SCOTUS Opening Shakes Up the Senate Race (Late Sept.)

^{Disclaimer: As this article was written before the new revelations on President Trump’s tax returns, the information in this article may not fully reflect the political landscape that has developed because of these revelations.}

Since I last covered the Senate race earlier this month, a lot has changed due to the sudden passing of Justice Ginsburg. With Democrats adamant on not replacing Ginsburg’s seat until a new president is elected in November, the Democratic Party is sure to come out in full force to vote this November. This has shaken up the Senate race by quite a lot, so let’s take a look.

Since the last discussion on the Senate, FiveThirtyEight has launched its Senate forecast model. They have three versions of the model: “Lite,” which only considers polling data, “Classic,” which considers polls, fundraising, past voting patterns, and more, and finally, “Deluxe,” which also considers experts’ ratings (e.g. Sabato’s Crystal Ball, the Cook Political Report) in addition to the Classic forecast. Because polling has been so strong for the Democratic Party this year, the Lite forecast is giving a 70 percent chance of Democrats controlling the majority, while in the Deluxe model, that chance drops to “just” 63 percent. As the Deluxe model is the most accurate, we’ll mainly focus on that one in this post.

Before we begin our discussion, I’d like to point out this FiveThirtyEight article, which explains how the Senate is heavily skewed toward rural voters. It explains why winning the Senate is such an uphill battle for the Democrats, so for the Democrats to win the Senate is no easy feat.

We’ll once again start by classifying the safe states. All of these states have a greater than 95 percent chance of the candidate winning in the state on the FiveThirtyEight Deluxe forecast.

Again, in case you’re not familiar with how this works, states are ranked based on their expected winning margins. If a candidate is expected to win by over 15 percent, the state is “safe” (darkest color). States are “likely” if the candidate is expected to win by five to 15 percent, “lean” if the margin is one to five percent, and if the candidate is expected to win within one percent, the state is “tilt” (lightest color). This map is NOT based on win probability.

I previously classified Minnesota as safe, but having considered all the data again, I realized that was an error as it is unlikely Democrat Tina Smith (inc.) will defeat her challenger Jason Lewis by over 15 percent, but she is still almost guaranteed to win the state.

In a normal year, Virginia, New Mexico, and New Hampshire probably wouldn’t be safe for the Democrats, but due to the GOP fielding bad candidates and 2020 being an all-round bad year for the GOP, it is likely that the Democrats will win these seats by a 15-point margin or more.

There are nine safe races for the Democrats and nine safe races for the Republicans, putting the Democrats at 44 seats and the Republicans at 39. Just for reference, here are all the safe seats arranged alphabetically with who is running listed. The challenger is always from the opposing party. (Open elections do not have incumbents.)

• Arkansas: Tom Cotton (R, inc.) to win. No Democratic challenger.
• Delaware: Christopher Coons (D, inc.) to win. Lauren Witzke is the challenger.
• Idaho: Jim Risch (R, inc.) to win. Paulette Jordan is the challenger.
• Illinois: Richard Durbin (D, inc.) to win. Mark Curran is the challenger.
• Louisiana: Uses a runoff election model. Bill Cassidy (R, inc.) to win. Antoine Pierce and Peter Wenstrup are the main challengers.
• Massachusetts: Ed Markey (D, inc.) to win. Kevin O’Connor is the challenger.
• Nebraska: Ben Sasse (R, inc.) to win. Chris Janicek is the challenger.
• New Hampshire: Jeanne Shaheen (D, inc.) to win. Corky Messner is the challenger.
• New Jersey: Cory Booker (D, inc.) to win. Rikin Mehta is the challenger.
• New Mexico: Ben Luján (D) to win. Mark Ronchetti is the Republican.
• Oklahoma: Jim Inhofe (R, inc.) to win. Abby Broyles is the challenger.
• Oregon: Jeff Merkley (D, inc.) to win. Jo Perkins is the challenger.
• Rhode Island: Jack Reed (D, inc.) to win. Allen Waters is the challenger.
• South Dakota: Mike Rounds (R, inc.) to win. Dan Ahlers is the challenger.
• Tennessee: Bill Hagerty (R) to win. Marquita Bradshaw is the Democrat.
• Virginia: Mark Warner (D, inc.) to win. Daniel Gade is the challenger.
• West Virginia: Shelley Capito (R, inc.) to win. Paula Swearengin is the challenger.
• Wyoming: Cynthia Lummis (R) to win. Merav Ben-David is the Democrat.

As the safe races don’t require much discussion, we’ll now move on to the likely states. These all do have pretty high chances for their respective candidates in the FiveThirtyEight Deluxe forecast. The lowest percentage a candidate has that is likely is Democrat John Hickenlooper from Colorado.

We’ll start with Michigan. Michigan, though it voted for Donald Trump (by 0.27 percent) in 2016, is now predicted to go back to the Democrats. A traditional Democratic state, the incumbent Democrat, Gary Peters, is almost certain to win this state over challenger John James. Peters has a 79 percent chance of retaining his seat. With the GOP quite weak and the Democrats in full force this year, there is almost no doubt that the seat will remain blue. All polls are showing Peters up by four to nine percent. The same goes for Minnesota. There is almost no way that the seat will go to challenger Jason Lewis over Democratic incumbent Tina Smith. In fact, it is so safe that there is a 93 percent chance of Smith retaining her seat on the FiveThirtyEight forecast.

As I have mentioned in previous predictions, Arizona’s seat is going blue. Republican Martha McSally, the incumbent, lost a Senate election in 2018 before she was appointed to this seat. (Read my in-depth analysis on Arizona.) This was a really bad decision by the Republican governor because it basically doomed her in this year’s Senate special election. McSally is down in every single poll, and FiveThirtyEight is giving Mark Kelly, the challenger, a 78 percent chance of winning.

With Republican Cory Gardner of Colorado choosing to accept President Trump’s Supreme Court Justice nominee, the race is now out of reach for him. At this point, Colorado is basically a blue state, having voted Democrat for the past 15 years. With Cory Gardner being a staunch supporter of the president, a hated figure in the state (Biden is leading by double digits in the state), there is almost no doubt that challenger John Hickenlooper, a previous Colorado governor, will win. Hickenlooper has a 72 percent chance of winning.

On the Republican side, there is almost no doubt that incumbents Mitch McConnell and Cindy Hyde-Smith will win their races in Kentucky and Mississippi respectively over challengers Amy McGrath and Mike Espy. Polling data is just not in favor of the Democrats in either of the two states and although Mississippi has narrowed up slightly with Hyde-Smith only leading in single digits, she is still highly likely to win. And although McConnell is an unpopular senator, the truth is that Kentucky is still ruby-red and isn’t flipping any time soon. FiveThirtyEight gives McConnell and Hyde-Smith a 96 percent and 92 percent chance of winning respectively. Though these races will not be won by over 15 percent, they will be Republican holds.

It is a similar story in Alaska. Though not as conservative as the other two, and the “Democratic” challenger Al Gross is technically an independent (but if you’re caucusing with the Democrats and running against an incumbent Republican, not as a Republican, it’s pretty obvious which party supports you), incumbent Dan Sullivan is likely to win, simply due to the demographics of Alaska. Sullivan has an 87 percent chance of winning.

Unfortunately for Democratic incumbent Doug Jones in Alabama, he is facing an intense upward battle to keep his seat in this staunchly conservative Bible Belt state. Having won a special election narrowly in 2017 against an alleged child molester (Republican Roy Moore), he was the first Democrat to win a statewide race here in decades, but he seems likely to lose this year against Trump-endorsed challenger Tommy Tuberville. Because the state is so conservative, there is little chance that people will split their tickets and vote for Jones. Tuberville has a 77 percent chance of winning the seat, and this jumps to 94 percent in the Lite forecast. Some polls are showing Tuberville ahead by double digits. This is the only Senate seat the Democrats are expected to lose this election cycle.

In Texas, due to the Democratic challenger M.J. Hegar not being a well-known candidate, she seems less likely than Biden to win here. The incumbent, John Corbyn, seems like he will edge out this election, with consistent leads in polling. Should the Democrats have fielded a better candidate here, they would have a much greater chance. Corbyn has an 87 percent chance of winning here. However, fundraising is still relatively strong for Hegar, having raised $300,000 on Sunday.

The last race in this category is Georgia’s Senate special election. This special election will consist of all candidates being on a single ballot, with the top two vote-getters facing off in a runoff in January if no candidate receives a majority of the vote. Unfortunately for Democrats, the top two vote-getters seem to be favored to go to Republicans, with Kelly Loeffler ahead of Doug Collins. Though Democrat Rapheal Warnock could win, it seems fairly unlikely, considering there are two other Democrats, Matt Lieberman and Ed Tarver, refusing to drop out of the race. If Lieberman dropped out, there would be a dramatically greater chance of Warnock making it to the runoff. This race here clearly highlights the problem with a first-past-the-post plurality voting system. The race has an 80 percent chance of going to a Republican, according to FiveThirtyEight. However, it is of note that Warnock does occasionally make it out ahead in polls.

That leaves us with the seven most competitive Senate races of the year, with five of them being lean states.

Georgia’s normal election moves from tilt Republican to lean Republican in this prediction. The reason for this change is because polling data for the incumbent Republican, David Perdue, is consistently better than that of his challenger Jon Ossoff. Perdue has led in most polls taken recently, though not by much. Although the race could flip (Perdue only has a 73 percent chance of retaining his seat on FiveThirtyEight), it is considerably less likely (10 percent difference) for Ossoff to win compared to Joe Biden. However, the state is trending bluer, so it could vote Democratic as soon as the midterms in 2022.

Kansas is also a lean state. Those who haven’t followed this election closely may find this strange, as Kansas is a ruby-red state. In reality, though, the open Senate race here isn’t looking that good for the GOP as it should be. The Republican nominee, Roger Marshall, just isn’t doing as good as expected. Originally, he was thought to be a much better candidate than the more extreme Kris Kobach, but polling data is showing Democratic nominee Barbara Bollier not far behind. Recent polls have shown the race within single digits (just one or two percent), with Bollier occasionally leading. The seat only has a 79 percent chance of going to Marshall, which is, to be frank, abysmal for a Republican in Kansas. Bollier is doing amazingly well in the state.

Montana is a state that I moved from tilt Democratic to lean Republican. In hindsight, I should have done this in the previous prediction. This is because though Democratic challenger and former state governor Steve Bullock led for a period of time, he hasn’t led over incumbent Steve Daines for quite some time now. Though the lead held by Daines is quite narrow, the race now seems more likely to go to him, with FiveThirtyEight giving a two-thirds chance of the race going to Daines. However, the Lite forecast is giving an edge to Bullock, with Daines only having a 58 percent chance. The map lists this seat as tilt Democratic, though. Check out the in-depth analysis of Montana’s races to learn more.

North Carolina is also a swing state on the presidential level, but the seat here is much safer for Democratic challenger Cal Cunningham to win over incumbent Thom Tillis than it is for Joe Biden to win here. Cunningham has consistently led in polls all throughout the campaign season, and with Tillis vowing to confirm a Trump nominee to the Supreme Court, the race is looking increasingly likely to go to Cunningham. FiveThirtyEight gives the race a 63 percent chance of going to Cunningham.

The last lean state is Maine. Although longtime Republican incumbent Susan Collins may have gained slightly from choosing not to vote for Trump’s nominee should he put one forward, that is not likely to sway back many voters considering her voting record in the past four years. She has dropped from being one of the most popular senators in the country to one of the least. Challenger Sara Gideon, the Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives, is very well known and seems on track to win her race here. She has a 58 percent chance of winning on the Deluxe model, and this widens to 74 (!) percent on the Lite model, showing just how well Gideon is doing in the polls.

We now get to the last two tilt states, with one red and one blue, finishing the map.

The first thing to note is that South Carolina has moved from likely to tilt Republican. Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison is doing amazingly well in this state over incumbent Lindsey Graham. Harrison has raised way more money than Graham, with Harrison constantly hitting fundraising records and outraising Graham. For instance, Harrison raised over $6 million in the 72 hours following Justice Ginsburg’s death. He has now raised over $30 million via ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising site. That amount of money is unheard of for a Democrat in such a conservative state. It completely dwarfs the $10 million Harrison originally thought was necessary to win in an interview with the Associated Press.

In an interview with Fox News, Graham also whined about “getting killed financially. This money is cause they hate my guts.” Clearly, Graham is now admitting that he is facing the dire prospect of losing this election to Harrison in a state no Democrat has won a statewide race in 15 years. With Graham choosing to confirm a Supreme Court nominee, going back on his promise four years ago when Justice Scalia died, many voters may see him as untrustworthy. Coupled with Trump being relatively unfavorable in the state, Graham’s path to reelection just got much narrower.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has also pledged to spend at least $1 million in the race’s closing weeks, funding polling, field organizing, and advertising. Other external groups, like the committees Lindsey Must Go and the now-famous Lincoln Project, have also spent lots of money here.

New polls, such as one from Quinnipiac University, are showing the two in a statistical tie. With donor cash now surging to Harrison, clearly, the data is now indicating the unthinkable: the very real possibility of a statewide Democratic win in South Carolina. A Harrison internal poll is even showing him up by two percent.

Though FiveThirtyEight’s Deluxe forecast is still giving Graham an 80 percent chance of winning here, the number is dropping and in the Lite forecast, that number continues to drop to 71 percent. I truly believe that this race is going to be very competitive this year. Harrison truly does have the momentum which may push him over the top, becoming the first Democrat to flip a statewide S.C. race in decades.

The only other state left to talk about is Iowa, the most competitive Senate race this cycle. Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield is doing surprisingly well here against incumbent Joni Ernst, with the race narrowing up quite considerably. Greenfield has led in numerous A+ rated polls recently, with her now having a 47 percent chance of winning in the Deluxe model (probably because FiveThirtyEight gives incumbents a major boost) and 54 in the Lite model. This is in addition to a Seltzer & Co. poll (one of Iowa’s best polling firms) showing Greenfield up in the state. The popular vote is also expected to be within one percent. Jony Ernst’s decision to vote for a Supreme Court nominee is also narrowing up the race. This will be a key race to keep track of and is also the one that gives Democrats 51 seats, an outright majority (If Biden wins, 50 Democratic seats will constitute a majority, as the Vice President breaks Senate ties.)

The final tally is 51 seats for the Democrats and 49 for the Republicans. This gives the Democrats an outright majority, but if Biden wins, Democrats need only 50 seats to win a majority as the Vice President breaks Senate ties. This will mean that Republicans are predicted to flip one Democratic seat (Alabama), while Democrats are expected to flip five Republican seats. In addition, there are 10 Senate seats in which Democrats have a greater than five percent chance of winning, a very large amount.

If Democrats want to have a filibuster-proof majority (60 seats), they will have to win all the seats I classified here for Democrats (including incumbents not up for election this year, 51), plus the competitive races of (in order of competitiveness) Montana, Georgia, South Carolina, Kansas, Alabama, Georgia’s special election, Texas, Alaska, and either Kentucky or Mississippi, the latter two of which are very difficult, uphill battles.

Everything is at stake in this election, so please, if you are a U.S. citizen over the age of 21, register to vote now. Your vote matters, so treasure it. Don’t disappoint America and the rest of the world. Use your vote wisely.

A post discussing the recent revelations regarding President Trump’s taxes will be out in the coming days. Make sure to subscribe so you receive an email update of when the post is out.

_{Polling data is correct as of writing. Polling data may have changed slightly since writing.}