First Look At The 2024 Senate Race Landscape

This November, the Class I Senate seats are up for re-election.  I'll admit that a wave of nostalgia crashes upon my brain when I think of this Senate class, which has produced so many exciting election memories for me in previous cycles.  The low point from a Democratic perspective was 1994, when the GOP scored their big national landslide and consolidated support in this Senate class.  But the Democratic comeback ensued with a handful of gains in 2000, which was of course the most influential election of my lifetime.  The tide kept rising with the Democratic midterm landslide of 2006, my favorite midterm cycle of all-time, and against all odds, kept rising still in 2012 when Democrats won 25 races and Republicans only won 8.  Little did I know that would be the last genuinely fun election of my life.

With the Democrats so overexposed in Senate class I, it was obvious they were living on borrowed time, and every indication was that 2018 would be their comeuppance.  Certainly if Hillary Clinton had won the White House two years earlier, the Democrats could well have taken on a double-digit loss of seats in 2018, but of course Hillary didn't win the White House in 2016 and Democrats still had a pretty decent election night in 2018.  But heading into election night 2018, Democrats were expected to have a better night, with incumbent defeats in Missouri, Indiana, and Florida where they were thought to be even money or to have a narrow advantage.  Worse yet, even in victory the Democrats underperformed expectations in Ohio, Montana, and West Virginia, making it clear the Trump realignment of two years earlier was real.

The Democrats are still highly exposed in the 2024 Senate class, with Democrats defending 23 seats and Republicans defending 11.  Favorable electoral conditions have propped Democrats up for four consecutive cycles in Senate class I, but few analysts are going into this year expecting November 2024 to be anywhere near as good of a Democratic environment as 2006, 2012, 2018, or even 2000.  If the political environment keep worsening, the Senate landscape is bad enough that Democrats could be truly wiped out.  And even if the political environment is no worse for Democrats than it was in 2020, the last time Biden and Trump ran against each other, it's still almost unthinkable that the Democrats will be able to hold their 51-49 Senate advantage.  Let's do a deep dive...

I'll start with the Democratic-held seats I suspect are almost certain to stay in Democratic hands...

California (Open--Feinstein/Butler)

Connecticut (Murphy)

Hawaii (Hirono)

Maryland (Open--Cardin)

Massachusetts (Warren)

Minnesota (Klobuchar)

New York (Gillibrand)

Rhode Island (Whitehouse)

Vermont (Sanders)

Virginia (Kaine)

Washington (Cantwell)

 

And the seats where I think Republicans will have a safe hold....

Mississippi (Wicker)

Missouri (Hawley)

Nebraska (Fischer)

Nebraska Special (Ricketts)

North Dakota (Cramer)

Tennessee (Blackburn)

Utah (Open--Romney)

West Virginia (Open--Manchin)

Wyoming (Barrasso)

 

Obviously in one instance, a seat I'm identifying as "Safe Republican" is currently Democratic held.  With Joe Manchin retiring, there's zero chance of another Democrat prevailing in West Virginia.  Even if Manchin had decided to run for another term, I'd have likely rated this race as "Safe R".  So we're already at R +1 even before we get to any races that are even on the periphery of the Senate battleground.  Speaking of the battleground.....

Arizona--We start out with the most complicated race in the country.  Conservative Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, who flipped this Grand Canyon State seat from red to blue in 2018, has spent her first Senate term voting a lot like someone who's still on the red team, so much so that she became an independent last year and is running for re-election as an independent in 2024.  Running to her left as a Democrat is Congressman Ruben Gallego while firebrand conservative and 2022 gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake is the likely Republican nominee.  At this point, Sinema doesn't have much of a natural constituency and conventional wisdom is that she's poised to come in a distant third running against the two major party candidates, but I'm not so sure.  While Arizona has undeniably shifted toward the Democrats in the Trump era, there's a lot of country club Republicans in that Democratic coalition and an outsized share of them could very well opt for Sinema over Gallego, who's a pretty decent and pragmatic candidate but still probably to the left of where most Arizonans are.  But even if Sinema gets as little as 10% of the vote that includes a fair number of moderate Republicans, the likeliest outcome of this three-way race certainly seems to be Lake prevailing.  She managed 49.6% of the vote in her losing bid for Arizona Governor in 2022, meaning that she could lose as little as 3% of that support to Sinema and still come out on top amongst a divided opposition.  Now it's certainly possible that, seeing no path to victory, Sinema decides to simply retire and make this a two-candidate race, but even in that scenario, I'd still give the advantage to the odious Lake given the increasingly poor national environment and how inept the Democrats have been on the border in a state that borders Mexico.   (GOP +2)

Delaware--Biden's home state is only barely in the 2024 battleground because it's an open seat, vacated by long-time Democratic moderate Tom Carper.  You just never know what to expect in open seats, but it would take quite a political earthquake to prevent Democratic representative Lisa Blunt Rochester from getting a promotion to the Senate against seemingly token GOP opposition in a state that hasn't voted for a Republican statewide in a quarter-century.

Florida--If Delaware is barely in the 2024 battleground for the Republicans, the increasingly red Sunshine State is barely in the battleground for the Democrats.  In virtually every sense, freshman incumbent Rick Scott is a horrible candidate, proposing Social Security abolition in a state full of seniors, but that hasn't stopped him from ekeing out the slimmest of victories both as a gubernatorial and Senate candidate as his state shifts more conservative.  The already considerable pipeline of conservative retirees to Florida escalated still further during the pandemic, and every indication is that Florida is now irredeemably MAGA. Former Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, voted out after a single term in 2020, is the best the Democrats can do.  She might help to stop the bleeding a bit with the Florida Hispanic vote, but considering the heavy hitters that Scott has laid waste to in the past, it's hard to imagine he won't chew up and spit out Mucarsel-Powell by double digits this year.

Indiana--Another barely qualifier for the battleground.  Freshman Senator Mike Braun is already calling it quits, choosing to run for Governor of the Hoosier State instead of a second Senate term.  His heir apparent seems likely to be Republican Congressman Jim Banks and it's hard to imagine that anybody from the weak field of Democrats currently declared becoming competitive, especially with Indiana having returned to rock-ribbed Republicanism after a flirtation with the Democrats a decade ago.  Still, the Democrats have enough solid names in their potential candidate log to conceivably make this race moderately competitive should one of them choose to run.  It's very unlikely though.

Maine--Two-term incumbent Angus King is an independent who caucuses with the Democrats and seems likely to get a third term as he remains popular with the independent voters who decide elections.  Still, King will be 80 years old, will have both Democrat and Republican challengers, and parts of Maine are realigning to the GOP quickly.  I'm not yet to the point where I'm ready to take this race out of the potential battleground.

Michigan--Four-term Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow is retiring this year, leaving an open seat in a Midwestern battleground state that's become much more politically unpredictable in recent cycles, particularly when Donald Trump is on the ballot.  Tellingly, Stabenow badly underperformed expectations herself in the strongly Democratic 2018 cycle, winning by only 6 points.  This year, it's a bipartisan free-for-all to fill her seat with a crowded field of candidates, and at least on the Republican side, no clear frontrunner.  The Democrats' likeliest candidate is Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin from the Detroit suburbs, who's smarter than most and has outperformed the fundamentals in her district in previous runs.  Still, Biden's approval rating is cratering worse in Michigan than elsewhere in the country, partly because the state's Palestinian population is furious with Biden over his support for Israel in the latest Middle Eastern rumble.  Slotkin faces a lot of headwinds this cycle, and given that Democrats barely hung onto Gary Peters' seat with Peters as an incumbent in 2020 with much more favorable election fundamentals, I'm not that optimistic about Slotkin's chances.  Obviously, the candidate the Republicans select as her challenger will matter considerably.  The conventional wisdom is that its unlikely that moderate GOP Congressman Peter Meijer can prevail in a Republican primary, but given how crowded the Republican field is, it's not entirely out of the question. If Meijer is the GOP nominee, Slotkin is finished.  Even if he isn't, I like the prospect of "Generic R" better than Slotkin's in the current environment.  To be continued on this one.  (GOP +3)

Montana--For three consecutive cycles, populist Democratic Senator Jon Tester has kept finding impressive ways to pull out narrow victories in the Treasure State.  Of course, he's always done so in election cycles where Democrats had a generic advantage. Tester's streak of running with the wind at his back is likely to end in 2024, and with it, almost certainly his political career.  Trump is poised to win Montana by double digits.  Before the Trump realignment, it was possible for a strong Senate candidate in either party to run more than 10 points ahead of the top of the ticket, particularly in a small state like Montana.  Those days are probably over, and I'm bit surprised Tester even chose to run again and risk finding out for sure.  I suspect Tester not only loses, but loses by high single digits.  This is true whether his GOP challenger ends up being former Navy SEAL and Captain America Tim Sheehy or Tester's 2018 challenger, Congressman Matt Rosendale.  (GOP +4)

Nevada--Freshman Democrat Jacky Rosen is running for a second term in a state that's increasingly on the knife's edge for her party.  Democrats have been on a long winning streak in the Silver State, but their advantage is no longer going in a straight line as the party has been hemorrhaging support among Hispanics and the white working class in the Vegas area for the last couple of cycles and Democratic margins of victory have been getting smaller and smaller.  There's a large field of Republicans running to take on Rosen, none of whom look particularly intimidating in the abstract, but if Trump is able to blow up the Democratic advantage with working-class Hispanics this cycle as I suspect he is, there's a very good chance he'll provide coattails for whoever the GOP nominee is.  There's still not nearly enough information for this race to make a confident call, but right now I'd rather be Rosen's GOP challenger than I would Rosen.  (GOP +5)

New Jersey--The only reason the Garden State finds its way onto the Senate battleground list is the same reason that the Garden State ever finds its way onto the Senate battleground, and that's three-term Democratic incumbent and career criminal Bob Menendez who I suspect finally started a fire he won't be able to put out with his latest criminal enterprise.  Several Democratic candidates are running for his seat, the strongest of them being Congressman Andy Kim and Tammy Murphy, the well-heeled wife of current Governor Tammy Murphy.  Considering Republicans haven't been able to pull out any wins in Jersey even against Menendez following his previous criminal trials, they have a weak bench and not too many big names in the field of challengers.  While I expect Trump will make inroads among ethnic working-class voters in New Jersey, and have coattails downballot, it's very hard to imagine it would be enough for Republicans to win this Senate race...unless of course they somehow find themselves running against Menendez again.  The Democrats should hold this one, and if they don't, their party is in unprecedentedly catastrophic trouble.

New Mexico--Two-term Democratic incumbent Martin Heinrich is a heavy favorite to win a third term in the Land of Enchantment.  He has solid approval ratings and none of this GOP challengers look too intimidating. Still, his party's grip on the state hasn't quite solidified to the point that I think he's entirely out of danger in the event of a wave, particularly given that it's a border state with a large population of Hispanics whose partisan loyalty seems increasingly up for grabs.  It'd be an earthquake if Heinrich lost, but I don't think he will.

Ohio--Even when Democrats won more elections than they lost in the Midwest, the Buckeye State was their weakest link, more Republican than the country even in its bluest cycles.  The Trump realignment has all but taken Ohio off the board for Democrats, and the last-standing emissary of the state's bipartisan past faces voters in November.  Populist Democrat Sherrod Brown is running for a fourth term, and even though he's built his own brand in Ohio over several decades, it's hard to imagine a scenario where he prevails against any of his potential Republican challengers, lightweights as they seem on paper.  Any Brown victory would require him to run a bare minimum of seven points ahead of Trump, and I just don't think that's possible in a state the size of Ohio in 2024.  Whichever of Brown's GOP challengers prevails in the primary is likely to become the state's next Senator, and depressingly, will probably beat Brown decisively.  (GOP +6)

Pennsylvania--Another incumbent Senator from the class of 2006 who's built his own brand is three-term incumbent Democrat Bob Casey, who's running for a fourth term.  His likely GOP challenger is rich guy David McCormick, who was narrowly edged out by Mehmet Oz as the 2022 Senate nominee, which could very well have cost Republicans that seat.  McCormick doesn't seem like the best demographic fit for today's Republican Party but you can be sure he'll get a turnout boost with Trump at the top of the ticket.  It's hard to imagine a scenario where McCormick doesn't give Casey the race of his career.  At least for now, I think Casey still pulls it out given how narrow the Republican path to victory is in Pennsylvania but I'm betting on a 2-point race.

Texas--After Republican Ted Cruz only prevailed by 2 points in 2018, it's clear he's weaker than the average Republican in a state with a demographic profile trending favorably to Democrats, albeit slowly.  Cruz will have a strong challenger this year (at least on paper) from three-term Congressman Collin Allred from suburban Dallas, a perfect avatar for the changing political profile of Texas.  Still, I don't think is gonna be Allred's year.  I suspect that even the odious Cruz will benefit from the chaos on the southern border that has negatively impacted Texas more than any other state.  Any ongoing realignment in upscale suburbs will be more than offset by a consolidation of GOP support in the Rio Grande Valley, where I suspect across the board double-digit GOP gains, including in population centers like El Paso, Laredo, and McAllen.  Ultimately, I suspect Cruz wins more decisively than he did in 2018.

Wisconsin--As is always the case at the outset of any election cycle, the Badger State stands out as one of the biggest wild cards.  Two-term Democratic incumbent Tammy Baldwin is seeking her third term, and she must be intimidating enough to scare off top-tier challengers as declared GOP candidates are the very definition of weak sauce.  In a competitive cycle with Trump at the top of the ballot, it's likely that even the weakest possible Republican challenger will get within 5 points of Baldwin, but at least for now it seems as though she has a decided advantage in pulling out a win.

More than 10 months before the general election, I have the Republicans gaining six Senate seats, which would give them at a 55-45 majority.  That's larger than what most election analysts currently imagine, but it doesn't seem the least bit bullish based on trends in the national environment.  Given that the incumbent Democratic President is quickly approaching re-election metrics as terrible as Jimmy Carter in 1980, it's easy to imagine a genuine wave election for the GOP where they sweep all of the battleground races and even some that weren't on the board just as was the case 44 years ago.  

But even if we entertain the notion of a historic Biden comeback that helps Democrats out in these Senate races, maintaining Senate control requires Democrats to sweep EVERY competitive race.  That includes Ohio and Montana, where Democrats would need to outrun Biden by at least a half dozen points to eke out a win.  I guess a surprise win in Texas would give them one extra seat to work with, but that's a long shot.  And of course, even if Democrats got the inside flush in the Senate races, a Biden win would still be required for the Vice President to be a tie-breaking vote. The bottom line is that I can much more easily envision a 57-43 Republican Senate at this time in 2025 than I can a 50-50 + Democratic Vice President Senate.  Suffice it to say that if it plays out this way, my nostalgia for the Class I Senate races will be a bit tarnished.