The Race for the Senate: Democrats Still in the Game, but Republicans Have the Upper Hand

KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE

— Republicans remain favored to flip the Senate majority this year.

— Democrats are still in the game, but they need to win all the closest races just to get to 50-50, and they are likely behind in at least one of those races, Montana.

— We aren’t making any rating changes in the top-tier races in this update, although some may be coming soon as we wait for more information.

— Democrats appear to retain leads in 5 seats they are defending in presidential battlegrounds, although Republicans argue that the gravity of the presidential race will allow them to catch up.

— We remain skeptical of the Democrats’ ability to truly put Florida and Texas in play, and the Republicans’ ability to put Maryland in play.

Map 1: Crystal Ball Senate ratings

The race for the Senate

Imagine it’s Election Night 2024. Vice President Kamala Harris wins a promotion by sweeping most of the 7 states that the Crystal Ball currently rates as Toss-ups in the Electoral College. Just down the ballot, Democrats also hold all of their Senate seats in those presidential battlegrounds.

But, at the same time Harris is winning the swing states, Democrats lose their hold on the Senate because Montana, which Donald Trump easily carried, elected… a Republican.

All things considered, this scenario—which former Democratic pollster Adam Carlson got into our heads with a recent post outlining a similar outcome—could hardly be considered a bad outcome for Democrats, especially considering where things seemed to be going earlier this summer before President Biden announced his retirement. But it still speaks to the fundamental challenges Democrats face in holding the Senate. With 49 seats, plus what amounts to a “gimme” with West Virginia’s open seat, Senate Republicans only need to flip one additional Democratic-held seat for outright control of the chamber. Democrats, especially in Senate contests, have beaten expectations before, though: most recently, in 2022, with the Senate tied 50/50, Democrats had literally no room for error—they ended up flipping Pennsylvania for a net gain in the chamber. But any possible post-2024 Democratic Senate majority would be predicated on an amount of ticket-splitting that has just become much harder to come by, and this is a more difficult map for Senate Democrats than 2022 was.

So while the presidential race will almost certainly hinge on one of the “classic” swing states, like Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, we would consider Montana’s race as this cycle’s crucial bellwether contest for control of the Senate. This cycle, Republicans are hoping they can finally defeat 3-term Sen. Jon Tester (D) with businessman and retired Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy (R). While Senate Democrats are also defending Trump-won Ohio, we see Montana as a bit of a tougher defensive assignment. It’s true that Montana, as a smaller state, lends itself better to retail politics, but it is also simply a redder state than Ohio: in 2020, Donald Trump’s 16-point margin in the former was double his margin in the latter.

We’ll have some more thoughts on Ohio a little later, but with that in mind, we have been debating whether to change our rating for Montana’s contest—we are pulling back the curtain a bit here, although we are also constantly monitoring every race for potential rating changes. In canvassing our contacts from both sides over the past week or so, we came to the conclusion that Sheehy likely is ahead, although not necessarily by much.

The bulk of the recent public polling also suggests Sheehy is ahead. However, the only nonpartisan poll of that race that appears to come from a source that the New York Times defines as “select” was from early August, when Emerson College showed Sheehy leading Tester by just a 48%-46% margin. Another recent poll, from KULR-TV in Billings, gave Sheehy a 51%-45% lead, although Democrats emphasize that this survey was published shortly after Trump held a rally in the state aimed at boosting Sheehy. We’d like to see a little more, ideally from a highly-rated public pollster, before moving to a Leans Republican rating. One challenge is that Montana is not polled very often, and because it is not a presidential swing state, it has not received much attention from prominent public pollsters.

One historical comparison that may be apt is now-former Sen. Heidi Heitkamp’s (D) 2018 race in next-door North Dakota. After an upset win in 2012, Heitkamp sought a second term—but by this time in the 2018 cycle, we noted that it was getting hard to find good news for Democrats in North Dakota. Heitkamp would eventually lose 55%-44% to now-Sen. Kevin Cramer (R). While Tester likely is behind, we don’t feel that he’s as endangered now as Heitkamp was then. And, in fairness to Heitkamp, her terrain was tougher—in recent presidential elections, North Dakota voted almost perfectly in tandem with MT-2, the redder of Montana’s two congressional districts.

According to AdImpact Politics’s running tally, Montana voters can look forward to seeing (at least) nearly $110 million dollars’ worth during this post-Labor Day stretch of the campaign. Unlike several more marginal states, where Democratic incumbents or nominees are running circles around their GOP opposition in terms of spending, the partisan balance of the future ad reservations in Montana is split about evenly between the parties. As one of our Republican contacts summed up the larger state of play to us, “we just need to get to 51 seats.” Montana represents that 51st seat, and we see why Republicans are optimistic about their chances to get it, even as we’re being cautious in holding the race at Toss-up.

Republicans have also emphasized to us that, after being an announced candidate for more than a year, the Democrats have not “disqualified” Sheehy. As a first-time candidate, he lacks a voting record to scrutinize, although he has given Democrats a few opportunities to make political hay. Last week, for instance, audio surfaced of Sheehy making what a local news outlet characterized as “racially-tinged” comments about Native Americans, a small but important voting bloc in Montana that Democrats see as crucial to Tester’s path to victory. He also made a comment about privatizing health care that has been prominent in Democratic advertising. But whatever one thinks of Sheehy, he does not seem to have the glaring flaws that so many GOP Senate challengers had last cycle. Republicans, meanwhile, have been working to tie Tester to the national Democratic brand, a logical strategy in a state that is redder at the presidential level than any House district Democrats won in the 2022 midterm.

If Tester is likely down by some amount in Montana, the other red-state Democrat in a Toss-up race, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), is likely leading, as public polls suggest.

However, it’s also the case that Donald Trump should win Ohio again by a margin commensurate with his 2016 and 2020 margin of 8 points each time. Republicans are confident that in an era where ticket-splitting is on the decline, businessman Bernie Moreno (R) will eventually edge ahead of Brown based on a nationalizing message. That said, Brown is a well-funded and reasonably well-liked incumbent who performed much better than the overall Democratic statewide ticket the last time he was on the ballot in 2018, winning by a little under 7 points while the statewide Democratic executive officeholder candidates lost by roughly 3-6 points, a 10-point or more difference in margin that is the kind of ticket-splitting level Brown needs to survive this cycle. In the 2022 Senate election, an open seat, former Rep. Tim Ryan (D, OH-13) lost by 6 points to now-Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), while Republicans swept the statewide executive races by margins roughly triple that or more. Back in 2016, Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) won reelection by 21 points while Trump won statewide by 8. There are race-specific reasons we could point out for this ticket-splitting in each instance, but there also is recent precedent in Ohio for the level of ticket-splitting that polls suggest is possible in this race. But it also would hardly be shocking if Brown ultimately cannot produce that kind of separation from the top of the ticket, particularly given broader national trends.

Moreno, a wealthy car dealer, recently announced a $25 million ad buy, likely backed by at least some self-funding, and one of his recent ads is a fairly clear attempt to nationalize the race, touting his endorsement from Donald Trump in a general election setting. Brown, meanwhile, continues to try to build his own identity; one recent ad focuses on his work to try to prevent the Chinese from buying farmland (anti-China populism is common in both Republican and Democratic advertising this cycle).

Ultimately, we think Ohio is the truer of the two Toss-ups on the Senate map at this point.

The 5 key swing state races

Based on the polling margins, all of the Leans Democratic races—seats Democrats are defending in presidential battlegrounds Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin—are justifiably rated that way even as Republicans argue at least some of them are pure Toss-ups. Table 1 shows the recent RacetotheWH polling averages for both the presidential and Senate races in these 5 states. Notice that Democrats are up at least 5 points in each of these Senate races. This represents the basic argument for why Democrats should remain favored in these Senate contests even though all 5 of these states are Toss-ups for president.

Table 1: Senate vs. presidential polling in presidential battlegrounds

Source: RacetotheWH polling averages

However, who is leading in terms of margin may not tell the whole story.

In an era where ticket-splitting isn’t as common as it once was, it seems reasonable to think that the presidential numbers in a poll may be a decent guide to where the Senate race will end up, even though there will be some differentiation between the two races. In these 5 states, the presidential margin is tighter than the Senate margin at least in part because there generally are fewer undecideds in the presidential race. Republican Senate candidates in these races are running behind Trump, but it stands to reason that Republican presidential voters who are undecided in the Senate election would eventually come around to the Republican Senate candidate. This is why we think a common Republican argument—these Senate races are closer than what the public polling margins indicate—has merit, even as we do still see a Democratic edge in all of them in our ratings.

One positive factor in the polling for most, although not all, of the swing state Senate Democratic candidates is that even if one believes their margins over their Republican opponents may be artificially inflated, their actual share of the vote is usually higher than Kamala Harris’s is in polling averages. Look at Table 1 again: Notice that the Democratic Senate candidates in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin all are getting a higher share of the vote than Harris (that is shown in the second column from the right).

The one exception, though, is Michigan, where Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D, MI-7) leads by 5.5 points on margin, but is actually getting a lower share of the vote than Harris, unlike the other Democrats in these races, who are all at least running slightly ahead of Harris’s share in the average. Slotkin is not an incumbent, unlike Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Bob Casey (D-PA), and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), and she is not running against Kari Lake (R), the damaged former gubernatorial candidate that Rep. Ruben Gallego (D, AZ-3) faces in the open-seat Arizona race. So of all these races, Michigan may be the most fluid and also the one where it might be hardest for Democrats to ultimately run ahead of the presidential race.

Slotkin faces former Rep. Mike Rogers (R), who has made his peace with Donald Trump but made his name in the pre-Trump Republican era (the former House intelligence committee chairman has been out of the House for nearly a decade). Slotkin has raised way more money than Rogers this cycle, and as of the most recent reporting (mid-July), she had $8.7 million cash on hand compared to just $2.5 million for Rogers. According to AdImpact, Democrats had $34 million in advertising booked in Michigan’s Senate election after Labor Day, compared to just $9 million for Republicans. Democrats have huge edges in Arizona, Nevada, and Wisconsin as well, at least for the moment (Lake got a boost earlier this week as the Club for Growth came to her aid with an 8-figure ad buy). Republicans are sounding the alarm about a lack of money in House and Senate races, as Politico’s Ally Mutnick reported earlier this week; this has become a common complaint among Republicans in the Trump era as they struggle to match Democratic fundraising, particularly the more valuable dollars raised by actual candidates as opposed to those raised by outside groups (candidates get better rates on buying TV ads than outside groups).

Another thing working for Slotkin is that Michigan is probably the bluest state of all of these—as we noted in a recent Crystal Ball article, Michigan has generally been the most Democratic of this year’s 7 key presidential swing states over this century’s presidential elections.

Down the stretch, we think Michigan’s top two races will be more in sync than what our current ratings suggest (we have the presidential race there as a Toss-up and its Senate race as Leans Democratic). So Michigan is a state we may revisit soon, possibly to put both contests in one category or the other.

Careful readers may notice that this is the second rating decision we seriously considered making this week (Montana is the other) but decided to forego for the time being. It is the start of football season, though, so we hope you’ll forgive a punt or two.

One place where Republicans do have an advantage, at least for now, in future money booked on ads is Pennsylvania, and the GOP has collectively seemed excited by the candidacy of former hedge fund CEO David McCormick (R) all cycle. McCormick lost a close Republican Senate primary to television doctor Mehmet Oz last cycle in which McCormick was on the wrong side of Donald Trump’s endorsement. Democrats, who see McCormick as a flawed plutocrat, have featured Trump’s past attacks on McCormick in ads in a bid to generate crossover support for long-serving Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA). (Trump now supports McCormick in this cycle’s race, but the video is the video.) The Trump campaign also is going for broke in Pennsylvania, believing that if they can deny Harris the state’s 19 electoral votes, she cannot win the presidency (and they might be right about that). That level of presidential investment helps McCormick, although Casey does still seem to be doing better than Harris in the state. A CNN/SSRS poll released Wednesday morning did show both the presidential and Senate races tied in Pennsylvania. For now, this poll appears to be an outlier, but we’ll see if it becomes more of a leading indicator.

Our bottom line on these 5 swing state races is that the Democrats are still at least slightly better-positioned in all of them, but it’s not hard to imagine Republicans eventually being able to grab one or more of them when it’s all said and done. And, as noted above, Republicans don’t need to win any of them given their opportunities in Montana and Ohio.

The sleepers

Among the other races to watch down the stretch are Florida and Texas, where Sens. Rick Scott (R-FL) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) are seeking reelection. If Democrats could make a real run at one or both, it would open up an avenue to holding the Senate even if they lost Montana. We continue to rate both races as Likely Republican, though. Polls will sometimes show a very close race in these states, although Cruz and Scott have consistently led their rivals, Rep. Colin Allred (D, TX-32) and former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D, FL-26), and neither state seems to be up for grabs in the presidential race.

Our Senate sources generally agreed that if either race were to really pop, it’s likelier to be Texas than Florida—a major reason for this is Scott’s immense self-funding potential, which helped him win a trio of razor-thin victories in 2010 and 2014 gubernatorial races and in a 2018 Senate race. Cruz is also more of a national lightning rod, even though Scott has become a more prominent figure in recent years thanks to some of his policy proposals that Democrats ran against in 2022 and Scott’s unsuccessful stint as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee that same cycle. In the longer term, we’re also somewhat bullish on Texas becoming more competitive than Florida, given the latter’s influx of conservative-leaning retirees, but both states remain right-of-center in the context of 2024.

A logistical challenge for Democrats in either of these states is that they already are playing a ton of defense all over the country this cycle, and if an outside group really wanted to invest in Texas and Florida (the second- and third-largest states in the country), it would be very expensive to do so.

While a lot of Republican Senate advertising has a very familiar feel, with a focus on nationalizing Democratic candidates and attacking them on issues like inflation and immigration, the advertising for former Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) is predictably much different: deemphasizing partisanship and featuring testimonials from self-identified Democrats who like him. Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D) does have what Democrats argue is potent footage cutting against Hogan’s bipartisan pitch—Hogan’s own words describing himself as a “die-hard lifelong Republican.”

A couple of recent polls paint a picture of a close race in otherwise very Democratic Maryland; a bipartisan polling team working for AARP found the Senate race tied at 46% even though Kamala Harris led the presidential race by about 30 points. Maryland-based pollster Patrick Gonzales, whose numbers we trust and whose late October 2014 polling suggested the possibility of the big gubernatorial upset that Hogan would achieve, had Alsobrooks up 46%-41% in the Senate race as Harris was up by a more modest (compared to AARP) 21 points in the presidential contest. In a polling memo, Gonzales noted Hogan’s impressive share of Democratic voters, about 20%—however, Hogan probably needs more like 30%, Gonzales wrote. Hogan is going to do much, much better than Trump in this state, but our initial analysis of this race back when Hogan entered is still operative: Hogan just likely needs more ticket-splitting here than is reasonably plausible. One could arguably say the same thing about Tester, too, although it’s also worth remembering how much bluer Maryland is than Montana is red: Joe Biden won Maryland by 33 points, while Donald Trump won Montana by 16 (Tester is also an incumbent, while Hogan is not).

We have compared this Maryland race to red-state contests with strong Democratic candidates that appeared close but where presidential partisanship reasserted itself, like Tennessee in 2018 and Montana in 2020. It is worth noting that we have more recent experience with that kind of race (attractive Democrat running in red state) than this kind of race (attractive Republican running in blue state). Perhaps the voter psychology ends up being a bit different, and that Hogan’s antipathy toward Donald Trump gives him a credential that allows him to win over more Democratic support. If we got to the point where we thought that was a greater possibility, we’d move this race to a more competitive category. But we remain skeptical.

There has been a little bit of buzz over a couple of other races that we continue to rate as Safe for the incumbent party. Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-NM) has been running aggressively against Nella Domenici (R), daughter of the late former Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), suggesting he is taking her challenge seriously in a blue-leaning state. This race seemed to come on the board a bit at the tail end of the slump that would eventually drive President Joe Biden from the presidential race, and the general belief among sources we talked to is that this race might have become highly competitive if Biden had stayed in and the overall Democratic position had not improved. We’re watching it more closely than your average Safe Democratic race, but it remains in that category. The same is true for Sen. Deb Fischer’s (R) reelection bid in Nebraska, where she faces an unusual challenge from labor leader Dan Osborn, who is running as an independent. Osborn’s camp has produced polling showing him roughly tied with Fischer at around 40% of the vote apiece, and a SurveyUSA/Split Ticket poll released over the weekend showed roughly the same thing. We would expect partisan gravity to assert itself in this red-state contest down the stretch, but this is another one that merits watching.

Our one rating change comes this week in Maine, where Sen. Angus King (I-ME) is seeking a third term as a nominal independent (he has caucused with Democrats ever since being elected to replace Republican Olympia Snowe in 2012). We rated the race as Likely Independent to start the cycle and hadn’t moved it, but it belongs in Safe. There was one recent University of New Hampshire poll of Maine that was unusually good for Democrats but actually not that great for King: Harris was up 17 points in the presidential race in a state Biden only won by 9. Harris was also leading 49%-44% for the single electoral vote in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, which Trump carried by 6 points in 2020. We don’t really buy that Harris would be leading in that district (or even would come all that close to winning it). Yet in this otherwise rosy (for Democrats) Maine poll, King was up only a somewhat lackluster 10 points in the Senate race, 43%-33% over Republican Demi Kouzounas as part of a multi-candidate field.

Still, no one we’ve spoken to believes this race is competitive.

Table 2: Crystal Ball Senate rating change

Conclusion

All told, we continue to expect Republicans to flip the Senate this year, given the huge level of Democratic exposure. That Democrats are still in the game after Labor Day is in some ways an achievement given the challenges they face, although some Republicans suggest that Democrats are actually not in the game because they believe Tester’s actual chances of winning are scant. We are not yet at that point ourselves.

One bit of advice we would give to election watchers is this: The 5 Senate races in the key presidential swing states are of course very important and very much worth watching, and there will be tons of future polling in all of those states because of their importance in the presidential race. But the actual Senate majority is going to be decided by what happens in Montana and Ohio, where we’ll have fewer polls and where the Democratic defensive task is harder.