Is the Fight for the Senate Over?
November 2023
With Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin heading for the exits, effectively giving Republicans a seat, is the fight for the Senate over almost a year before Election Day? Not quite, but Democrats have a difficult road ahead.
At the most basic level, Democrats need to win all the competitive Senate races to retain control, and that may not even be enough.
Republicans need a net gain of two seats in 2024 for a majority, and the West Virginia seat gets them halfway there. But Republicans can win control of the Senate with West Virginia as their sole takeover by winning all the seats they currently have and winning the White House, because the new vice president could break tie votes. That’s a plausible path for the GOP, considering their Senate vulnerabilities are limited and former President Donald Trump is running even with or ahead of President Joe Biden in early presidential polls.
If Biden prevails and Republicans need to gain a second seat, there are plenty of opportunities. Democratic Sens. Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio are extremely vulnerable, due to the high likelihood Trump will carry both states even if he loses the overall election, and the high correlation between presidential results and Senate results.
Republicans also have a handful of other takeover opportunities in states that Biden carried narrowly in 2020 and may not carry again in 2024. Pennsylvania (where Democratic Sen. Bob Casey Jr. is up for reelection), Nevada (Jacky Rosen) and Wisconsin (Tammy Baldwin) are all vulnerable along with Michigan, where Debbie Stabenow is not running for reelection. And Democrats are still trying to keep Arizona from falling into the hands of Republicans, even though the race is complicated by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s decision to leave the Democratic Party.
Republicans are headed toward primaries in Ohio, Nevada, Michigan and potentially Montana that could produce flawed nominees, and they still have a recruitment hole to fill in Wisconsin. It’s also not clear whether they’ve recruited the caliber of challenger necessary to knock off some of Democrats’ strongest incumbents. But Republicans don’t have to win all those races, and may not have to win any of them, if they win the White House.
Manchin’s announcement should not be a surprise. Despite his impressive string of victories going back 40 years, he was probably going to lose reelection had he decided to run for a third full term. West Virginia has been shifting quickly toward Republicans and is even more conservative than the last time Manchin was on the ballot in 2018. Losing can’t be how the senator wanted to cap his career. (It’s also a good reason for him not to run for president.)
In the Senate, both parties defend incumbents, almost to a fault. So not having to defend Manchin in a potentially unwinnable race frees up some resources for Democrats to spend elsewhere. But a loss in West Virginia increases the pressure on Tester and Brown to win, and for Democrats to cultivate Florida and Texas into real offensive opportunities. They might need to take over at least one Republican seat to make up for a loss elsewhere. Democrats believe Sens. Rick Scott and Ted Cruz are uniquely vulnerable in Republican-leaning states. But both races are still long shots and would be expensive because of the large number of media markets in each state.
Democrats expanded their Senate majority against long odds in 2022 and proved their ability to win key races in the face of Biden’s poor poll numbers in 2022 and 2023. And Republicans have shown an ability to lose winnable races going back more than a decade. But Biden is likely to be on the ballot in 2024, and the Senate battleground is even more difficult to navigate for Democrats.
In 2022, the battleground was more evenly split between vulnerable Democratic and Republican seats. Democrats didn’t lose a single incumbent last cycle. But none of the competitive races were in states Trump carried in 2020. This cycle, Democrats need one (and potentially both) of Tester and Brown to win reelection in states Trump will carry without much difficulty.
Looking at their races individually, it’s not hard to see how Brown and Tester could win. But at a macro level, it’s harder to see how both of them (and all the other Democratic incumbents) win, particularly when Biden is struggling.
Some of the greatest lessons in political analysis over the last eight years have been to be open-minded about possibilities and that races are not just simple exercises in partisanship. So, it’s wise not to count Democrats out. But it’s also unwise to underestimate the challenge they face to keep control.
Nathan L. Gonzales is a senior political analyst for the Public Affairs Council and editor of Inside Elections, a nonpartisan newsletter with a subscription package designed to boost PACs with a regular newsletter and exclusive conference call. You can also hear more on the Inside Elections Podcast. His email address is [email protected].
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Democrats expanded their Senate majority against long odds in 2022 and proved their ability to win key races in the face of Biden’s poor poll numbers in 2022 and 2023. And Republicans have shown an ability to lose winnable races going back more than a decade. But Biden is likely to be on the ballot in 2024, and the Senate battleground is even more difficult to navigate for Democrats.
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