Dem
53
Ties
3
GOP
44
This week, our postings make us look like we've become an official organ of the Democratic National Committee, because it's been wall-to-wall bad news for Donald Trump and his political party. We don't love that dynamic, but we are also bound to report the election-related news that we think is important. And pretty much all of the election-related news this week, with the possible exception of New Hampshire's Senate race being a nail-biter, has been good for the Democrats.
We have the Senate polls that we run almost every day, of course. We've written quite a few items this week about some of the issues (beef, diesel fuel, the war in Iran) that could very well be hurting the GOP, including in red states. We had an item about Republicans who are in tough races, and are semi-rebelling against Trump, or else trying to pretend he doesn't exist. We have written about Donald Trump's approval rating, both nationwide and in states with key Senate races.
And now, another way of looking at things, namely the race raters. These are the folks who try to take a holistic look at the Senate (and other) races, and to make their best projection based on the available data, as well as the raters' gut feel for American politics. There are three entities that have been doing it this way for many years, namely the Cook Political Report, Inside Elections and the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia (a.k.a. Sabato's Crystal Ball). Others have horned in on this general shtick, the way that some people tried to steal Siskel & Ebert's "two thumbs up" (even though that's trademarked), but these three are the founding parents of holistic projections. So, we're going to take a quick look at where the three of them have the Senate, about a month and a half before the election.
What particularly motivates us to write this item today is that Sabato, for what must be the fourth or fifth time in the past few weeks, moved a bunch more races in the direction of the Democrats yesterday: the governor's races in Florida, Nevada, Ohio and Texas; the U.S. Senate races in Iowa, Kansas and Michigan and the U.S. House races in FL-27, IA-02 and TX-09. Note that all of those, save the U.S. Senate race in Michigan, involve seats currently held by a Republican.
Here is how the three gold-standard race raters have each of this year's Senate races (* = retiring; # = defeated in primary):
| State | Current Holder | Cook | Sabato | Inside |
| Alabama | Tommy Tuberville* | Solid R | Safe R | Solid R |
| Alaska | Dan Sullivan | Toss Up | Toss Up | Tilt R |
| Arkansas | Tom Cotton | Solid R | Safe R | Solid R |
| Colorado | John Hickenlooper | Solid D | Safe D | Solid D |
| Delaware | Chris Coons | Solid D | Safe D | Solid D |
| Florida (special) | Ashley Moody | Solid R | Safe R | Solid R |
| Georgia | Jon Ossoff | Lean D | Likely D | Tilt D |
| Idaho | Jim Risch | Solid R | Safe R | Solid R |
| Illinois | Dick Durbin* | Solid D | Safe D | Solid D |
| Iowa | Joni Ernst* | Toss Up | Toss Up | Tilt R |
| Kansas | Roger Marshall | Likely R | Lean R | Likely R |
| Kentucky | Mitch McConnell* | Solid R | Safe R | Solid R |
| Louisiana | Bill Cassidy# | Solid R | Safe R | Solid R |
| Maine | Susan Collins | Toss Up | Toss Up | Toss Up |
| Massachusetts | Ed Markey | Solid D | Safe D | Solid D |
| Michigan | Gary Peters* | Toss Up | Lean D | Toss Up |
| Minnesota | Tina Smith* | Likely D | Likely D | Likely D |
| Mississippi | Cindy Hyde-Smith | Solid R | Safe R | Solid R |
| Montana | Steve Daines* | Solid R | Safe R | Solid R |
| Nebraska | Pete Ricketts | Likely R | Likely R | Likely R |
| New Hampshire | Jeanne Shaheen* | Toss Up | Lean D | Toss Up |
| New Jersey | Cory Booker | Solid D | Safe D | Solid D |
| New Mexico | Ben Ray Luján | Solid D | Safe D | Solid D |
| North Carolina | Thom Tillis* | Lean D | Lean D | Tilt D |
| Ohio (special) | Jon Husted | Toss Up | Toss Up | Toss Up |
| Oklahoma | Alan Armstrong* | Solid R | Safe R | Solid R |
| Oregon | Jeff Merkley | Solid D | Safe D | Solid D |
| Rhode Island | Jack Reed | Solid D | Safe D | Solid D |
| South Carolina | Darline Graham | Solid R | Safe R | Likely R |
| South Dakota | Mike Rounds | Solid R | Safe R | Solid R |
| Tennessee | Bill Hagerty | Solid R | Safe R | Solid R |
| Texas | John Cornyn# | Toss Up | Toss Up | Lean R |
| Virginia | Mark Warner | Solid D | Safe D | Solid D |
| West Virginia | Shelley Moore Capito | Solid R | Safe R | Solid R |
| Wyoming | Cynthia Lummis | Solid R | Safe R | Solid R |
The current count for each of the three race raters:
Now, let's add in the seats that aren't being contested this year (34 for the Democrats/Independents who caucus with the Democrats, 31 for the Republicans):
Those numbers are certainly a little more bearish for the blue team than our current count, which is 53 D, 3 TU, 44 R. However, let's resolve the tossups. If tossups were truly random, then each party could expect to win 50% of them. However, they are not truly random, and tend to correlate with each other. That is why all seven of the swingiest states went for Donald Trump in 2024, six of the seven swingiest (all but North Carolina) went for Joe Biden in 2020, and five of the seven swingiest (all but New Hampshire and Minnesota) went for Trump in 2016.
This admittedly limited data set suggests that a fair guess is that 6/7 of swing state results will correlate. So, let's give 6/7 (85%) of the swingy Senate races to the Democrats, who certainly appear to have the favorable environment. Just for simplicity, we'll also assume that Nebraska is the state (or one of the states) that bucks the trend. Under those assumptions, you end up with this:
Incidentally, if you apply the same assumptions to our numbers, you end up with 55 D, 45 R.
It is not too much of a surprise that our numbers-driven approach produces a slightly (but, in two of three cases, not substantially) more extreme result. Race raters tend to be more cautious, because they don't want to make big, embarrassing mistakes. And if you don't believe us on that point, perhaps you will believe G. Elliott Morris, the fellow who replaced Nate Silver at 538 before 538 was shut down. Morris had a long piece yesterday headlined "The race raters are lowballing the Democrats." Looking at the same trio of raters we just did, he says they tend to err heavily on the side of the party in power in rating races as toss-ups, and that the solid majority of those races end up going to the party that is out of power. It's a pretty good analysis; consider clicking through and reading the whole piece.
Ultimately, we are just trying to find different ways of looking at the available information to see if all these crazy Senate polls, with Democrats leading in places you would never expect them to lead, could possibly be accurate. And we think the overall picture we've painted this week strongly suggests they could be. And note that even if you dislike the assumptions we made for the third and final case above, there are two incontrovertible facts in play. The first is that control of the Senate will be decided mostly (or entirely) by those toss-up seats. The second is that toss-up elections definitely do correlate with each other.
The only potentially squishy elements of our assumptions are: (1) that it will be a Democratic year, and (2) that the year will be good enough for the blue team to cause 75% or 80% or 85% of the swingy elections to break in their favor. At this point, however, while "this is going to be a Democratic year" may not be a fact, per se, it's getting pretty close. Meanwhile, the size of the wave doesn't actually have to be that big for there to be some serious correlation. Donald Trump lost the popular vote in 2016, and yet took 71% of the swing states. He won the popular vote by just 1.5% in 2024, and took 100% of the swing states. It doesn't necessarily take that big a margin. (Z)