We’re just about a month away from Election Night, and the Senate battleground is still shifting.
Right now, I see nine competitive races, in a Senate that outside of those contests stands at 48 Republicans and 43 Democrats. As a result, the GOP’s got the inside track on gaining the majority, needing to win just two or three of these nine elections (depending on which party wins the tie-breaking Vice Presidency).
Before we get into all that, though, I should touch on the Senate races in Maryland and Nebraska. Two months ago, for my last update, I included the Maryland contest between Democratic nominee Angela Alsobrooks and Republican nominee Larry Hogan on this list. Yet since then, Alsobrooks’ advantage average has grown to 9.4%, so it appears likely she’ll win there.
Meanwhile, some surprising surveys have emerged in Nebraska’s Senate race between Republican incumbent Deb Fischer and Independent challenger Dan Osborn. The dynamic calls to mind a similar circumstance in neighboring Kansas’ 2014 Senate race. In that case, Republican Sen. Pat Roberts was trailing against an Independent challenger in October, only to go on to easily win re-election. I’m betting on a similar outcome in this year’s Nebraska contest.
With all that said, let’s now dive into the nine remaining competitive Senate races, presented here in alphabetical order.
Arizona: Ruben Gallego vs Kari Lake
DDHQ Forecast: Gallego 83%, Lake 17%
DDHQ Polling Average: Gallego +7.4%
While the North Carolina’s Gubernatorial race gets all the ticket-splitting headlines, a considerable gap has grown between the Arizona Presidential and Senate contests, with Trump holding a slim lead in the former as Gallego continues to build on his advantage in the latter.
Lake, who has refused to recognize either her 2022 Governor’s loss or Trump’s 2020 Presidential defeat, is clearly struggling to appeal to moderates and independents. On top of that, Lake is badly trailing Gallego in the fundraising battle, suggesting she’s got some difficulties with Republicans as well. To wit, she went viral last August when pictures emerged showing Trump event organizers begging her through the teleprompter to leave the stage.
Florida: Rick Scott vs Debbie Mucarsel-Powell
DDHQ Forecast: Scott 69%, Mucarsel-Powell 31%
DDHQ Polling Average: Scott +2.8%
For perhaps the first time since 1988, Florida is not considered a top-tier swing state for a Presidential election. As a result, the Sunshine State’s Senate contest wasn’t considered getable for Dems despite losing it by just 0.12% six years ago.
Although, as the polls there have narrowed over these past few weeks, national Democrats are starting to look to Florida again as a possible savior for their majority. Yet while the DSCC are making their first TV ad buys here, GOP incumbent Rick Scott is responding with $10 million worth of his own commercials.
Working against Democrats, of course, is that Florida is a terrific demographic fit for Republicans. Not only do elderly white Northeasterners continue to flock there in droves, but the GOP is also winning over more and more Hispanics with each passing year. It remains to be seen, however, whether the half a million Haitian-Americans who live in Florida will be alienated by the recent comments Trump and Vance have made about their community.
Michigan: Elissa Slotkin vs Mike Rogers
DDHQ Forecast: Slotkin 68%, Rogers 32%
DDHQ Polling Average: Slotkin +3.5%
The three Blue Wall states – Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – aren’t just critical in the Presidential race, but in the battle for the Senate majority as well.
Recently, though, Rep. Elissa Slotkin told donors that her internal polling showed Kamala Harris was “underwater” in Michigan. That runs counter to the public polls in the Wolverine State, suggesting Slotkin may be worried about overconfidence. After all, she is far outpacing her opponent Rep. Mike Rogers in the fundraising race, raising $23.8 million to Rogers’ $5.3 million in the last quarter.
Nevertheless, in both the widely discussed New York Times/Siena surveys, as well as the overall polling averages, Slotkin trails her Democratic compatriots in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. So, if there’s a spot for a Blue Wall Republican upset, this would likely be it.
Montana: Jon Tester vs Tim Sheehy
DDHQ Forecast: Sheehy 79%, Tester 21%
DDHQ Polling Average: Sheehy +6.7%
If Montana truly is the tipping point in the battle for control of the Senate, then Republicans look poised to retake the majority. Prognosticators have already moved this race out of the toss-up category, as GOP nominee Tim Sheehy continues to build on his lead over Democratic incumbent Senator Jon Tester.
Yet despite the recent initiative to expand the battleground to Florida and Texas, Dems aren’t completely abandoning Tester; to the contrary they’re spending some $45 million there in the campaign’s final days. The terrain isn’t getting any friendlier, however, and Sheehy is smartly playing prevent defense, avoiding the media at all costs to limit any possible missteps. So even while Tester did get a recent opportunity to face Sheehy 1-on-1 in a debate, these types of confrontations rarely make an impact on the statewide level. Instead, it’s looking more and more likely that Tester’s reached the end of his magical Montana run.
Nevada: Jacky Rosen vs Sam Brown
DDHQ Forecast: Rosen 79%, Brown 21%
DDHQ Polling Average: Rosen +8.3%
Perhaps no Senator in a competitive race has put together a more impressive fall than Nevada’s Democratic incumbent Jacky Rosen. After all, going into this summer the Silver State looked like the likeliest Hillary 2016 state to turn red. In fact, even back in the 2022 midterms, the GOP made their sole Gubernatorial pick-up in Nevada.
Rosen’s rise could be a result of the change at the top of the Democratic ticket, since Trump lost his lead in Nevada a few weeks after Harris replaced Biden and he’s yet to get it back. Still, Rosen possesses the largest lead of any contest on this list, so that must say something about both her strengths as well as her opponent’s weaknesses. Army veteran Sam Brown was the Republican Party’s establishment pick, but with the NRSC canceling TV and radio ads, it doesn’t look like he’ll be able to flip this seat.
Ohio: Sherrod Brown vs Bernie Moreno
DDHQ Forecast: Brown 58%, Moreno 42%
DDHQ Polling Average: Brown +2.2%
Like Jon Tester in Montana, Brown is a Democratic incumbent fighting uphill in a Trump state. Unlike Tester, though, Brown is still clinging to a lead and giving Democrats hope that he can pull out one last victory.
To that end, the Senator’s undoubtedly thankful that his GOP challenger Bernie Moreno stepped in it on abortion and suburban women. “There’s a lot of suburban women,” Moreno contended, “that are like, ‘Listen, abortion is it. If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else.’ OK. It’s a little crazy, by the way, but — especially for women that are like past 50, I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.’”
This revelation comes as the latest round of New York Times/Siena surveys found Sen. Brown ahead by five points over Moreno. Moreover, Sen. Brown raised an impressive $30.6 million over the past fundraising quarter. Taking all of this together, Brown’s re-election suddenly seems truly possible a month out from Election Night.
Pennsylvania: Bob Casey vs Dave McCormick
DDHQ Forecast: Casey 72%, McCormick 28%
DDHQ Polling Average: Casey +3.7%
Pennsylvania is almost universally considered the tipping point state in this Presidential election, yet over the past year and a half Democratic Senator Bob Casey has maintained a polling lead over his Republican opponent Dave McCormick. By early August, in fact, Casey’s advantage eclipsed double digits, but the GOP refused to cut bait, and that lead is now down to 3.7%.
Last week, Casey and McCormick held their first debate in Harrisburg and their face-off was emblematic of the entire contest: the Republican challenger painted Casey as a done-nothing incumbent while the Senator repeatedly hammered McCormick as a Connecticut hedge fund CEO.
Ultimately, since McCormick can only win the Senate race if Trump carries the Keystone State, he’s closely tying himself to the controversial former President. As a result, the Senate nominee will rise or fall depending on how well Trump can perform in this always crucial commonwealth.
Texas: Ted Cruz vs Colin Allred
DDHQ Forecast: Cruz 76%, Allred 24%
DDHQ Polling Average: Cruz +3.1%
With the Montana Senate race drifting away from the Democrats, and Florida as a state trending towards the Republicans, that leaves Texas as the best chance Senate Dems have at pulling off an upset and improbably retaining their majority. Of course, that’s much easier said than done given that Texas Democrats haven’t won a statewide contest since the 1994 Lt. Governor’s race.
Simply put, Ted Cruz is still a conservative crusader in the nation’s largest red state, and that makes him tough to beat. For instance, back in 2018, exit polls found Democratic nominee Beto O’Rourke won two-thirds of the Latino vote, yet only a third of the white vote. So Allred needs sizable crossover support from non-college educated whites – the demographic most likely to vote for Donald Trump – for him to seriously compete in this race. Nevertheless, national Dems are pouring more money into the state in the hopes of somehow fundamentally altering their disadvantageous map.
Wisconsin: Tammy Baldwin vs Eric Hovde
DDHQ Forecast: Baldwin 72%, Hovde 28%
DDHQ Polling Average: Baldwin +4.2%
No state looms larger in the post-2016 Democratic conscience than Wisconsin, the state considered so safely locked into Hillary Clinton’s column that she never even bothered to visit. As a result, ever since Trump’s upset here, Democrats both in and out of the state are liable to disbelieve polls of the Badger State; even, or especially, those surveys that are favorable to them.
To that point, the highly regarded New York Times/Siena and Marquette University surveys both found Sen. Tammy Baldwin ahead of Republican challenger Eric Hovde by seven points. If anything, though, these encouraging numbers are only further stressing out Wisconsin Dems. For instance, last week the Baldwin campaign leaked to Axios that their internal surveys only had her up two points, an obvious attempt to prevent national Dems from taking their foot off the pedal here.
Should all these polling averages prove true, Republicans will finish with a 51-49 majority in the Senate. Although the fun of Election Night, of course, is that there’s always some surprises in store. Right now, an upset appears conceivable in Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Wisconsin. We’ll see whether or not this changes over the campaign’s final month.