Roll Call’s Stuart Rothenberg thinks Chuck Schumer could be giving his Majority job in the chamber back to Mitch McConnell come January 2025….
While campaign junkies everywhere are focused on the 2022 midterm elections, I’m already thinking about the fight for the Senate in 2024.
Sure, what happens in next year’s congressional elections will impact the future, as will the next presidential contest, the state of the economy and dozens of other unknowns. If you are looking for predictions here about 2024, you are looking in the wrong place.
But we already know that while handicappers’ initial ratings for the Senate class of 2022 suggest a relatively even fight involving only a handful of states, the 2024 map strongly favors the GOP.
At least nine Democratic-held seats in competitive states will be up in 2024 — Arizona (Kyrsten Sinema), Michigan (Debbie Stabenow), Minnesota (Amy Klobuchar), Montana (Jon Tester), Nevada (Jacky Rosen), Ohio (Sherrod Brown), Pennsylvania (Bob Casey), West Virginia (Joe Manchin III) and Wisconsin (Tammy Baldwin).
In addition, the seat of Maine independent Angus King, who caucuses with the Democrats and recently turned 77, will be up.
Democrats may eventually hold some, most or all of these seats, of course. Tester, Brown, Casey and Manchin, for example, have shown the ability to attract working-class white voters and to win in a difficult environment.
But those Democrats who won competitive contests during the 2018 midterms did so with a controversial Republican in the White House. Can they hold their seats during a recession or with an unpopular Democratic president seeking (or not seeking) reelection?
Barring dramatic shifts in state partisan preferences over the next few years, Republicans will likely be defending only one or two competitive Senate seats in 2024 — in Florida (Rick Scott) and, possibly, in Texas (Ted Cruz)….
As of right now,given reapportionment and past history,one would have to give the Republicans a better than even chance of winning the House.
As to the Senate?Still too early to tell but Rothenbergs analysis is certainly convincing.
Still a ways off.Lots can change .
In 2022 (next year), the Democrats will need to capture some of those seats they should have won in 2016, but didn’t, partly due to Hillary Clinton’s unpopularity and incompetence (draining all DNC’s money from down-ballot races). In some of them, things might be made easier because the GOP winner in 2016 will retire at the end of this term, e.g. Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania and Rob Portman in Ohio.
Among other seats we coulda shoulda won or held in 2016 were Wisconsin (Ron Johnson vs Russ Feingold), and conceivably but just possibly, Missouri (Roy Blunt vs Jason Kander) and Indiana (Todd Young vs Evan Bayh). The two Republican incumbents that the Democrats did unseat were Mark Kirk in Illinois and Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire.