After talking about why increasing political polarization and hyperpartisanship are horrible for the Senate, today, we are going to discuss the 2022 Senate elections as a whole. The 2022 midterms will be the first major federal elections to be held in President Joe Biden’s first term, and we could see a Republican sweep if Biden is disapproved of in a year and a half’s time, or we could see Democrats maintain control if Biden and his party remain popular.
The current Senate is held by the Democrats by an extremely narrow zero-seat majority. 50 of the Senate’s 100 seats belong to each party, and it is only because Vice President Kamala Harris, who is constitutionally also the president of the Senate, is able to break ties and give the majority in favor of her party. Of the 50 members in each party’s caucus, six senators — three from each party — come from a state which voted a different way in the 2020 presidential election.
Every two years, approximately one-third of all Senate seats will be up for election or reelection. In 2022, barring any special elections, there will be senators in 34 states up for reelection.
One important thing to keep in mind is that historically, the party which doesn’t have control of the White House typically performs better. Since 2000, except in the 2002 midterm elections due to the knock-on effects of 9/11, the party which doesn’t have White House control has gained substantially in the House. Although Senate elections typically see fewer seats change hands, the effect can usually be seen too.
In addition, an open race, which is a race without an incumbent, is far more competitive than a race with an incumbent. This is because incumbents typically have name recognition and past records to attract voters, while in an open race, two new candidates are being pitched against each other, so neither has a particular advantage. Seats may be open due to retirements, resignations, or deaths.
In 2022, we have seen five Republicans already announce retirement, and three of them come from very competitive states. Republican Sens. Pat Toomey (Pa.), Richard Burr (N.C.), and Rob Portman (Ohio), who all come from swing states have all announced their retirement. In addition, Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., is also retiring, as is Sen. Richard Shelby from Alabama. No Democrats have so far announced any retirements.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who is 87, might also announce his retirement simply because of age, as might Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. (Leahy is the only expected possible retirement on the Democrats’ side.) Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., has previously said he would not seek reelection, but he has still not fully decided whether or not he would run. Should all of these senators retire, there could be up to seven Republican retirements and one Democratic retirement.
(And, as we will see, this map is already favorable to the Democrats since they are defending very few competitive seats, so these retirements are definitely ruining the GOP’s chances.)
Now, obviously, senators could retire for many reasons, but one major reason as to why many elected officials retire is to save themselves from losing an election. If they believe an election may be highly competitive and believe they might lose, an official might choose to retire rather than potentially lose reelection in order to save face. This could indicate that many Republicans believe 2022 might not go as well for them as history might say, which might be due to reasons such as the Biden administration handling COVID-19 very well and believing that the economy will recover.
Safe states
Let’s now mark off all the safe states for each party in the map. These seats are expected to be won by each respective party by 15 points or above and are very unlikely to change hands. These seats usually come from highly partisan states like California, and though it is possible one of these races might become competitive, it just simply isn’t likely.
There isn’t much to talk about here, but I would like to point out that Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski from Alaska is in this column despite being very vocally anti-Trump and former President Donald Trump promising to campaign against her in this state. This is simply because Alaska just passed ranked-choice voting last November on a ballot initiative in the state, practically guaranteeing Murkowski’s victory.
Because Democrats are going to rank Murkowski higher than any pro-Trump Republican, and Republicans will rank Murkowski higher than any Democrat, Murkowski is likely to get a majority of the votes. She is also exceptionally popular, being the only senator in modern history to win on a write-in campaign (yes, she was not listed on the ballot) after losing the primary election to a right-wing Tea Party Republican in 2010.
Even though Alabama is seeing a retirement and Vermont might be too, due to the extreme partisan nature of these states (the 2017 special U.S. Senate election in Alabama was a massive fluke and will probably not happen again, at least in modern history), they are still likely to remain in the safe column.
The rest of these states are pretty self-explanatory as to why they belong in the safe column — it would simply be unfathomable in this day and age for a Republican to win a Senate election in California, for example, or for a Democrat to win in Oklahoma.
Likely states
Moving on, we get into the “likely” states, which are states that are pretty solid, but not safe, for their respective parties. These states are likely to vote for the respective party anywhere between five and 15 percent margins.
There are only five states in this column: Colorado and Nevada for the Democrats, and Florida, Iowa, and Missouri for the Republicans.
Colorado is a state that has been getting more and more solid for the Democrats in the past decade or so — Biden won the state by a 14-point margin in 2020 only about 16 years after George W. Bush won it by four percent in 2004 — and we have only seen the blue trend accelerate since Trump took office. Hence, this race is practically locked down for the Democrats, and it wouldn’t be a surprise if it ultimately ended up being safe, either. Sen. Michael Bennet is likely to win by a large margin in 2022.
Though Nevada is certainly a competitive state — it only went to Biden by about 2.4 percent in 2020 — it is a swing state with a stubborn blue tilt, just like how Florida has a stubborn red tilt. Considering the fact that many Hispanic voters shifted away from Biden in 2020 and he was still able to win it by exactly the same margin Hillary Clinton was able to win by here in 2016, it is evident that the state is probably remaining in the Democrats’ column. Also, Nevada’s population is so heavily concentrated in Las Vegas (Clark County) that incumbent Sen. Catherine Cortez-Masto was able to win in 2016 by about 2.5 percent just by carrying that one county. Considering Nevada’s other Democratic senator, Sen. Jacky Rosen, was able to win by a likely margin in 2016, it is possible that Cortez-Masto will win by a similar margin in 2022.
On the Republicans’ side, Iowa is in this column because we are expecting Grassley not to run. As mentioned, if he chooses to run, he will be serving into his mid-90s, and many Iowans, even those who lean Republican, are all in favor of seeing Grassley retire after having served in the Senate for over 40 years (he was elected in 1980). If he doesn’t run, this will be an open race, making it far more competitive (it might even be lean for the Republicans or even a tossup). However, if he runs, it will probably be a very solid margin for him (Grassley won by 25 percent in 2016, carrying all but one country), though it may be less since many voters are opposed to the idea of Grassley running. The characterization of this race will change as we know more information.
As mentioned, since Missouri is seeing a retirement, it will be more competitive than usual. Now, despite Missouri’s reputation as a red state in the modern day, the 2016 Senate election here was exceedingly close, with the incumbent Republican winning by just over two percentage points. (Had this been an open race, the Democrat would likely have won.) If Eric Greitens, a former governor of Missouri who resigned in disgrace over a felony charge scandal, wins the Republican nomination, he could turn away enough Republicans to allow the Democrat to become competitive or even win. Keep a close eye on the primary here next June.
The last state here is Florida. Now, Florida is always a swing state, even if it might lean slightly Republican, and is always immune to wave years and sees close elections all the time. In 2018, a Democratic wave year, the incumbent Democrat lost by just 0.2 percentage points, while in 2010, a massive, massive wave year for the Republicans, a Republican only won the governorship here by 1.2 percent, proving that the state is immune to waves.
Even if Trump might have improved here by two percent from 2016, it still only went to him by about three percent, and there is no doubt that Florida remains competitive for the Democrats. The reason why the state is likely for the Republicans is due to Sen. Marco Rubio’s popularity among Hispanics in this state — he won by a seven-point margin here in 2016. Polling has also been in favor of Rubio here, though it is by no means resounding nor indicative this far out.
Lean states
We now get into the more competitive lean states. These states are very competitive and could go either way, but one party has the advantage and is expected to win by a margin of one to five percent. Quite a large number of states in 2022 belong in this column.
Georgia and Arizona both saw special elections in 2020, so Sens. Raphael Warnock and Mark Kelly from the two states respectively will be up again in 2022. Obviously, the restrictive voting laws passed in Georgia by the GOP will definitely hurt the Democrats, but with COVID-19 likely going away by then, we could see mail voting take a back seat and see voters energized to vote against the GOP because of it. Coupled with the two states’ Democratic trend and incumbency advantages for the party, the Democrats are favored, though by no means guaranteed, to keep control of these two Sun Belt seats.
Because Gov. Chris Sununu, New Hampshire’s extremely popular Republican governor, might run for Senate in 2022, the race will definitely be more competitive for the Democrats than it otherwise would be. Now, governing is very different than representing a state in the Senate, and we have seen many former popular governors from the opposing party, like Democrat Steve Bullock, who ran, but failed to win, in Montana in 2020, run and lose. Also, considering incumbent Sen. Maggie Hassan’s ability to appeal to voters (she narrowly won against a Republican incumbent powerhouse in 2016), New Hampshire remains more likely to vote Democratic than Republican.
As discussed, Portman is retiring in Ohio, so the race is likely to get competitive. Portman is a popular Republican who has won by very safe margins in the past, so his retirement is a major blow to the GOP’s chances in this state. Due to the state’s increasing support for the GOP, however, the party remains advantaged in this state, and so it will likely remain in the Republican column unless a strong Democrat runs.
Pennsylvania is the first flip so far. As mentioned, Toomey, a Republican who voted to impeach Trump, is retiring, and so this race will be open. That makes it more competitive than usual. With Pennsylvania returning to the Democratic column in 2020 (it seems like Trump’s victory in 2016 was a fluke), the state remains slightly more Democratic than Republican, and in the case of a landslide election, it is fairly likely a Democrat could win here.
Tilt states
We now get into the most competitive “tilt” states. These are the most competitive races of any given election, and could really go either way, so the ratings here may change as time passes. This completes our map for the 2022 Senate elections.
Wisconsin will have an interesting race. The incumbent pro-Trump Republican, Sen. Ron Johnson, had previously said that he would retire in 2022 after he won in 2016. But, he walked back on that promise earlier this year, citing that he wasn’t expecting the Democrats to win a trifecta in government. However, he recently indicated that he was still “leaning toward retirement,” and that it would be his “preference” to do so. If Johnson retires, it would make yet another competitive race that the Republicans need to defend, so the GOP is trying to stop him from retiring. Trump, for example, has endorsed him even before Johnson has announced whether or not he will seek reelection to encourage him to run.
Even if Johnson runs, however, it seems like the state has backed away from Trump. It voted against him in 2020, and Johnson was one of very few Republicans to continue spreading Trump’s “rigged election” rhetoric until the Jan. 6 Capitol riots. It, therefore, seems possible that he might lose even if he chooses to run. (Obviously, if this ends up being an open race, it will be much more competitive.)
The last state is North Carolina. This state is also seeing an incumbent Republican retiring, Sen. Richard Burr. Though North Carolina voted for Trump and has remained stubbornly Republican, we also musn’t forget that the state only voted for Trump by just 1.3 percent in 2020, far less than Florida and less for Trump than states like Michigan. The state also voted for incumbent Democratic governor Roy Cooper last November, and so there should be no question about whether or not this race will be competitive. Even though the race is open, North Carolina still typically leans Republican, so it is more likely that the Republican will win, though this can definitely change. It would not be out of the question to see North Carolina flip blue.
In conclusion, the 2022 Senate elections will likely see a number of competitive races, and based on the number of Republican retirements and the relatively few competitive seats the Democrats are defending, this is definitely the most favorable Senate maps the Democrats have seen in a while. Even if it ends up being a red wave, it is not out of the question for the Democrats to retain or even expand their majority, just as the Republicans did in 2018. The 2022 Senate elections will be of considerable interest to keep close attention to.
Important time ahead! Beginning of the turn?
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