Sunday with the Senators: Overview
The Senate is a fascinating deliberating body. Its history is intriguing. The reason the make up diverges from the House comes out an attempt at parity between large and small states during the drafting of the Constitution. Originally, Senators were appointed and not elected, and that is why to this day, if a Senate seat becomes open, a replacement is appointed by the state’s governor (different laws on who can be named differ by state) and why if a House seat becomes open an election is held. There are riveting anecdotes about the Senate, and the men and women who have served in the august body.
As an aside, if there is interest, I’ll be happy to do an interactive webinar on the history of the Senate, but I suspect most of you are only interested in this cycle. But if you want to learn, leave a note in the comments, and I’ll schedule something.
And so – 2024.
This is the consensus view1 of the outcome of the 2024 Senate elections from 270 to win. If you’re new to how they operate:
States in grey have no Senate election this year.
States in blue and red indicate THE CONSENSUS view of who will win the election (Dark Color = Safe, Middle Color = Likely, and Light Color = Leans).
States in that weird grey-beige color (in this case Ohio and Montana) indicate toss-up races.
States in purple (on the right side bar) relate to states where Independents are running. (This includes Nebraska where there is no Democratic candidate.)
The bar on top indicates the potential Senate make-up post-election, including all the states with no election this cycle.
If you don’t like the consensus choices, you can interactively make your selections and create your own outcomes.
If the consensus is correct, AND if we hold Montana (Jon Tester) and Ohio (Sherrod Brown) that would mean a 50/50 split with the Vice President as the tiebreaker. That was the situation during the first two years of the Biden-Harris administration.
So, what will happen?
There are some interesting things flying under the radar. For example, there’s a rumor (I’m not printing details because I don’t have 3 decent sources) that one candidate is claiming to be a disabled vet, but can’t seem to detail when he was injured. There are several carpetbagger candidates who don’t live in the states they want to represent. There could be a surprise in a ruby red state, might not be an actual win, but would cause the GOP to have to spend money they don’t have. There is another close race in a second ruby red state, that presents the Democratic candidate with an opening due to something no one is focused on.
As an aside, don’t buy into Trump’s huge fundraising numbers: a lot of that money is going to his court cases and his businesses. The RNC and DNC are supposed to collect money to spend on down ballot races in addition to the presidential candidates. This current RNC? Not so much. Without cash going to the state organizations, there’s no money for ads, canvassers, phone banks, basically “the ground game”. And no one wins an election without a ground game, except really, REALLY rarely. That exception would be an individual race, not all the Senate and House races in all the states. You can see party fundraising numbers here. They will all be updated in mid-July with second quarter numbers. Point is, money is critical to winning races at all levels. And in addition to what individual candidates raise, the parties prioritize which races they will fund. If there is a race that’s supposed to be solid for the party and yet they have to spend money there, those are dollars that can’t go to contested races.
Most Americans cannot name both their Senators. If you don’t believe me, ask 10 random people you know to name their Senators, and see what you find out. You would be hard-pressed to find people who can name all 100 Senators. (Yeah, I can, by state, with nicknames…but I’m a political junkie.)
Name recognition is important – it’s one of the two major reasons incumbents are re-elected: the other reason is party affiliation, which is a topic for another day. Therefore, money for name recognition (not to mention issues) is important.
That’s my introduction. In future editions of “Sunday with the Senators” we’ll look at individual races.
This data for the “consensus” comes from polls, prognosticators and other people who are sure they know the future. To the best of my knowledge, none of these people have ever won big in the lottery.