Senate Reset: Uncertainty Reigns

On The Wacky Map

It’s very easy to make a lot of different arguments about what the Senate will look like in November, given that there’s four states of (mostly) equivalent partisanship that are competitive, and given the thin differences between the four races, you can make (mostly) any case for any combination of Nevada, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia in any order.

In 2020, we knew (or, at least, thought we knew) what Democratic seats 47. 48, and 49 were, in that order. We knew that Colorado was the likeliest flip, we knew that Arizona was next, and then there was Maine. What most of the Senate commentary was focused on was ordering the various other races that excited Democrats – North Carolina, Iowa, both Georgias, Montana – in order of likelihood. Even if the consensus was wrong – and it obviously was – there was at least a coherent frame to talk about the Senate map. Like, we knew that if Mark Kelly lost, Democrats had no chance of winning the Senate, and if Steve Bullock won, then they had it.

This year, there’s no such certainty, because I can make a case for Democrats winning a 50/50 Senate without one of each of the four states, because this Senate cycle is turning out to be a very old school one – one where partisanship is less important, candidate quality seems to be more important, and most of all, none of the states have a particularly great connection to each other.

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Regardless of what you think the eventual Senate map will be, think about how little knowing the result of any individual race will tell you about the rest of the competitive map. It’s one of those games that usually comes up anytime anyone does some form of Twitter Q&A, but it’s usually interesting to think about what one individual result would portend for the rest of the map. (This is basically what the NYT needle does, just in a quantified way.)

If I told you John Fetterman wins, does that make you more confident in Raphael Warnock? It shouldn’t, because Fetterman winning could mean that Democrats are having some weird ass dream of a night (ala the kind I thought they’d have last year, before coming to my senses) and it could mean that they’re sucking everywhere else and they’re just winning Pennsylvania because the Oz New Jersey thing really, really worked.

If Raphael Warnock wins, it could be a broadly good night for Democrats or it could be that the Black turnout operation that the Reverend and Stacey Abrams have built is so strong it can even deliver for Democrats in shit circumstances. We know Democrats winning in Nevada doesn’t mean fuck all for the national environment (Harry Reid 2010, come on down!), and if Mark Kelly beats Blake Masters it’s as likely that Masters’ specifically horrible abortion policies and Kelly’s huge spending advantage is why more than anything about the environment as a whole.

In reverse, CCM losing in Nevada probably portends a really bad with Hispanics, but Kelly could hold on in Arizona with white swing and Pennsylvania and Georgia don’t have that many Hispanics to hurt Dems there (and especially in Georgia, their Hispanic community is very young, and therefore less likely to swing). If Kelly loses, Blake Masters won a race that any non-insane Republican should have won. If Oz wins, then the GOP held an open seat in a wave, and Democrats easily could be holding on better where they have actual incumbents.

I can’t actually make the case for a Democratic Senate majority with Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania and not Georgia, but even still, these races are so perplexing and individualized that almost none of this has the cohesive feel of usual. You can sell me on Democrats having 51 seats and having 46 and I won’t be that shocked. But at this point, it’s probably safe to say that Democrats would keep the Senate for an election held today. Of course, it isn’t, but this is the point.

There’s so much uncertainty around the Senate because there’s four countervailing winds on top of the wacky, individualistic map – two that help them, and two that point to disaster for them. This is the election of Presidential Approval versus Party support, and the election of historical trends versus the truism that parties get penalized for unpopular policies. The unpopularity of repealing Roe and the fact that the Democratic brand seems mostly fine against the fact that Democratic support usually craters from this point on in a bad cycle for them and the fact that Joe Biden’s approval is slightly above drinking one’s own piss. And nobody knows with any amount of confidence which of those factors will be the most important in November.

The legacy that most people are taking away from November 2020 is that the polls will overstate Democrats forever more, and in some ways, I agree with that. Certainly, if you’re believing these Ohio polls without realizing that Republicans have beat their polls there by 7% on average from 2014-2020, then you’re a fool. But in terms of takeaways, I can’t shake the feeling that I’m watching many Republicans cherrypick their way through a theory and a set of data that feels very familiar. In 2020, the polls were more uniformly headed in one way – towards a Biden blowout – but there was still the familiar beats of finding ways to dismiss the polls that did disagree while taking at face value those that agreed.

Pollsters’ historical results were useful when I needed to defend them, and their records were “mixed” when it was a bad poll for Democrats. It was an act of some delusion, because I (wrongly thought I) knew the answer and therefore could discern the “bullshit” from the “truth”. Obviously my head was up my own ass, but I just remember the sinking feeling when the landslide didn’t come. It’s possible that these sorts of landslides just can’t happen anymore, and it feels like there’s a lot of people whose frame of reference for a first term midterm is Obama and Trump and think that these sorts of huge swing are likely.

I’m at a no-change Senate map if I’m projecting forward to November, and I think if the election was today Democrats would flip Pennsylvania, but I hold neither of those opinions super strongly. What I do know is that this Senate map is the most wide open of any national chamber this close to the election since my entrance into giving a shit about politics, which was the Obama-Clinton primary of 2008. This is going to be a wild, unpredictable set of weeks and months.

I’m not sure anyone will be able to enjoy it, but from someone who lived and died with every poll last time around, don’t do that this time – there’ll be plenty of time for that when we know more.