Even if Harris sweeps the swing states and wins the White House, a whole lot would have to go wrong for the GOP to remain in the Senate minority.
Even if Harris sweeps the swing states and wins the White House, a whole lot would have to go wrong for the GOP to remain in the Senate minority.
C onservatives are rightly concerned that Donald Trump may lose to Kamala Harris. They should not be worried about the Senate, however. The lineup of states with competitive Senate races, combined with the current polling and historic relationship between presidential and Senate outcomes, means the GOP has a near lock on winning Senate control.
Democrats currently hold 48 Senate seats and are supported by three nominal independents. That gives them an effective 51–49 majority and allows them to control the chamber’s agenda. Republicans thus need to gain two net seats to retake control in the event that Harris and Walz prevail.
Harris may be ahead nationally, but her lead in the polling averages does not equal Biden’s 4.4 percent winning margin. That strongly suggests that she would not currently win any state that he lost. That alone means that the Democrats’ two best Republican targets, Senators Ted Cruz (Texas) and Rick Scott (Fla.), should be expected to win even if they have to spend more than they had hoped.
The underlying demographic trends make it even more unlikely that a Democratic Senate candidate in those states could ride a Harris wave to pick up a GOP-held seat. Hispanics are more pro-Trump than they were in 2020 in virtually all public polls. Texas and Florida had already shown a clear pro-Republican tilt in 2020, meaning we should expect an even better showing by Republicans statewide this year.
This factor alone would mean that we should expect Cruz and Scott to win in their respective states by more than Trump did in 2020, and the movement of blacks toward Trump provides additional solace. Both states have sizeable black populations, and Democrats have traditionally relied on huge, 80-point or more margins with them to mount a serious challenge. Reducing that to even a 70-point loss would add one or two points to Cruz’s or Scott’s margins on top of the Latino shift.
Those are the only two seats that Democrats even have a prayer of picking up. Every other Republican-held seat is in a state Trump carried by double digits. Recent polls showing that Nebraska Republican senator Deb Fischer leads an independent candidate by only a few points should be taken with a grain of salt. Polling showed independents in Kansas (2014) and Utah (2022) doing much better in these deep-red states than they eventually did. There’s no reason to think Nebraska will behave any differently.
If they are unable to pick up a Republican seat, Democrats can keep control only if they win the White House and lose no more than one seat. West Virginia is a lock for the GOP, as Governor Jim Justice is very popular, and Trump should win the state by roughly 40 points. This would be a gain, as the seat had been held by Democrat-turned-independent Joe Manchin since 2010. That means the Democrats will need to run the table on every other contested race to narrowly control the chamber, thanks to the vice president’s tie-breaking vote.
That’s extremely unlikely. Montana is the GOP’s likeliest pickup of the other races on tap because of the state’s heavy Republican tilt. Republican challenger Tim Sheehy already leads incumbent Jon Tester in the polls, and Trump should win the state by 15–20 points. Barring a dramatic revelation in the final months, Sheehy should win this race going away.
Ohio is another state where Republicans have an excellent chance. Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown currently leads, but Trump will likely win Ohio by 8–10 points even if he loses nationwide. Republican Bernie Moreno remains less well known than Brown and has started to place significant television ad buys. This contest will be closer than Montana’s, but there’s no reason to count Moreno out yet.
Republicans also have credible challengers in three swing states that have Senate races: Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. These contests, along with Nevada’s, will likely go to the party whose nominee carries the state.
That’s because only one Senate race in the last two presidential election years — Maine’s in 2020 — has gone to a candidate from the party whose nominee lost that state. Polls in both years underestimated the straight-ticket voting that actually transpired, showing that they are unreliable tools to predict close races.
But even if that happens, Republicans still would control the Senate by virtue of their expected wins in West Virginia, Montana, and perhaps Ohio. And that’s a worst-case scenario, presuming that Harris wins every swing state.
Holding the Senate by a slim 51–49 margin would be cold comfort to a party that wanted to regain control of the White House. But it would provide a block on Harris’s agenda, and that’s quite important indeed.