Democrats are staring down an increasingly difficult Senate landscape as national political headwinds threaten to sweep away what they believe is their best chance to hold at least one chamber of Congress.
With hopes for holding their House majority dimming quickly, Democrats see this year’s Senate map as a relative bright spot, given the fact that they’re defending fewer seats than Republicans and believe they have a strong class of candidates.
But nationally, they’re up against a brutal political landscape — President Biden’s approval rating is well underwater, inflation is the highest it’s been in decades and Republican voters appear far more motivated than Democrats — raising the prospect that some factors that will determine the Senate majority are outside the party’s control.
“I think at the end of the day, I think it’s going to be hard for Democrats if the environment doesn’t change,” said Kyle Kondik, the managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “It’s not as bleak of an outlook as it is in the House for Democrats, but it’s still a heavy lift in the Senate.”
Part of the challenge for Democrats, Kondik said, is overcoming Republican enthusiasm and political polarization in an already-unfavorable year for the party and its candidates. Democrats control the White House and both chambers of Congress, and the party in power almost always loses ground in midterm elections.
In a sign of motivation among GOP voters, an NBC News poll released late last month showed Republicans with a 17-point advantage over Democrats in enthusiasm. Sixty-seven percent of GOP respondents said they have a high level of interest in voting this year compared to just 50 percent of Democrats.
“Politics is just more tribal, I think, and you’re just naturally going to have disproportionate motivation for the side not holding the White House in these off-year elections,” Kondik said.
“I certainly don’t think the Democrats are favored to hold the Senate. I would rather be the Republicans than the Democrats,” he added.
Republicans need to pick up just five seats in the House and net only one in the Senate to recapture their majorities in both chambers, meaning Democrats have little room for error if they hope to maintain their control of Congress this year.
Yet the mood among Democrats isn’t one of pessimism, at least when it comes to the Senate. While the GOP is targeting four vulnerable Democratic incumbents — Sens. Raphael Warnock (Ga.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Maggie Hassan (N.H.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.) — the party is also defending more seats than Democrats, including a handful of open seats in states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio.
Democrats also say they have an opportunity to pick up GOP-held seats in states such as Wisconsin, where Sen. Ron Johnson (R) is facing reelection this year.
At the same time, Democrats say they’ve benefited from strong challengers in states such as North Carolina, where former state Supreme Court Justice Cheri Beasley is seen as the party’s likely nominee, and Florida, where Rep. Val Demings (D) is the favorite to take on Sen. Marco Rubio (R) this fall.
Republicans, meanwhile, are facing a series of brutal and competitive Senate primaries in places such as Pennsylvania and Ohio, races that threaten to leave the eventual GOP nominees politically battered before the general election even begins.
“Lots of things can change. But there are two things that are consistent right now,” said Chuck Rocha, a Democratic consultant and former senior adviser to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). “The DSCC [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee] is raising a shit ton of money, and the Republicans have flawed candidates in many states.”
“I feel more bullish about the Senate than I do the House,” Rocha added. “The headwinds are horrible, history is horrible, but left to their own devices, Republicans always shoot themselves in the foot with some of the craziest f—— candidates I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Still, Rocha cautioned, the party may not be able to count on good candidates alone.
“The more the president is under water, the harder it is to win seats for Democrats. That fact has never changed,” Rocha said. “The lower the approval rating, the more seats we lose. I’ve done this for 32 years, and that’s just what it is.”
“I’m encouraged by what I’m seeing, but I don’t know if it’ll be enough, just given the headwinds,” he added. “Gas and groceries are still everything.”
Those rising prices have become a key line of attack for Republicans, who have sought to pin inflation and supply chain disruptions on runaway government spending under a Democratic-controlled Washington.
The GOP has also seized on immigration — most recently the Biden administration’s decision to rescind a Trump-era policy that blocks migrants from seeking asylum in the U.S. amid the coronavirus pandemic — in an effort to cast Democrats as unwilling to address a chaotic situation at the U.S. southern border.
Some vulnerable Senate Democrats have sought to mitigate those attacks, even if it means breaking with their own party’s leadership. Kelly called the decision to rescind Title 42 “wrong,” while Hassan said the Biden administration “does not appear to be ready” for the surge in migration that could follow the decision.
One consultant to several Democratic Senate challengers said that Senate candidates face less of a risk of being tied to party leaders in Washington, arguing that the statewide nature of their races allow them to build their own political brands separate from the White House.
“I think that Senate races — they’re so big [that] you’re able to create some of your own atmosphere,” the consultant said. “And a Maggie Hassan or Raphael Warnock or Mark Kelly are able to build the kind of campaign that frankly can tell its own story separate from whatever Republican attacks are being waged around D.C.”
Still, the consultant added, it will likely be impossible for any Democratic Senate candidate or incumbent to remove themselves completely from the political drama in Washington.
“If Biden’s numbers stay where they are, if inflation continues, that’s a challenging environment,” the consultant said. “If you’re a voter, you might just hate Joe Biden so much that you want to put Republicans in charge, no matter what. That might happen.”
Democrats are also well aware that they might not be able to count on the same voter turnout that helped propel their party’s recent White House and Senate victories.
In an early effort to rally their voters ahead of the midterms, the DSCC is dropping $30 million on its “Defend the Majority” program to build out its organizing infrastructure in battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and New Hampshire.
And party leaders have repeatedly sought to make the argument that voters who are unhappy with the lack of progress on issues such as voting rights should be even more motivated to cast their ballots in order to give Democrats more power in the legislative process.
Nora Keefe, a spokesperson for the DSCC, projected confidence in Democrats’ chances of holding the Senate this year in a statement to The Hill on Friday.
“While our Democratic candidates are building formidable campaigns and fighting for working families, flawed Republican candidates are stuck in vicious, expensive primaries and running on a disastrous agenda: raising taxes on seniors, ending Medicare and Social Security and pushing the interests of big corporations that get rich by keeping prices high,” Keefe said. “That contrast will lead their campaigns to defeat in 2022.”
Other Democrats, however, said that the party needs to take a more sober view of the midterms. One strategist who has worked on several high-profile Senate races said that while Democrats have reason to be cautiously optimistic, they should also acknowledge that certain things are out of their control.
“I think we need to be realistic about it that, look, it’s a really challenging year, just with everything happening,” the strategist said. “All that said, I think it’s winnable. … We just need to be very cognizant of the fact that some things are out of our hands.”