Dems chances of holding Senate slim
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Democrats then have the task of defending three clearly vulnerable seats. Another one, in New Hampshire, is in some jeopardy, but probably doesn’t fall unless at least two of the other three seats also flip (Colorado and, to a much lesser degree, Washington State, could also come into play in the fall, but are unlikely to do so unless the previous seats are lost). Two of these states – Arizona and Georgia – have PVIs (Partisan Voter Index, which measures how each district or state performs at the presidential level compared to the nation as a whole) that lean toward Republicans, while a third (Nevada) has no lean in either direction. The president’s job approval in these states likely mirrors his national job approval; this means that a successful Democratic candidate is going to have to convince about one in six voters who don’t approve of the president to nevertheless pull the lever for the Democratic Senate candidate.
That’s a tall order, especially in Nevada, where Republicans have a reasonably good, if not spectacular, candidate in former Attorney General Adam Laxalt. Laxalt hails from a famous Nevada family, and is a capable enough politician that he lost the gubernatorial race by just four points in the solid Democratic year of 2018. He’s a candidate that is at least at the Mendoza line in an environment where Mendoza-line candidates should win.
That leaves Georgia and Arizona. Former Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker is a weak candidate with a penchant for outlandish comments, and Sen. Raphael Warnock is a charismatic incumbent. But this is still a seat that Warnock barely won against another weak candidate in a low turnout 2020 runoff, and he will have to convince a large number of voters who disapprove of the president to vote for him. Arizona is an under-polled race with a late primary. We don’t yet know what kind of candidate Blake Masters, the seemingly likely victor of the GOP primary, is going to be, although recent comments about the possibility that the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was an FBI false flag operation aren’t particularly promising. But again, all he has to do to win is convince about 80% of the Arizona voters who disapprove of President Biden to vote for him.
In short, the battle for the Senate comes down to Democrats’ ability to win at least three of four seats that would likely be highly competitive if President Biden’s job approval were about ten points higher than it is today. But in a situation where Senate outcomes correlate heavily with presidential job approval in the state, that’s a tough row to hoe. While we should give more than a cursory nod to the possibility that Democrats will hold the Senate (unlike the possibility that Democrats will hold the House, which is barely worth that nod), we should also say with some confidence that Republicans are the favorites to win.
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It is not just Biden that is the Democrats' problem. Congress and the Dem leaders in it are also in negative territory. Public sentiment was against their big spending programs that caused inflation and they should be held accountable too.
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