Can Republicans hold the Senate?

 President Trump is trailing in both national polling and in the Electoral College. If Joe Biden becomes president, it becomes even more important for Republicans to maintain control of the Senate, but the structure of the 2020 elections in which the GOP is defending many more vulnerable seats than Democrats, as well as alarming polls, make keeping control of Congress’s upper body a difficult proposition.

As I discussed two weeks ago in my last look at Senate races, the dynamics of this year’s election mean that Republicans are defending 23 Senate seats while Democrats only have to defend 12. Most of these seats on both sides are in states that are not competitive, but, as you might expect, the sheer numbers mean that more Republican seats are vulnerable. As 2020 has turned progressively more ugly for Republicans, seats once thought safe for the GOP have become vulnerable. At this point, 10 Republican seats are at risk compared to only two Democratic seats.

On the Democratic side, the two seats that it was considered possible for Republicans to flip were those of Doug Jones in Alabama and Gary Peters in Michigan. When Doug Jones won the special election to fill Jeff Sessions’ seat against Roy Moore in 2018, everyone knew it was a temporary thing. Moore, a former state supreme court justice who was removed from the bench for judicial misconduct and who was the subject of sexual assault allegations, was a uniquely bad candidate. No one expected that Jones would win re-election against a more mainstream Republican.

The conventional wisdom appears to be correct. Most polling shows Jones trailing former Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville by double-digit margins. As you’d expect for one of the reddest states in the nation, this looks like a Republican pickup.

Not so for Michigan. Republicans had high hopes for the Wolverine State after 2016, but it looks as though they will be disappointed. After a narrow win there over Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump is trailing by nine points. Republican John James is doing slightly better than the president but is still trailing by six points. Michigan seems destined to go blue again this year, leaving the Republicans with a gain of one seat.

That was the good news for Republicans. Now let’s look at the list of Republican seats that are at risk.

• Arizona – Republican Martha McSally is not a bad candidate, but she is the victim of the poor timing of being a Republican candidate in the Trump era. McSally lost the race to replace Jeff Flake to Kirsten Sinema in 2018 and then was appointed to fill Jon Kyl’s seat. Now she is trailing Democrat Mark Kelly by four points, which is slightly better than Donald Trump’s position in the state. The race is somewhat of a tossup, but McSally is the clear underdog. The seat is likely to go blue.
• Colorado – Republican Cory Gardner came into the Senate as a Tea Party candidate in 2014, but Colorado is trending more and more blue. Gardner is trailing by double digits in most polls and looks to be toast. This would be the Democrats’ second pickup.
• Georgia – Republican David Perdue is facing surprisingly stiff opposition from Democrat Jon Ossoff. Perdue has narrowly led in most polling but a partisan Civiqs poll released yesterday showed Ossoff ahead by six points. Georgia’s requirement that a candidate wins a majority means that the race will probably go to a runoff in January where Perdue would likely have an advantage.
• Georgia special election – Kelly Loeffler was appointed to replace Johnny Isakson last winter and now she is fighting for her political life. Loeffler is competing in a jungle primary against both Doug Collins, a Republican congressman, and Democrat Raphael Warnock (as well as a handful of other candidates). Both Republicans now trail Warnock but the runoff would likely favor the eventual Republican nominee.
• Iowa – Joni Ernst, another 2014 Tea Partier, is in a close race with Democrat Theresa Greenfield. The race has tightened in recent weeks with two polls that show a one-point lead for Ernst, but Greenfield still leads the polling average by two points. This race could go either way but is a likely Democratic pickup even though Donald Trump may win the state.
• Kansas – Republican Roger Marshall and Democrat Barbara Bollier are vying to replace the retiring Pat Roberts in this sleeper race. The race is surprisingly close, but Republicans should retain the seat.
• Maine – Susan Collins has been a Republican that other Republicans love to hate for as long as I can remember. It looks as though Republican voters won’t have to worry about her swing votes after this year. They’ll be complaining about Democrat Sara Gideon, who has led in every poll since July. Maine could be the fourth seat that Democrats flip.
• Montana – Donald Trump will win Montana handily but the Battle of the Steves in the Senate race is much closer. Republican Steve Daines narrowly leads Democrat Steve Bullock by three points. The seat will likely stay red.
• North Carolina – Both the Senate and the presidential races in the Tar Heel State are tossups this year. Democrat Cal Cunningham has lost some of his lead after a sex scandal erupted a few weeks ago. Nevertheless, Cunnigham still holds a polling edge over Republican Thom Tillis. This is another tossup, but North Carolina could easily become a fifth Republican loss.
• South Carolina – Polling favors Lindsey Graham in this surprise tossup although several recent polls have shown a tied race or a slight lead for Democrat Jaime Harrison. Republicans should hold this seat but there is a good opportunity for an upset.

The changing political situation is also leading to an additional Republican seat that may be vulnerable. Polling in Texas shows a very close race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, but so far Republican John Cornyn has maintained a comfortable lead over Democrat MJ Hegar. The race is not a tossup but a few recent polls have indicated that the race may be tightening. As Trump struggles in the Lone Star State, the Senate race bears watching as well.

The big picture here is that Democrats are likely to lose one seat (Alabama) while Republicans are almost certain to lose three seats (Arizona, Colorado, and Maine) and are somewhat likely to lose as many as five (adding Iowa and North Carolina). If the Democrats get the breaks on Election Day, things could get even worse for the GOP. A net gain of at least two seats for Democrats is a virtual certainty.

A net gain of three seats for Democrats would mean a 50-50 tie in the Senate. In that case, the vice president would cast the deciding vote for legislative ties.

If Democrats take the three likely seats and then add two or more tossup races to their tally, they will win control of the Senate. They would fall short of a filibuster-proof majority, however. If Senate Democrats elected to retain the filibuster, Republicans would still have enough clout to act as a speedbrake on the progressive agenda, except for judicial nominations where Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell have exercised their respective nuclear options.

At this point, the odds seem close to even money that the balance of the Senate next term will be a tie or a Democratic majority. The Senate races are looking slightly better for Republicans than the presidential race. Republican candidates may benefit from split-ticket voters who are experiencing Trump-fatigue but don’t want to hand the Democrats a blank check.

Originally published on The First TV

Ben Sasse unloads on Trump…and it may be a sign of things to come

 In a sign of things to come, Nebraska Republican Ben Sasse let President Trump have it with both barrels this week. Senator Sasse spoke truths rarely voiced by Republicans for the past four years in a phone call with constituents earlier this week, but, as the president sinks in the polls, Sasse’s criticism may become more common as vulnerable Republican incumbents attempt to save (and distance) themselves.

Sasse, who was an outspoken critic of Trump earlier in his presidency, was responding to a constituent who asked, “Why do you have to criticize him [President Trump] so much?”

Sasse began by responding, “We should distinguish between policy agreement and policy disagreement and then also long-term political implications as well.”

Sasse said that he had worked hard to develop a good relationship with Trump and then touted areas where “the president has now adopted traditionally Republican positions that he used to reject, for the majority of his life, when he was funding Democratic candidates.” In particular, Sasse said that Trump has nominated very good judges.

“There are a lot of places where he and I differ as well,” Sasse continued, “And these aren’t mere policy issues, and I’m not at all apologetic for having fought for my values against his in places where I think his are deficient, not just for a Republican but for an American.”

“The way he kisses dictator’s butts, the way he ignores that the Uighurs are in literal concentration camps in Xinjiang right now, he hasn’t lifted a finger on behalf of the Hong Kongers,” Sasse went on. “I mean he and I have a very different foreign policy. It isn’t just that he fails to lead our allies, it’s that the United States now regularly sells out our allies under his leadership. The way he treats women and spends like a drunken sailor. I criticized President Obama for that kind of spending, I criticize President Trump for it as well.”

Shifting to the president’s personal traits, Sasse said, “He mocks evangelicals behind closed doors. His family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity. He has flirted with white supremacists.”

Sasse then addressed Trump’s response to the Coronavirus pandemic. “At the beginning of the COVID crisis, he refused to treat it seriously,” Sasse charged. “For months, he treated it like a newscycle by newscycle PR crisis rather than a multi-year public health challenge, which is what it is.”

“Now, in his partial defense here, I think that lots of the news media has pretended that COVID is literally the first public health crisis ever and somehow it’s Donald Trump’s fault, that’s not true,” he qualified, “But the reality is that he careened from curb to curb. First, he ignored COVID and then he went into full economic shutdown mode. He was the one who said that 10 to 14 days of shutdown would fix this, and that was always wrong.”

Sasse also said that he thought Trump would ultimately drive the country further to the left. President Trump erred when he mistook an electoral fluke for a broad popular mandate.

“I think folks have regularly misunderstood the meaning of 2016,” Sasse said. “Donald Trump didn’t win the presidency because America actually wants more reality tv around the clock…. I think the overwhelming reason that Trump won in 2016 was because Hillary Clinton was literally the most unpopular candidate in the history of polling.”

“It has always been imprudent for our party to try to tie itself to a Trumpian brand and that’s what I’ve been worried about for five years,” Sasse said.

Sasse fretted, “I’m worried that if President Trump loses, which looks likely, that he’s going to take the Senate down with him,” adding that he is concerned about the possible loss of the filibuster and its effect on religious liberty and free speech.”

“I’m looking at the possibility of a Republican bloodbath in the Senate and that’s why I’ve never been on the Trump train,” Sasse said.

Sasse takes a long view, speculating that court-packing could lead to “dozens of people on the Supreme Court,” that our allies in the Pacific will side with China “because Trump’s isolationism is so weak” that our allies doubt us, that “young people [will] become permanent Democrats because they’ve just been repulsed by the obsessive of our politics,” and that women will leave the Republican Party permanently.

“What the heck were any of us thinking that selling a tv-obsessed narcissistic individual to the American people was a good idea?” Sasse asked rhetorically. “It was not a good idea.”

Can I get an amen?

Sasse makes many of the same points that I have made over the past five years. That includes earlier this week when I decided to support Joe Biden for president and Republican candidates for Congress. What Sasse says is what many prominent Republicans must have known all along. I am glad to hear Senator Sasse speaking out about Donald Trump’s flaws, but, for this election, it is too little too late. The Republicans are about to lose both the White House and the Senate to a blue tsunami.

I sympathize with Sasse’s fears about Democratic control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, but the time to sound a warning against Donald Trump was years ago, not two weeks before the election. If more Republicans had spoken out against Trump’s excesses, if they had done their constitutional duty and removed him from office last January, then we would be looking at a completely different campaign.

If Donald Trump was not at the top of the Republican ticket, Mike Pence would not be making inane comments and retweeting conspiracy theories. A Pence-Biden debate would have had a completely different outcome than the disastrous Trump-Biden debate. Republican incumbents in Congress would not be shackled to a sinking ship. If Mike Pence was the nominee, I and many other disaffected conservatives would have voted Republican rather than Democrat or third party.

Whose fault is the looming Republican electoral disaster? Ultimately, it is Donald Trump’s fault, but Republicans in Congress also deserve a large share of the blame. The GOP promised to hold Trump’s feet to the fire and then proceeded to let him run amok, circling their wagons to protect him from accountability. The Republican Party even protected Trump from primary challenges by canceling many state primaries, ensuring that their deeply flawed candidate would be the standard bearer, no matter how unpopular he was.

In 2016, the Republican embrace of Trump was a matter of necessity to defeat Hillary Clinton. In 2020, the party had a choice and knowingly, purposely, eagerly hitched itself to the man who half the country wanted removed from office only nine months ago. A man who 52 percent of voters said they would never vote for even before the pandemic.

Ben Sasse’s criticism of Trump is honest and refreshing, but it comes too late. The Republican Party is about to face losses of historic proportions because Republican voters have lived in a pro-Trump bubble for the past four years and been in denial about Trump’s widespread unpopularity, aided by congressional Republicans and pro-Republican pundits on television and radio.

If more Republicans had demonstrated the moral courage of Democrats who united to stand against Bernie Sanders, things might have been different, but, sadly, we will never know. America and the Republican Party are about to pay the price for the Republican failure to stand up for the principles that they professed before Trump came down the escalator.

Originally published on The First TV

The ‘Dirty Dozen’ races that will decide control of the Senate

 Last week, I took a deep dive into swing state polling in the presidential race. Today, I’ll focus on the other big concern for Republicans this November: control of the Senate.

As you probably already know, Republicans started the campaign with a three-seat advantage. This means that Democrats need a net gain of at least three seats just to even it up. In that case, tie votes in the upper body would be decided by the vice president, which would be either Kamala Harris or Mike Pence. (Although at this point I think it’s looking likely to be Harris.)

The list of battleground Senate seats looks a lot like the list of presidential swing states, but there are differences. Sometimes local conditions mean that a Senate seat is vulnerable in a state that looks pretty solid for a presidential candidate.

Democrats have a structural advantage this year because Republicans are defending more seats. Twenty-three Republican-held seats are up for re-election compared to only 12 Democrat seats. The fact that 2020 is shaping up to be a difficult year for Republicans means that more of these Republican seats are vulnerable than would be in a more typical year.

On the Democratic side, only two of the 12 seats up for election are not rated as “solid Democrat.” Those are Gary Peters in Michigan and Doug Jones in Alabama.

In Michigan, Peters has consistently led in polling and holds an average five-point lead over Republican John James. Peters will almost certainly retain his seat, but the story is different in Alabama.

Doug Jones won a special election in Alabama in 2018 when Republicans nominated the supremely bad candidate, Roy Moore. Even though Moore was unpopular enough to push Republican voters across party lines, Alabama is still a very red state. Jones is trailing former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville by about 10 points. The outcome of this race will likely increase the number of Republican seats that Democrats need to flip to four.

That was the good news for Republicans. The bad news is that 10 of the 23 Republican seats up for election are vulnerable to Democrats. This includes two where Democrats are favored to win and another half-dozen that are considered toss-ups.

Here is the full list of Republicans in trouble:

• Arizona – Martha McSally seems destined to lose her second Senate race in two years. In 2018, she lost the election to replace Jeff Flake to Kirsten Sinema and then was appointed to replace the retiring Jon Kyl. Now McSally is trailing Democrat Mark Kelly by seven points in a state that seems to be turning blue.
• Colorado – Cory Gardner is trailing former governor John Hickenlooper by an average of eight points. Colorado is another state that is trending more and more blue in the Trump era.
• Georgia – David Perdue is three points ahead of Democrat Jon Ossoff in this tossup race. Perdue is likely to win this close race, but it may require a runoff.
• Georgia special election – Kelly Loeffler, appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp to replace Johnny Isakson earlier this year, is in trouble, largely because Republican Doug Collins is mounting an intraparty challenge in this jungle primary race that I detailed last week. The two Republicans are splitting the vote and leaving Democrat Raphael Warnock with a lead in this six-way race. The two top vote-getters will compete in a runoff where Loeffler is likely to best the Democrat.
• Iowa – Joni Ernst, a Tea Party favorite, trails Theresa Greenfield by five points. This could be the third pickup for the Democrats.
• Kansas – Kansas is normally a red state but polling in the race to replace Pat Roberts, who is retiring, indicates a tossup. Republican Roger Marshall may have a slight edge over Democrat Barbara Bollier.
• Maine – Susan Collins, the perennial aisle-crosser that Republicans love to hate, is trailing Sara Gideon by four points. Collins may have reached the end of her tenure in the Senate as well.
• Montana – Donald Trump will win Montana comfortably but Steve Daines is in a tight race against a popular former governor Steve Bullock in this Battle of the Steves. Daines holds an average three-point lead and seems likely to hold on to his seat.
• North Carolina – Thom Tillis was trailing challenger Cal Cunningham when the Democrat became embroiled in a sexting and adultery scandal that only broke a few days ago. At this point, Cunningham still leads in the polling average by five points but has seen his lead slip. With three weeks to go, the race could go either way but the Democrat still has the edge.
• South Carolina – In the most surprising tossup race of the year, Lindsey Graham is struggling for survival against Democrat Jaimie Harrison in a race I profiled at The Resurgent a few weeks ago. This race is about as close as it gets, with recent polling showing a one-point race and polling favoring both candidates. Graham has a slight structural advantage but this one looks like a nail-biter.

If you’re keeping score at home, it looks like Republicans will flip one Democratic seat — Alabama — and Democrats are poised to flip at least four (Arizona, Colorado, Iowa, Maine) Republican seats and possibly as many as eight (adding Kansas, Montana, North Carolina, and South Carolina). That represents a net gain of between three and seven seats for the Democrats.

At this point, the smart money is on Democratic control of the Senate next year. FiveThirtyEight rates the odds of a Democratic takeover at about 69 percent. There is a nontrivial chance that Republicans can retain the Senate but it will require a very good night in which nearly all of the tossup races go red.

There is also a decent chance that we won’t find out who controls the Senate on Election Night. Both Georgia races are subject to a rule requiring a majority of the votes. If no candidate gets 50 percent, the top two candidates compete in a runoff. The runoff is scheduled for January 5.

Originally published on The First TV

Trump Outperforms Senate Republicans

 When I was writing about Lindsey Graham earlier this week, I noticed that the South Carolina senator was actually running behind Donald Trump in the Palmetto State. This was somewhat surprising since Mr. Trump underperformed most Republican candidates in 2016 and it made me wonder how the president stacks up against other Republican incumbents.

This year, Republicans will be defending a total of 23 Senate seats. Here is how the current RealClearPolitics polling averages (or FiveThirtyEight when no RCP average is available) compare for each Senate race and the presidential election, along with each Senate race’s current rating from Cook Political Report:

Alaska – Likely R (no polls since July)
Sullivan (R) leads by five points
Trump (R) leads by three points

Arizona Lean D
McSally trails by five
Trump trails by three

Arkansas Solid R
(No Senate polls and no presidential polls since June)
Trump leads by two

Colorado Lean D
Gardner trails by eight
Trump trails by 10

Georgia Toss up
Perdue leads by three
Georgia special election Lean R
Loeffler leads by three
Trump leads by one

Idaho Solid R
Risch leads by 26
Trump leads by 25

Iowa Toss up
Ernst trails by three
Trump is tied with Biden

Kansas Lean R (open seat)
Marshall leads by three
Trump leads by nine

Kentucky Likely R
McConnell leads by eight
Trump leads by 18

Louisiana Solid R
No Senate polls
Trump leads by 11

Maine Toss up
Collins trails by seven
Trump trails by 15

Mississippi Solid R
Hyde-Smith leads by 10
Trump leads by 12

Montana Toss up
Daines leads by two
Trump leads by nine

Nebraska Solid R
No Senate polls
Trump trails by seven (this was a shocker)

North Carolina Toss up
Tillis trails by six
Trump trails by less than one point

Oklahoma Solid R
Inhofe leads by 20
Trump leads by 24

South Carolina Lean R
Graham is tied
Trump leads by eight

South Dakota Solid R
No polls

Tennessee Solid R (open seat)
No Senate polls
Trump leads by 13

Texas Likely R
Cornyn leads by eight
Trump leads by four

West Virginia Solid R
No recent polls

Wyoming Solid R (open seat)
Barasso leads by 29
No presidential polls

Of the polls where we have decent data on both races, the Republican candidate polled better than the president in seven cases. This does not include Idaho where James Risch fared only one point better than President Trump, a statistical tie. That leaves nine states where Donald Trump is running ahead of the Republican Senate incumbents.

It is also worth noting that Republican incumbents trail in five states, not counting South Carolina. Democrats need to gain a net of four seats to gain control of the Senate (three if Kamala Harris becomes president of the Senate) and Doug Jones’s seat in Alabama appears to be the only likely Democratic loss.

It is difficult to draw firm conclusions in the midst of the campaign but the polling currently shows a stark change in the nature of the Republican Party since November 2016. That year, Trump outperformed Republican senatorial candidates in only three of 12 races.

The data so far for 2020 is incomplete but shows that Donald Trump is far more accepted among red-state Republicans now than in 2020. This is true despite the fact that Joe Biden is a much more popular candidate than Hillary Clinton. With no polling in so many deep-red states, it will be interesting to watch the margins of the elections to see whether Trump maintains his edge over Senate Republicans.

Despite Mr. Trump’s unpopularity in the country at large, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that Trump remains popular in red states. What is surprising is the extent to which Trump has become more popular than traditional Republicans. That truth underscores the fact that, even if Mr. Trump is shown the door by voters, his influence will be felt in the GOP for years to come.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Lindsey Graham Is In Trouble

 There have long been rumors of a tightening in the race for Lindsey Graham’s South Carolina Senate seat. Those rumors were confirmed in a poll earlier this month that showed the race in a tie. Now the Cook Political Report is downgrading the race from Likely Republican to Lean Republican.

There are only two recent public polls in the race. A Gravis poll from mid-July had Graham leading Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison by seven points. Mere weeks later, Quinnipiac had the race in a 44-44 tie.

The rapid swing and scarcity of polling leave questions about the true state of the race, but Cook Political‘s Jessica Taylor notes that a favorable electoral climate and strong Democratic fundraising mean that Harrison’s attempt to unseat Graham is “no longer a long-shot, though the race fundamentals still give Graham an advantage.”

Fundraising is one of the few objective measures of determining the depth and commitment of a candidate’s base before Election Day and the figures from South Carolina underscore Graham’s peril. Harrison has outraised Graham for two consecutive quarters and the total raised by the two candidates is almost equal.

Taylor also notes that the current political climate is a good one for Democrats. The Coronavirus pandemic has stoked the electorate with anger and uncertainty and the Black Lives Matter protests have invigorated black voters, who make up more than a quarter of South Carolina’s population and who are overwhelmingly Democrat.

Jaime Harrison, a graduate of Yale and Georgetown Law who grew up in Orangeburg, is also black, a fact that may also help to rally support. If Harrison wins, South Carolina, the state that fired the first shots of the Civil War, would become the first state in history to be represented by two black senators at the same time.

Taylor also points out that there is more polling support for a close race than public polling would indicate. Two internal Democratic polls since early July found a two-point and a four-point lead for Graham.

These polls indicate that Graham is weak in the areas that cost Republicans the House in 2018. The data indicated that Harrison led Graham by 19 points among college-educated women and 7 points among suburban voters. Both demographics figured heavily in the blue wave from the midterms two years ago.

One factor in Harrison’s strong polling may be the fact that he began introducing himself to the state’s voters with positive, biographical television ads in early April. Graham did not respond until late May, allowing Harrison to define himself. Now, when Graham tries to paint Harrison as a radical leftist, the attacks are failing to stick.

Another factor is that Harrison does not seem to be a radical leftist. A Republican source told Cook’s that Harrison is running “a centrist Democratic campaign focused on dinner table issues that has captured a lot of disaffected moderates.” Centrist Democrats were another strong element of the 2018 “shellacking” of the GOP.

Graham also seems to be negatively affected by his strong association with Donald Trump, who often polls worse in the Palmetto State than Graham himself. Graham was long considered a RINO and reviled by Republican pundits as “Grahamesty,” but his independent streak disappeared as he rarely challenged or criticized President Trump. The Gravis poll that showed Graham up by seven showed that a plurality of voters thought he was too close to Trump.

Graham’s words from April have also come back to haunt him as the pandemic spread. The senator vowed last spring that the $600 enhanced unemployment payment would only be extended “over our dead bodies.” With more than 170,000 Americans dead from COVID-19, that sound bite doesn’t sound the way it once did and has become the basis for Harrison’s attack ads.

It is premature to say that Lindsey Graham will be evicted from his Senate seat this November, but conditions are ripe for an upset victory by Jaime Harrison. The race is one to watch closely, especially with the control of the Senate hanging in the balance of a handful of races.

Originally published on The Resurgent