Are Dems Scared of Losing Again

Democrats' control of the fifty-fifty Senate could well be washed away by a red wave in this autumn's midterm elections.

Republicans appear favored to win back the Senate for ii simple reasons. Kickoff, the national environment has moved in their favor. Biden's approval rating is depression. The GOP has improved in generic ballot polls and won the governor's seat in Virginia last November.

Second, the Senate is already dissever 50-50, and so a cyberspace gain of even just ane seat for Republicans would flip the chamber into their hands.

Notwithstanding, Democrats do still have a way to hold on. The main affair they have going for them is a decent map — they aren't defending any seats in states Trump won in 2020, while Republicans are defending two states Biden narrowly won. If Democrats manage to hold their losses to a minimum, or make up for them by defeating Republicans elsewhere, they could proceed Senate command. But if the national environment keeps looking so dire for the party and the president, that would be a tall order.

Most analysts expect Democrats to lose the House. Losing the Senate would be an even more painful blow. Senate control would requite Republicans veto power over Biden'south appointees — new Cabinet secretaries and subcabinet officials, as well equally judges, including fifty-fifty a futurity Supreme Court justice should a vacancy unexpectedly arise. A GOP takeover would dramatically constrain the next two years of Biden's presidency, and prepare progressives upwards for fifty-fifty more thwarting in this administration than they've already faced.

Six key states

In the by decade, in that location have been 20 individual Senate elections where a seat concluded upwards flipping to the other political party. The vast majority of those races (16 of 20) had the same partisan outcome as either the presidential race that yr or, in midterm years without a presidential competition, the most contempo ane. Senate races have been falling in line with the state's presidential party preference. "Mismatched" senators, who represent a state their party's presidential nominee lost, are condign rarer.

From that perspective, Democrats have a pretty okay map in 2022. In the ii most contempo midterm cycles, they were badly exposed, with several incumbents in states the Republican presidential candidate but won. This year, they take none at all. (They do have three such seats coming up in 2024, which will be a major challenge, but that's a problem for some other time.) Meanwhile, there are ii GOP-held seats in states Biden narrowly won, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, on the election.

Just that's likely too optimistic for Democrats. Another fashion to think about the map is that at that place are six true swing states with races this cycle. At to the lowest degree once in either 2016 or 2020, Trump either won or came quite close to winning Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, and New Hampshire. Nevada, meanwhile, trended correct relative to the state between 2016 and 2020, though Biden even so won it.

These half dozen states — iv held by Democrats, and two held by Republicans — are currently the cadre of the 2022 competitive Senate map, though other contests could likewise come up into play. It'due south reasonable to look that with Biden's national continuing declining, Senate seats in these states are in neat danger of slipping out of Democrats' grasp.

Merely while Senate race outcomes have become more correlated with national partisanship, individual candidates do oft overperform or underperform the overall trend. Democrats' Senate chances likely hinge on whether enough of their candidates tin escape this partisan gravity, arguing either that they're non only another Democrat, or that their opponent is a uniquely unfit Republican.

Republicans' top Democratic-held Senate targets

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Georgia: Sen. Raphael Warnock (D) won his seat in a high-stakes January 2021 runoff, but that was a special election; he has to run again for a full term this fall. His likely opponent is Herschel Walker (R), a old University of Georgia football star, making this a rare U.s.a. Senate race probable to characteristic two Blackness major party nominees.

Republicans are hoping Democrats' narrow Georgia triumphs last cycle were a fluke, and that the long-red state is moving dorsum toward the GOP. Only some are a fleck worried about Walker, who's a political novice with a practiced deal of baggage in his personal history (for case, his ex-wife alleged that he put a gun to her head and threatened to kill her). Meanwhile, Democrats hope the presence of Warnock and likely gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams on the election will motivate Black voters to turn out for them.

Arizona: Sen. Marking Kelly (D), a former astronaut, was also another of Democrats' biggest success stories in a 2020 special election, who likewise must at present run for a full term in a state that narrowly tipped from Trump to Biden. Different his iconoclastic Democratic colleague Kyrsten Sinema, Kelly has kept a low contour in the chamber so far, and he'll face up the challenge of distinguishing himself from his political party's brand.

Meanwhile, Republicans have a messy chief state of affairs. State attorney general Marking Brnovich is well-regarded in the party but Trump is trashing him for insufficient support of his lies that the 2020 election was stolen. Wealthy man of affairs Jim Lamon has greatly outspent his opponents, simply venture capitalist Blake Masters may too have lots of money on his side considering he is president of billionaire Peter Thiel'south foundation. Mick McGuire, the former head of Arizona's national guard, is also running. This primary is in August, and so they will be at information technology for some time.

Nevada: Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D) is running for a 2nd term, and she'll likely face up former land attorney general Adam Laxalt (R). Nevada has voted for Democrats on the presidential level since 2008, but at that place have been some troubling signs for the party there. Demographically, this is a state where Democrats' worsening operation with Latino voters and continued poor performance among non-college white voters are problematic, since those two groups fabricated upwards more fifty percent of the 2020 electorate, according to the firm Catalist. That year, Nevada was one of just 2 states where Biden did not improve on Hillary Clinton's margin of victory (Florida is the other).

Cortez Masto won her seat by 2.4 percentage points in 2016, and in the accelerate of her reelection she's been positioning herself as a defender of the state's mining industry. Laxalt has run two statewide races — his 2014 bid for attorney general (which he won past less than 1 pct bespeak in a good GOP twelvemonth), and his 2018 bid for governor (which he lost by 4 points in a good year for Democrats). So neither has a rails record of overwhelming electoral say-so.

New Hampshire: Sen. Maggie Hassan (D) won this seat in 2016 while she was the state'due south governor. Hassan merely barely unseated Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R) by a 0.1 percent point margin (about 1,000 votes), in a year when Trump came very shut to winning in the state as well. In 2020, though, New Hampshire moved sharply away from Trump, equally Biden won information technology past vii points, but this famously swingy state could certainly swing again.

Republicans were disappointed when they failed to recruit the land's moderate governor, Chris Sununu, to take Hassan on, and Democrats debate the remaining candidates in the field are unimpressive. The primary's not until September, so nosotros won't know who will face Hassan for some time, just the GOP field includes a former country senate president and a retired general, among other candidates.

Democrats' top GOP-held Senate targets

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Meanwhile, there are two GOP-held seats in states that swung from Obama to Trump to Biden up this fall.

Pennsylvania: The contest for the open seat held by retiring Sen. Pat Toomey (R) may well be the well-nigh expensive ane in the country. For Democrats, the state's lieutenant governor John Fetterman has taken a pb in recent polls over Rep. Conor Lamb and land rep. Malcolm Kenyatta. Fetterman strikes an unusual profile for a Autonomous politico — burly, bearded, about 6 foot 9, often dressed informally. Democrats have been divided over whether he's exactly what they demand to appeal to the white working grade, or whether his past back up for Bernie Sanders and progressive positions on issues like criminal justice reform hazard his chances in the general election.

The Republican principal, meanwhile, features celebrity television receiver personality Dr. Mehmet Oz (circulator of dubious health claims) and ex-hedge fund CEO David McCormick, both of whom are spending millions of their own money. Some conservatives have questioned Oz's conservative bona fides but Trump endorsed him this month. The primary will take identify on May 17.

Wisconsin: Sen. Ron Johnson (R) is running for a 3rd term in function (despite having previously pledged only to serve two). Democrats have long believed he's as well bourgeois for this swing state, just Johnson, a wealthy self-funder, took downwardly incumbent Russ Feingold in 2010 and so shell Feingold again in 2016. This time effectually, no one thinks he'll be like shooting fish in a barrel to beat.

Democrats have a competitive primary featuring Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, State Treasurer Sarah Godlewski, and billionaire's son Alex Lasry (an executive of the Milwaukee Bucks basketball game team, which his father co-owns), among other candidates. This is an August primary and then in that location won't be clarity hither for a while.

The rest

Apart from these core six races, both parties hope to aggrandize the field to other "achieve" contests. There are 35 Senate contests overall this year, but most are in strongly Democratic or strongly Republican states. Only a scattering of others are believed to be even potentially competitive (though an unexpected consequence similar a scandal or decease could bring others into play).

Republicans point to Colorado, where Sen. Michael Bennet (D) is running for a 3rd total term. The GOP has struggled in Colorado lately — Trump lost the state by nearly 14 points. Just in a wave year, perhaps the state could exist in play for Republicans, every bit it was in 2014 when Cory Gardner defeated incumbent Sen. Marker Udall. National Republicans promise man of affairs Joe O'Dea wins the nomination in the June primary. They fear the other candidate, state rep. Ron Hanks, who champions stolen election conspiracy theories, is too farthermost to win.

Some Republicans also optimistically bladder Washington, where longtime Sen. Patty Murray (D) is on the election, as a race that could come into play in a truly dismal national environment for Democrats. Tiffany Smiley, a former nurse and veterans advocate, is viewed as the leading Republican candidate in that location. Biden won the state past well-nigh 20 points, though, and so she'd face up an uphill battle to overcome the state's underlying Democratic tilt.

Democrats, meanwhile, tout North Carolina, with some arguing it should be considered a top tier contest. This is an open seat race in which Republicans are facing a heated primary between former Gov. Pat McCrory and Trump-endorsed Rep. Ted Budd, while the Democratic nominee will be erstwhile country supreme court main justice Cheri Beasley. Democrats oasis't managed to win a presidential or Senate contest in North Carolina since 2008, so pulling information technology off in a tough twelvemonth for the party nationally would exist a challenge. But Democrats argue that Trump only won the state narrowly, and that Gov. Roy Cooper's success shows the party can win there.

Additionally, there's another Republican-held open seat in Ohio with a competitive GOP primary winding down and Rep. Tim Ryan (D) the likely Autonomous nominee — the Buckeye state has leaned strongly toward Republicans in recent years, but Ryan hopes he can defy the tendency with an anti-China message. In Florida, Sen. Marco Rubio (R) is facing a challenge from Rep. Val Demings (D), but Democrats have had little success they tin can point to in Florida lately. And both parties agree Missouri could get competitive if the state's scandal-plagued sometime governor Eric Greitens wins the GOP nomination, but he has been dropping in polls of late.

The math to keep in heed is that, to hold the bedchamber, Democrats demand to either hold all their own seats, or they demand to match any lost seats with pickups of GOP-held seats. In a neutral political environment, that would be quite doable. Simply if the surroundings remains so challenging, they'll have to hope unique dynamics among candidates in individual races interruption in their favor. If the GOP wave is big enough, though, those individual dynamics probably won't be plenty to make a difference.

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Source: https://www.vox.com/23030164/senate-2022-midterm-elections-battlegrounds

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