Unlikely Voter

Three polls, three races, all close results. We’re starting to see what the 2018 Senate Battleground looks like, as Democrats try to beat the odds and take the Senate.

This is going to be a bad year for Republicans, but the Senate race this year is so stacked in their favor, it’s practically impossible for them to lose control of the body this year.

Even after the Republicans choked away the Alabama seat, they have a 51-49 edge in the body. In the event of a 50-50 tie, votes by the Vice President Mike Pence will tilt the body to the Republicans, so Democrats must net a two seat gain in order to take control of the body.

Yes, technically two members of the Democrat caucus claim to be independent, but they both submit to the party whip and fully participate in the party caucus. One of them, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, even ran for the party’s nomination for President in 2016. So I will dispense with any pretense that Sanders and Angus King of Maine aren’t full members of the Senate Party.

Up this year is Class 1 of the Senate, along with two special elections from Class 2. the amount that this split favors Republicans is overwhelming.

Consider that Republicans not up this year number 42, while the Democrats not up this year are only 23. That means Republicans only need to win 8 seats out of 35 to hold the Senate. How easy is that?

Widely-accounted safe seats in Mississippi (Roger Wicker), Nebraska (Deb Fischer), Utah (Orrin Hatch retiring), and Wyoming (John Barrasso) account for half of it right there. That’s a virtual lock for Wicker, Fischer, Barrasso, and (probably) Mitt Romney to be Republicans 43, 44, 45, and 46.

That leaves four. Republicans have two more seats that are widely rated as “Likely”: Mississippi (Thad Cochran retired, Cindy Hyde-Smith appointed) and Texas (Ted Cruz). It’s conceivable for either of these seats to swing the other way, but when Cook in particular moves a seat to Likely as he has for Cruz and Hyde-Smith, it would be most unexpected for those seats to go the other way.

Beyond that, there are eight more seats widely rated as toss-ups: Arizona (Jeff Flake retiring), Florida (Bill Nelson), Indiana (Joe Donnelly), Missouri (Claire McCaskill), Nevada (Dean Heller), North Dakota (Heidi Heitkamp), Tennessee (Bob Corker retiring), and West Virginia (Joe Manchin). Between the eight toss-ups and the two “likely” seats, Republicans just have to win half, plus their safe seats, to get to 51 seats.

Winning half of the toss-ups may sound hard in a wave year, but look at the states. Seven of the eight toss-up states went for Donald Trump. Further, Democrats like McCaskill and Donnelly faced remarkably weak Republicans last time, and are unlikely to get so lucky this time.

On top of that, Democrats have their own Leaners in Trump states they have to defend: Montana (Jon Tester), Ohio (Sherrod Brown), Wisconsin (Tammy Baldwin). If Ted Cruz isn’t safe, then we can’t count them as safe, either.

Analysts often point out how lucky Donald Trump was in 2016. It’s true. But Democrats were also lucky in the 2012 Senate elections. They have to get more lucky than that if they want to net two seats and win the Senate this year.

Challenging an incumbent Senator is hard, even for an incumbent Governor. But after months of bad polling, Rick Scott could win this.

This is a new feature I’m going to start here at Unlikely Voter. When I see a few polls that aren’t really a whole post in themselves, I’ll throw a post out wrapping them all up into one post.

One of the first posts I ever made at UnlikelyVoter charted Marco Rubio’s steady rise against Charlie Crist in his Senate primary.

Matt Bevin is not following that pattern against Mitch McConnell.

There’s an old saying, that if a headline asks a question, then the answer is no. Well, in the case of this headline, that’s probably true

Quinnipiac’s latest on the race still shows a huge Cory Booker lead. It’s only the movement that Steve Lonegan welcomes.

The Washington Post found that among Registered Voters, Tim Kaine and George Allen are tied at 46 in the Virginia Senate race.

Virginia Virtucon’s Riley thinks that’s a bit misleading, though.

I’m happiest when all the polls in a race match up. It means we have a very good idea of how a race is going for the candidates in it.

So, naturally, I’m not happy about the Massachusetts Senate race right now. Seeing a 10 point swing from poll to poll, giving both candidates opposing 5 point leads, means we have to dig deeper to figure out what’s going on.

I’m glad that we’re now starting to have a better idea of the shape of the Senate race, as we settle down on who the candidates are going to be, and how they’re polling against incumbents (or each other, in the case of open seats). Soon I will update my Senate projections with actual data.

In the meantime, we’ve got the first Missouri Senate poll in two months. Sarah Steelman polls an absolute majority over incumbent Claire McCaskill.

I’m a proponent of applying mathematical principles to poll analysis because our intuition is often wrong. The human mind deals poorly with randomness.

However I don’t feel I need any math to conclude that Connie Mack IV runs better against Bill Nelson than do other Republicans in the Florida Senate race.

Senate polling comes and goes lately, and primary polling is even harder to get. Pollsters seem to get more attention when they make these premature Presidential general election matchups.

But we got some Maine Senate polling from PPP just in time to get wind of some possible machinations in that race. Could Democrats be clearing the way for independent Angus King?

Medal of Honor recipient, former Senator, and former Governor Bob Kerrey has announced he will run for Senate in Nebraska to replace Ben Nelson, the man who replaced him in the Senate. Common sense suggests a multiple-time statewide winner with a distinguished personal history would be a favorite to win the open seat.

New polling however suggests Kerrey is a large underdog to Republican Jon Bruning.

While everyone focused on Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum in Ohio, a major Senate matchup was finalized in the state. Treasurer Josh Mandel was chosen as the Republican challenger to Senator Sherrod Brown.

Brown took advantage of a crippled Ohio GOP and a second midterm wave to knock off a two term incumbent. But can he keep this battleground state seat?