Democrats Are the Odds-On Favorite
That has been my position for weeks.
Almost 100 Days Out, Democrats Are Favored to Take Back the Senate
Please consider Almost 100 Days Out, Democrats Are Favored to Take Back the Senate by Jessica Taylor.
“Something remarkable would have to happen for Republicans to still have control of the Senate after November,” remarked one GOP pollster. “It’s grim. There’s just so many places where Democrats either have the upper hand or are competitive in states that six months ago we wouldn’t have considered at risk.”
“If you’re an incumbent in a bad environment sitting at 44 percent, you should be pretty damn scared,” another alarmed Republican strategist said. “The expanding map has made it really hard, and there’s just a lot of Democratic momentum right now.”
By looking at the numbers, the battleground becomes clear — Arizona is falling down the list for the GOP to defend, and Colorado is threatening to. If the election were today, Arizona, Colorado and North Carolina stand as the most vulnerable, closely followed by Maine. That leaves what Republicans see as the tipping point states of Montana, Iowa and Georgia. But they have other states they have to watch and worry about, including Kansas, Texas, and even Alaska and South Carolina.
The bottom line is that even Republicans believe Michigan is gone for Trump, and even if James might be able to overperform the president, especially in the Detroit suburbs, polls don’t show it’s enough, so it remains in Lean Democratic.
Let’s turn to the polls to see what influenced Cook Political.
Senate Polls Released July 14 Through July 26
The above polls from FiveThirtyEight Senate Polls. I removed polls sponsored by political parties or PACs.
Republicans in Danger of Losing the Senate
On June 12, I wrote Republicans in Danger of Losing the Senate.
Trump’s mishandled Covid-19 and the George Floyd riots so badly that a red backlash may cost Republicans the Senate.
The map I posted at the time had Democrats ahead 47-43 with the rest tossups. Here is my map for reference.
Note that I already had Minnesota in the solid Democrat category. I had some states as tossups because there were no polls.
My Tweet at the Time
My Senate Map July 26, 2020
I created the above map on 270-to-Win.
That link will take you to my interactive map that you can modify.
What Will It Take to Flip the Senate?
Assuming Democrats win the presidential election 50 seats is enough. The Vice president will get a tie-breaking vote.
To win a 50-50 tie, Democrats need to win 1 of 4 of NC, GA, IA, or MT.
I have Colorado in the likely Democrat camp whereas Cook says “Arizona is falling down the list for the GOP to defend, and Colorado is threatening to.”
Colorado Threatening?
There are no recent Colorado Polls, but the latest 4 polls have Democrat Hickenlooper over Gardner by +11, +18, +17.
The most recent poll (June 29-30) was Hickenlooper +11.
If you wish to call Colorado and North Carolina tossups, the Democrats need 2 of 5 of NC, GA, IA, CO, or MT.
If you wish to add Maine to the tossup list as well, then the Democrats need 3 of 6 of NC, GA, IA, CO, ME, or MT.
The problem for Trump is that even if you label all of those as tossups, Democrats have a reasonable lead in NC, CO, and ME with the others genuine tossups.
What About Iowa?
FiveThirtyEight has Democrat Greenfield over Republican Ernst by 2 or 3 percentage points in five consecutive Iowa Polls in June or later, with the most recent in July.
I call that a tossup.
Conclusion
In an election in which it is increasingly likely Trump gets slaughtered, holding on to leads in three close Senate states out of six (or two of them and flipping a third elsewhere), is an odds-on bet.
An outright Democrat majority of 53-47 is possible, albeit unlikely, at the moment.
My base case now is Democrats win 50 or 51.
50 will do it but with that slim of a majority it will be tough to get much done, especially if Collins holds on in Maine.
Whatever the outcome, there will be only one person to blame: Trump.
Trump Will Lose to Biden
For analysis of why Trump will lose to Biden, please see Only 13 Percent of Voters are Still Undecided
Mish
https://www.amazon.com/Blitz-Trump-Will-Smash-Left/dp/1630061387
I’m still undecided. It doesn’t help that Democrats and Republicans just hurl insults at one another nonstop. Every accusation has to be taken with a grain of salt.
Vote Libertarian.
If you’re sufficiently ambivalent between the top two dunces, it obviously doesn’t much matter to you which one of them wins. So you’re not really indirectly voting for your “worst” choice, by voting third party.
And while the Libertarians won’t win, a big turnout for them, does have a similar effect to what a big turnout for Sanders and the other “socialists” has on the left: It demonstrates to ambitious mainstream candidates that there are voters who will respond to more Libertarian friendly policies and programs.
Either that, or find some Taliban chieftain to write in. Those guys are cool. And while a bit “different” from an American perspective, they at least better than either of the two mainstream candidates.
The Democrats can legitimately win 40 states now in the Presidential election. Trump is turning once surely red states into swing states. I thought this would happen in 2024 anyway given the demographics of states like Texas. The Republican party really lost it’s way over the last two decades. To let an outsider like Trump hijack the party was one thing but to embrace it as a winning strategy is another. The Russians aren’t done yet with 2020 and will be a factor imo. There is no way Putin doesnt put his entire hacking apparatus behind Trump and the Republicans to sow more discord.
What you say may be true, but the average voter is no historian and many have truly simple minds with astonishingly short attention spans and very little memory. Their motto is what have you done for me lately?
Mish is a Democrat, polls are basically lies, and the Democrats will have to run as the party who supports BLM, murder, and riots. Elections are decided by independents and moderates, and those people are not likely to support the direction the far right liberals controlling the Democratic party are taking the country. It amuses me that Mish had to run away from the place he lived because of liberal policies, and now he is still supporting the same policies he ran from…. Talk about major hypocrisy…
Trump really has 2 viable options to stay in power,1 war or 2 start cutting checks lots of them,and no not to the banks,not to WS,not to the MIC,but directly to voters.Hundreds of trillions (maybe quadrillions)has been pumped into WS banks since 09,while Main Street collapses,Obama didn’t give 2 chits,he was gettin paid,but i think Mr T sincerely cares about this country and the people!
Oh! Wait till you see what Rudy dug up! The Rethuglicans are sure to trot out loads of charges just before the election when there isn’t enough time to actually refute them. There will ba a Covid “vaccine” with no time to know if it’s safe or effective. Just wait for October. The surprises will be truly astonishing.
Problem is Trump has no credibility whatsoever. He has lied about the North Korea deal, the China deal, the NAFTA deal, the Covid virus, Covid testing and on and on and on. He can come come up with Biden stories and vaccine stories come October but most voters will yawn and recognize he is lying yet again to try and save his sorry ass.
“ i think Mr T sincerely cares about this country and the people!“: you r being sarcastic right?
Smiling Cory®—who wants to gut Medicare and your Social Security—is not going to stay in office in Colorado.
A Democrat House, Senate, and President will means-test Social Security and Medicare. Gutting by a different name.
Buy gold. Move to Australia.
If the Republicans lose the Senate it will not be President Trump’s fault. Rather it will be the fault of the Republican members of Congress who were unwilling to challenge his style of threats, bullying and random actions with no clear strategy.
It will be because the Republicans were scared of Trump. The best thing the Republicans could have done was to impeach Trump. Toss him out on his ear. They only have themselves too blame. Might not be too late to save the Senate if they strong arm Trump to stand down for health reasons.
I can’t identify with either party anymore. The people that make me laugh are ones like my far right hillbilly bob neighbors that claim it’s the end of the world if dems get in. Asides from the left lunacy, my position is that if you think you’re going to keep dems out from now till the end of time you’re an idiot. If it’s actually to that point it’s already swung too far and you’ve already lost. Period. I’d assume they get it now and deal with it. I won’t be voting in this election, just like the last go round. All these bastards are 100% worthless and there’s no way this country is going to settle down when were split down the middle and ‘the enemy’ takes control every other election. Good times ahead lmao.
I would’ve voted for Tulsi but she’s anti-war and had to go. Voting for Trump or Biden is like choosing which method of suicide you prefer.
I also loved Tulsi and she would have won in a landslide and truly helped this country. A women of color, with a level head and a military veteran to boot? Too good to be true and the Dems had to attack her as a “russian asset” almost immediately lol. Unreal.
If true, and you have not shifted your portfolio to 80+ percent gold, you need to move fast. As the probability of a Democrat 3-way increases, the bottom will fall out of the market. The Fed will be irrelevant.
Terrible news. The desired outcome would be Biden with a Republic Senate. Gridlock is the best we can hope for.
I do not want a Republian senate infested by McConnell, Graham, Cruz,…
Terrible news indeed. Much better to have an out of control pandemics, 30 million unemployed, trillions of dollars in new national debt, race riots and emerging hegemony of China is the world because we have alienated our significant allies.
The seeds to everything you mentioned were planted a long time ago.
A screw up of this magnitude is everyone’s fault. I am always amused whenever Dems try to spin 2016 as Year Zero. It takes a truly simple mind to believe that prior to 2016, everything was swimming along.
What you say may be true, but the average voter is no historian and many have truly simple minds with astonishingly short attention spans and very little memory. Their motto is what have you done for me lately?
That’s a valid point, but even if the blue team wins everything in 2020 it won’t last long. Nobody can stay popular for more than a few years as the empire crumbles.
Most people will keep pretending that the latest crop of politicians are responsible for everything because it’s too painful to admit this has been decades in the making, and a bipartisan effort to boot.
I’m curious, since you’ve gone all in for Biden, what will you do if Trump wins? I would hope you would appeal to your readers to take anything you say with a high degree of skepticism. Something tells me you don’t have the intestinal fortitude required for that scenario.