidential election—with the exception of Susan Collins in Maine.
Wow on Hung Cao in VA. He would sure be a breath of fresh air in the Senate.