Update on U.S. Senate Races: One Bright Spot Among Desolate Landscape

Montana is the ONLY bright spot for Republicans, with Tim Sheehy reversing Jon Tester’s lead.

At the end of May, I published an extensive piece on the state of the presidential race and the eight U.S. Senate races in which control of the U.S. Senate will be determined. That column assumed a 50-50 U.S. Senate with Republican Governor Jim Justice taking Democrat Senator Joe Manchin’s open seat. Here is where those eight races stood based on the polling on May 30: 

• Arizona: Ruben Gallego over Kari Lake by 6.0;

• Maryland: Larry Hogan over Angela Alsobrooks by 6.5;

• Michigan: Elissa Slotkin over Mike Rogers by 1.0;

• Montana: Jon Tester over Tim Sheehy by 5.5;

• Nevada: Jacky Rosen over Sam Brown by 4.6;

• Ohio: Sherrod Brown over Bernie Moreno by 5.0;

• Pennsylvania; Bob Casey, Jr., over David McCormick by 4.8; and

• Wisconsin: Tammy Baldwin over Eric Hovde by 6.8.

As I noted in May, it appeared that voters would split the tickets in most of the states by voting for Donald Trump for president while voting for the Democrat incumbent for the U.S. Senate. Based on the eight races, control of the U.S. Senate would come down to who won the presidency, with the Vice President casting the tie vote for control (assuming Hogan’s lead in Maryland would rapidly evaporate after the Democrat primary, which it did).

So, where do things stand three months later and with just sixty-eight days until Election Day, with many states starting early voting in the next two weeks?

The unfortunate punchline is: the landscape became MORE desolate except in one state. Here are the eight races as of yesterday’s polling (with change noted):

• Arizona: Gallego over Lake by 6.7 (+0.7D);

• Maryland: Alsobrooks over Hogan by 6.0 (+12.5D);

• Michigan: Slotkin over Rogers by 5.0 (+4.0D);

• Montana: Sheehy over Tester by 5.0 (+10.5R);

• Nevada: Rosen over Brown by 9.4 (+4.8D);

• Ohio: Brown over Moreno by 5.0 (+0.0);

• Pennsylvania; Casey, Jr., over McCormick by 7.6 (+2.8D); and

• Wisconsin: Baldwin over Hovde by 6.7 (+0.1R).

As you can see, Montana is the ONLY bright spot for Republicans, with Sheehy reversing Tester’s lead. Though neither Brown in Ohio nor Baldwin in Wisconsin GREW their leads over the last three months, they maintained leads outside of the margin of error. Thus, both Moreno in Ohio and Hovde in Wisconsin are rapidly running out of runway to take flight and win. If these numbers hold, Republicans should celebrate because it would give them control of the U.S. Senate by a 51-49 margin, which will serve as an insurance policy to stop Kamala Harris’s left-wing agenda should she defeat Trump for the presidency.  

If Trump wins the election by taking most of the above states, it would make for a strong case that Republican voters like Trump a whole lot more than other Republican candidates. 

P.S. I thought this video recreating the writing of The Federalist Papers by three of our Founding Fathers if the writing was a group project was hilarious. Hope you get a laugh at it, as well.