The GOP’s Congressional Campaigns Shouldn’t Be So Confident in Their 2024 Prospects

T here’s not a lot to love in the so-called minibus spending package that passed the House on Friday. Its primary purpose is to keep the government’s lights on, but conservative activist groups and Republican lawmakers have rightly looked askance at “its numerous expected earmarks, which are technically banned under the Senate GOP conference rules.” Indeed, the package only secured the votes of 101 Republicans — a minority of the House majority — because the prospect of a government shutdown is broadly (and rightly) perceived to be a graver political threat to the GOP’s electoral bottom line.

It’s easy to sympathize with Senator Mike Lee’s complaint that spending packages like these do not deserve Republican support. “We need Republicans who don’t suck,” Lee wrote. The obvious rejoinder to Lee’s understandable frustrations is that the GOP, therefore, needs to elect more Republicans. After all, the “minibus” may be undesirable, but it’s better than the legislative product that would sail through a wholly Democrat-led Congress. And if Republicans could count on bigger majorities in the House or even a majority in the Senate, the party would be able to preside over better legislative outcomes. So, how are the GOP’s prospects in this year’s congressional elections shaping up now that many of the party’s nominating contests are all but settled? Simply put, they should be better.

Congressional Republicans are likely so keen on avoiding a shutdown because they are eager not to remind voters of the chaos that typified the first year of the 118th Congress. At present, the FiveThirtyEight average of generic-ballot polling finds Democrats and Republicans almost perfectly tied, but that tie reflects a substantial improvement in Democratic prospects; earlier this year, the GOP enjoyed as much as a 1.4 percent advantage. Given the GOP’s already-small majority in the House, Republicans would surely prefer a bigger cushion in a presidential-election year that will see higher-than-average turnout.

Still, Republicans already have a lot going for them. As was the case in 2022, the Republican Party enjoys environmental tailwinds that favor its preferred issue set. The incumbent Democratic president is deeply unpopular — even if he manages to win reelection, he is unlikely to have “coattails” that will drag his party’s down-ballot candidates over the finish line. Republicans own the border crisis, the economy, and national security amid a rapidly deteriorating international threat environment. This should be their year. And yet, while this election cycle is a long way from over, the polling of individual U.S. Senate races does not indicate a banner 2024 is in store for the GOP.

Republicans benefit from a U.S. Senate map that compels Democrats to play defense. In Ohio and Montana, the GOP has two solid opportunities to unseat Democratic incumbents in states that typically vote Republican at the presidential level. Republicans are also in play in Arizona, a purple state that has been hit hard by the migrant crisis. But the GOP has complicated its prospects once again by selecting statewide nominees that are presently behind the eight ball in the polls.

With Senator Kyrsten Sinema now out of what briefly looked to be a three-way race in Arizona, former Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake is likely to face off against Democratic representative Ruben Gallego. But the only polls of a two-way race this year that find Lake edging out Gallego were conducted by partisan firms — one sponsored by her campaign in early February and another from the right-leaning, populist Bull Moose Project. The polling of this race is sparse, but what remains suggests a close race that favors Gallego.

In Ohio, Republicans backed Bernie Moreno to take on longtime incumbent Democratic senator Sherrod Brown. But they did so knowing (or, at least, having every available opportunity to learn) that Moreno polled worse in a head-to-head matchup against Brown than his most viable primary opponent, state Senator Matt Dolan. Pollsters devoted a lot of attention to the Buckeye State Senate race in March, and those surveys find Moreno trailing Brown by anywhere from four to eleven points.

Montana senator Jon Tester won’t know who his GOP opponent will be until the state holds its senatorial primary in June. But with Matt Rosendale out of the race, all indications suggest former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy will take on Tester in November. The only polling of that race conducted in 2024 finds Tester up by either two or nine points over his Republican rival.

Those are the most competitive seats in play this year, but Republicans might get lucky in contests on the margins. Nevada senator Jacky Rosen is likely to face off against retired Army captain Sam Brown, who lost his bid to challenge Senator Catherine Cortez Masto in 2022. Brown is the most competitive Republican in the race, but 2024’s Nevada Senate polls find Rosen leading him by between two and six points. Michigan’s open seat will likely feature a race between Democratic representative Elissa Slotkin and former Republican representative Mike Rogers. There, the polls show Slotkin with a narrow lead — one to two points — with one hopeful survey finding Slotkin and Rogers even at 37 percent apiece. Precisely two polls of the Senate race in Wisconsin in 2024, both from Emerson college, find Senator Tammy Baldwin leading businessman Eric Hovde by comfortable margins, though Hovde is closing the gap.

Then there’s Maryland. On paper, that seat has suddenly become competitive with former Republican governor Larry Hogan’s decision to run for the seat that is being vacated by Senator Ben Cardin. A recent Washington Post/University of Maryland poll found Hogan beating both his potential Democratic rivals by double digits, but this will be a tricky race. As the Dispatch’s David Drucker recently told me, voters have a canny ability to distinguish the qualities they like in a governor from those they seek in federal officeholders. It’s not a given that Hogan will close the deal with Marylanders in the fall. And if, in the end, Republicans are leaning on the deep-blue Old Line State to save their bacon, their cause is probably already lost.

These are all tight races, and there is plenty of game left to play in 2024. But Republicans may not be able to rely on a proficient ground game to make up the difference they need. Get-out-the-vote operations are expensive, and that money will be needed elsewhere.

“Donald Trump’s new joint fundraising agreement with the Republican National Committee directs donations to his campaign and a political action committee that pays the former president’s legal bills before the RNC gets a cut,” the Associated Press reported this week:

Trump has invited high-dollar donors to Palm Beach, Florida, for an April 6 fundraiser that comes as his fundraising is well behind President Joe Biden and national Democrats. The invitation’s fine print says donations to the Trump 47 Committee will first be used to give the maximum amount allowed under federal law to Trump’s campaign. Anything left over from the donation next goes toward a maximum contribution to Save America, and then anything left from there goes to the RNC and then to state political parties.

Well then, whither those poor state parties, and the down-ballot races that depend on the party’s congressional and senatorial campaign committees for support?

None of this will matter much if the political environment continues to favor the GOP to the extent that voters are willing to look beyond its nominees’ flaws. By rights, 2024 should be a good year for the Republican Party. But as Jim Geraghty recently observed, the Democrats will “never be as good at beating the Republicans as the Republicans are at beating themselves.”