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| Dear Readers: Join us next Wednesday, Feb. 22 for “A Conversation with Former/Future Republicans Bill Kristol and David Ramadan.” Kristol, a longtime political commentator, and Ramadan, a Center for Politics scholar and former member of the Virginia House of Delegates, will discuss the past and future of the Republican Party and their concerns about the state of our democracy.
Their conversation will be held from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. eastern at the Colonnade Club Solarium on the Grounds of the University of Virginia. It is free and open to the public with advanced registration through Eventbrite, and it will also be streamed at https://livestream.com/tavco/defendingdemocracytogether. — The Editors |
— It has been over a decade since an incumbent senator was successfully primaried in a regularly-scheduled election; though a few senators may be vulnerable, 2024 may continue that streak.
— Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) decision to retire removed one vulnerable senator from the primary conversation; Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s (I-AZ) decision to leave the Democratic Party removed another. Among the other incumbents who are still deciding whether to run for reelection, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) stands out as someone who could hypothetically be vulnerable in a primary.
— The open-seat Senate contests are all in various stages of flux. Indiana, the sole GOP-held open seat so far, seems to be the most straightforward, as Rep. Jim Banks (R, IN-3) is a heavy favorite to replace Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN).
One of the peculiarities of the 2022 election cycle was that, despite a good deal of political turbulence the past few years, incumbents thrived. Only a single incumbent governor lost (Democrat Steve Sisolak of Nevada), and not a single incumbent senator lost, either in the primary or general elections.
In fact, no sitting senator has lost a primary in any of the last 5 regular elections — they were undefeated for renomination in 2014, 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022. That ties the 1982-1990 stretch for the longest string of regular elections since World War II where no senator lost a primary, per the Brookings Institution’s Vital Statistics on Congress.
The only incumbent blemish in recent years came in an irregularly-scheduled special election, when appointee Luther Strange (R) lost to Roy Moore (R) in the 2017 Alabama special election primary.
Besides that, the last incumbent senator to lose a primary was way back in the 2012 cycle, when long-serving Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) lost to then-state Treasurer Richard Mourdock (R). (Notice that both of the most recent Senate primary defeats saw GOP primary voters swap out a probable general election winner for a loser.)
As we look ahead to the 2024 Senate primary season and ponder whether any incumbent is in jeopardy, it’s worth remembering this history: Incumbent senators are hard to unseat in a primary setting.
Part of what might keep the incumbents’ streak going this cycle is the early decisions by a couple of senators not to pursue renomination next year.
On Tuesday, long-serving Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) announced her retirement: There have been questions for years about the elderly Feinstein’s capacity to serve, and it appears she is finally bowing to reality. A couple of California House members helped nudge her towards the door by announcing their bids before she announced her plans (more on that below).
Late last year, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona left the Democratic Party, opting to become an independent despite continuing to caucus with Democrats. She too would have had trouble in a primary given some high-profile breaks with President Biden and other Democrats over the past few years.
So with those moves, the two senators who might have had the hardest time getting renominated are not running for renomination (or, at least in the case of Feinstein, not running at all — Sinema’s future plans remain a mystery).
So what other primaries merit watching? Let’s go through some others we are monitoring:
— Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) has not announced his 2024 plans. During his term, Romney has emerged as a key member of the Senate’s centrist bloc. Romney may have frustrated state partisans last year, as he was not seen as a “team player” — he was the only sitting Republican senator who did not endorse his home-state Sen. Mike Lee (R) for reelection. Lee, who was elected in 2010, actually is the most recent senator who made it to the chamber via a successful primary challenge (remember, Mourdock in 2012 and Moore in 2017 lost). And Lee’s case was special: he defeated the late Sen. Bob Bennett at a convention. Under the rules at the time, Bennett placed third at the May party convention, so he could not advance to the June primary. But under Utah’s current system, Republicans who don’t earn the party’s endorsement at the convention can petition to appear on the primary ballot. In fact, in 2018, Romney placed second at the party convention but went on to easily win with a broader primary electorate.
With Feinstein and Sinema out of the picture, Romney is hypothetically the most vulnerable incumbent in the 2024 primary season (assuming he runs). Bryan Metzger of Insider had a good rundown recently of Romney’s challenges; he quoted an unnamed Utah Republican consultant who said that polling suggested Romney was in the low 40s in a hypothetical primary. That might be enough to win if his opposition is splintered, but Romney may struggle against a single, strong opponent.
— The most recent addition to the Senate has been from Nebraska: after wrapping up 2 terms as governor, Republican Pete Ricketts was appointed to replace fellow Republican Ben Sasse, who began leading the University of Florida earlier this month. Ricketts will run in a special election next year, alongside Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE), whose seat was already set to be up. We are not expecting Fischer to have much competition in her primary. Fischer is running for a third term despite previously supporting a two-term limit for senators — but many members who did not abide by their own term limit ideals have been reelected anyway.
Ricketts, meanwhile, may have to at least break a sweat in his primary. Businessman Charles Herbster, who was last seen losing the GOP primary for governor last year, is openly considering the race. In the 2022 primary, Ricketts endorsed now-Gov. Jim Pillen over Herbster, who had Donald Trump’s support. One of Pillen’s first acts in office was to appoint Ricketts to the Senate. Ricketts would be the favorite in a primary, although appointed incumbency is not always the same as elected incumbency, and a challenger could try to capitalize on the circumstances of Rickett’s appointment, perhaps by arguing it seemed transactional. Lingering questions over his selection seemed to hurt Luther Strange in his primary. Before Ricketts, Nebraska’s most recent appointed senator, the late Republican Dave Karnes, actually drew a serious primary challenger when he ran in his own right, in 1988. He beat then-Rep. Hal Daub (R, NE-2) by 10 points in the primary, but had the bad fortune of running against Bob Kerrey, a Democrat who was then a popular former governor, in the general election (Kerrey won by 15 points). Democrats do not have a Kerrey-type figure waiting in the wings, so Republicans would still be favored in the general election this time.
— While there is no sign he faces a competitive primary, Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) was just endorsed by the Club for Growth, which often acts as an anti-establishment force in Republican politics. Following an unsuccessful tenure as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Scott failed in a challenge to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) for leadership of the caucus. McConnell has criticized Scott for a plan the latter released during last cycle that included a proposal to force Congress to re-approve federal programs, including popular ones like Social Security and Medicare, every 5 years — a proposal that Democrats, including President Biden in last week’s State of the Union, have highlighted. Scott was recently kicked off of the Senate Commerce Committee — as this was likely a form of retaliation from leadership, Scott has spun it as evidence of his anti-establishment credentials in his fundraising appeals.
— On opposite sides of the Delmarva peninsula, Sens. Tom Carper (D-DE) and Ben Cardin (D-MD) are both mulling whether they will run again. Both would likely be fine in both primary and general elections if they run again, although there also are deep benches in both states that would relish the opportunity to compete for an open seat. It is worth noting that Carper attracted a left-wing challenger in 2018, now-state Rep. Kerri Evelyn Harris. With memories of now-Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D, NY-14) upset primary victory over the then-No. 4 House Democrat, Joe Crowley, still fresh, the race generated some attention that summer, but Carper won convincingly with a little less than two-thirds of the vote.
— Speaking of Ocasio-Cortez, she decided to pass on challenging Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in last year’s primary, and there’s not much indication that she or any other Democrat of note would want to challenge Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) this cycle.
— Back in 2018, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) scored an unimpressive 62%-38% primary victory over a little-known activist, Lisa McCormick (D). This came a year after Menendez survived a federal corruption trial, and Menendez is reportedly under investigation again for a separate matter. Menendez has already drawn a couple of challengers, the more notable of whom is Joe Signorello III (D), the mayor of a small town, Roselle Park.
— Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) would likely be fine in a primary, although Politico’s Massachusetts Playbook did recently float Reps. Jake Auchincloss (D, MA-4) and Ayanna Pressley (D, MA-7) as possible challengers. Both suggested that they weren’t interested. Massachusetts was the site of a big Senate primary in 2020, when Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) fended off then-Rep. Joe Kennedy III by a little over 10 points (Auchincloss succeeded Kennedy in the House). With memories of that divisive 2020 primary still fresh in the minds of state Democrats, there simply may not be much appetite for a Warren challenge — as with Markey, she has not committed any obvious partisan apostasies.
— Arizona, an odd situation where Sinema is now an independent who caucuses with Democrats, may be one of the biggest question marks on the map. For at least the last year or so, it has been evident to all observers that Sinema would have a hard path to renomination — a reality that likely prompted her to leave the party. Even though she’s not running for renomination, we thought her race merited mention, too.
Towards the end of last month, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D, AZ-3) got into the race and has fundraised well. Though Gallego may not have the primary field to himself, he has probably been Sinema’s most vocal intra-party critic over the last few years. It seems likely that most Democratic primary voters will at least identify with his frustrations — he is selling buttons that read “Adios Sinema.” Since her switch, Sinema has kept reeling in donations, although if she pursues reelection as an independent, her path to victory would seem narrow. Republican Sen. John Thune (R-SD) has implored Sinema to go further, and actually cross the aisle. But Sinema’s numbers with Republicans are not impressive, so it’s unclear how GOP partisans would react to a Sinema candidacy, especially if more conservative options enter.
It’s early in the cycle, so undoubtedly there will be more primary action involving incumbents to watch. Beyond the races featuring incumbents running for renomination, let’s close by looking at the 3 states that are hosting open-seat primaries:
— Last year, Republicans bungled a seemingly golden opportunity to flip the Senate due in large part to the poor quality of their candidates in key states. But for the 2024 cycle, there are signs that Senate Republican leadership will take more of an active role in the primary process, with the goal of precluding another 2022-style debacle.
Let’s take Indiana as an example. With first-term Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) forgoing reelection to run for governor, the Hoosier State is the only open GOP-held seat on the map so far. Rep. Jim Banks (R, IN-3), who has represented the Fort Wayne area for 4 terms in Congress, announced his bid for Braun’s seat in mid-January. When former Gov. Mitch Daniels (R-IN), who had been toying with the idea of a Senate run, passed on a run, the NRSC almost immediately threw its weight behind Banks. The NRSC’s endorsement may have also deterred some other Republicans from entering the race — most notably, Rep. Victoria Spartz (R, IN-5) was reportedly exploring a 2024 statewide run, but she (surprisingly) opted to retire from office altogether. So, with these early-cycle developments, Indiana’s open-seat race seems to be a coronation for Banks.
Indiana is a state that Republicans will probably win by double-digits at the presidential level, and we expect our Safe Republican rating for the Senate contest would have applied even if the outlook for the primary was messier. But, using Indiana as a template, it seems that this cycle’s NRSC wants to leave as little to chance as possible.
— If the Indiana seat seems settled, Michigan’s contest still seems relatively fluid. Since Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s (D-MI) retirement announcement last month, no major candidates have officially jumped in, although several are reportedly considering. We explored the dynamics of that race a bit more last month.
— Even before Feinstein announced her retirement Tuesday, Democrats from the state’s House delegation weren’t waiting for her to step aside. Two Southern California Democrats, Reps. Adam Schiff (D, CA-30) and Katie Porter (D, CA-47), were already running, and Rep. Barbara Lee (D, CA-12), who represents Oakland, has reportedly been preparing to enter the race. Though Schiff, Porter, and Lee each have their own followings, it’s important to remember that, as members from the House’s largest delegation, they only represent small pieces of the state. State senators in California actually have more constituents than U.S. House members do — there are 52 of the latter, but just 40 of the former.
Coincidentally, the last time this seat was truly open, way back in 1982, was also a rare contest that featured 3 sitting House members — they all lost the Republican primary to then-San Diego Mayor Pete Wilson. Wilson won in 1982 and 1988 before resigning in 1990 to become governor; Feinstein defeated John Seymour (R), who Wilson appointed to replace him in the Senate, and she has held the seat ever since. One change from 1982, though, will be that the state now uses a top two primary system. With most of the major contenders likely to be Democrats, a pair of Democrats may ultimately face off in November — this was the case in 2016 and 2018.
— Senate races are increasingly converging with presidential partisanship, to the point where the huge overperformances that were so common a decade or two ago have become much less common.
— Since 2000, the number of senators who have run more than 10 points ahead of their party’s presidential nominee has decreased sharply.
— This trend helps explain why we currently rate Democratic-held West Virginia as Leans Republican and started off Montana and Ohio as Toss-ups.
Last week, when we put out our first look at the 2024 Senate map, we issued a rare rating: We started an incumbent off as an underdog. Specifically, we put the West Virginia contest in the Leans Republican category. Though Sen. Joe Manchin has not officially announced his plans, the reality is that any Democrat, even as one as successful as Manchin, faces a daunting challenge in West Virginia.
Some of Manchin’s worries are state-specific. One of the (several) unexpected success stories for national Democrats last year was their showing in state legislative races: They gained governmental trifectas in several states and held their own in the overall state legislative seat count across the nation. But the Democratic floor continued to sink in West Virginia. In the state legislature, Republicans now hold an astonishing 88 seats in the 100-member state House and 31 of 34 state Senate seats. When Manchin first entered office as governor, after the 2004 elections, Republicans only held about a third of the seats in the legislature.
But, as we have discussed in previous articles, there has been a larger trend driving recent elections for Senate: realignment along presidential lines. Between the 2016 and 2020 Senate elections, only one state, Maine, voted for presidential and Senate candidates of opposite parties. Though this trend would obviously imperil Manchin, Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Jon Tester (D-MT), if they seek reelection, also will run in states that Donald Trump or the eventual GOP nominee will likely carry, although neither states has become as ruby red as West Virginia (Brown says he will run again, Tester has not yet announced).
But, if Manchin were to run again — and win — how much of an exception to the recent trend would he be? Assuming West Virginia votes for the GOP nominee by roughly 40 points, as it did in 2016 and 2020, a Manchin win would surely be predicated on a high level of crossover support.
We’ve gone back through the 6 most recent presidential elections examining that question. The short answer is that in the Senate of the early 2000s, 40-point or more overperformances actually occurred with some regularity. Even in 2012, Manchin himself posted such a showing. But since 2016, no major party senatorial nominee has run more than 25 points ahead of their party’s presidential nominee.
So a 40-point overperformance would be a massive outlier in today’s electoral environment. But even loosening our criteria somewhat, even a 10-point overperformance — in the ballpark of what Brown or Tester likely will need to win — would be something of a rarity. Table 1 goes back to 2000 and tracks how many senators performed at least 10 points better than their party’s presidential nominee.
Note: Compares the 2-party vote for Senate to the 2-party vote for president. Table excludes the following Senate races: Arizona 2000, Idaho 2004, Arkansas 2008, Maine 2012, Alaska and California 2016, and Arkansas 2020.
Source: Dave Leip’s Atlas of U. S. Presidential Elections.
In both 2000 and 2004, about 70% of Senate races featured a difference of 10 or more percentage points in margin compared to the top of the ticket. But by the Obama era, that number hovered around 50%. As straight-party a year as 2016 was, Table 1 shows that 2020 was actually more so in some ways: Though no states actually produced a split-ticket outcome, more than a third of the Senate races featured a double-digit difference with the presidential race. But by 2020, just 3 Senate races did — meaning that more than 90% of the total Senate races had a 2-party margin within 10 points of their respective state’s presidential race.
With that, we’ll look at each presidential cycle since 2000 and identify the top overperformers.
2000 saw 6 incumbent senators, 3 from each party, run 30 points or more ahead of their presidential nominee.
By the late 1990s, New England had emerged as a Democratic-leaning region in presidential politics. Between the 1992 and 1996 presidential elections, most New England states swung to then-President Bill Clinton by double-digits. Many of Clinton’s gains stuck in 2000, as his then-Vice President, Al Gore, carried 5 of the region’s 6 states — Gore only barely missed out on New Hampshire, making him the most recent Democratic nominee to lose a New England state. But in the 2000 Senate elections, the region’s traditional affinity for moderate Republicans was still evident down the ballot. In Vermont, Republican Jim Jeffords won a final term by running 55% ahead of then-candidate George Bush’s showing in the Green Mountain State. Citing the GOP’s increasingly conservative direction, Jeffords became a Democratic-caucusing independent less than a year into his new term — Jeffords’s switch gave Democrats control of the Senate for much of the 107th Congress. In nearby states, Rhode Island’s Lincoln Chafee and Maine’s Olympia Snowe outran Bush by 47 and 43 points, respectively.
The top 3 overperformers on the Democratic side were all long-tenured incumbents with popular local brands. Though Bush’s 52%-46% victory in West Virginia came as a surprise on Election Night, Mountain State voters remained overwhelmingly loyal to Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd — a fiddler who was first elected in 1958, he was known for steering resources to his state and was something of a folk hero. Byrd took nearly 80% of the vote. Manchin currently holds Byrd’s seat. In North Dakota, a small state that lends itself well to retail politicking, Sen. Kent Conrad (D) first won a Senate seat in 1986 and won comfortably in the pro-GOP 1994 cycle (he had effectively switched seats in 1992). Republicans seemed to feel Conrad was too entrenched to defeat. Finally, Massachusetts’s Ted Kennedy, with his seniority and golden surname, easily dispatched a scandal-plagued Republican.
As the 21st century got underway, voters’ ticket-splitting habits began to wane. In 2004, Bush, then an incumbent, ran well in the South and his coattails helped Republicans flip 5 open Senate seats there. Bush’s 60%-38% showing in South Dakota also helped topple then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D) in a squeaker. But, in 2004, there were still over half a dozen senators who ran 30 points or more ahead of their party’s presidential nominees.
In Arizona, the late Sen. John McCain (R) was at the peak of his popularity. After running against Bush for the GOP presidential nomination in 2000, the two Republicans had buried the hatchet. McCain’s credentials as a “maverick” on some issues, most notably campaign finance, likely helped his crossover appeal. He took over three-quarters of the vote against weak opposition. In Iowa, Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R) annual 99-county trips around the state had made him a political institution in the state. And going back to New England, Sen. Judd Gregg (R) benefitted from token opposition — after a scandal sidelined Democrats’ preferred nominee, they were left running a 94-year-old liberal activist.
For 2004, a North Dakota Democrat again makes the list of top overperformers. Sen. Byron Dorgan had represented North Dakota in Congress since the 1980 election: as the farm crisis hurt Republicans electorally in the region that decade, Dorgan was always reelected with massive margins. He made the jump to the Senate in 1992. Hawaii’s Dan Inouye was in much the same category as Byrd in 2000: Though Bush performed well for a Republican in the state, the senator’s seniority paid electoral dividends. In Indiana, Sen. Evan Bayh, one of the chamber’s key moderate Democrats, comfortably won a second term.
One other notable overperformer in 2004 was not an incumbent — Barack Obama easily won his first and only term in the Senate in Illinois against carpetbagging conservative activist Alan Keyes, who had replaced a previous, scandal-plagued nominee. In fact, Obama turned in the largest overperformance of any non-incumbent during the 2000 to 2020 timespan (Map 1).
In 2008, Democrats had an undeniably strong cycle — they were aided by then-candidate Obama’s voter mobilization efforts and a pervading anti-George W. Bush sentiment.
Though Democrats tried to tie Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins to the outgoing president, New England ticket-splitting was again on display. Democratic Rep. Tom Allen, who represented the Portland-based 1st District, made the Iraq War a central issue of the campaign. But Collins had cultivated an image as a parochial, bipartisan senator. On the campaign trail, she could point to high ratings from usually liberal-leaning groups: in 2007, she had a perfect score with the League of Conservation Voters, for example. Collins won a third term with over 60% as Obama carried Maine comfortably. In Tennessee and Wyoming, Sens. Lamar Alexander and Mike Enzi were veteran officeholders in overwhelmingly red states. Their races attracted little attention. Alexander had a habit of winning Shelby County, which includes Memphis — over his career, he had been the GOP nominee in 6 statewide races and carried it each time. In 2008, as Obama carried Shelby County by close to 30 points, Alexander carried it 51%-47%..
The biggest overperformer in 2008 was Montana’s Max Baucus. Though the Democrat was a key player in the Senate — by 2008, he chaired the Finance Committee — his margin was padded by weak GOP opposition. His Republican opponent, Bob Kelleher, was a perennial candidate who had run under multiple partisan affiliations in the past — his institutional support was nonexistent. Like Byrd, Jay Rockefeller, West Virginia’s other senator, had a long career in state politics. A Democrat from a famously Republican family, he came to the Senate in 1984 immediately after serving 8 years as governor. As the state’s leader during a tough economic times, Rockefeller had to work hard to win that 1984 contest, but he quickly became entrenched. In the early 2000s, Republicans did not have much of a bench in West Virginia, and Rockefeller got the same underfunded challenger he ran against 6 years earlier. Sen. Tim Johnson represented South Dakota for 5 terms in the House before making the jump to the Senate. In 2006, Johnson suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and spent the better part of a year recovering. Constituents seemed to rally around their senator, and in 2007, when he returned to work, he was greeted with a standing ovation in the Senate chamber. Though Baucus, Rockefeller, and Johnson all scored impressive margins, it may be worth noting that Obama’s showing in each of their states was respectable, too.
In 2012, with Obama successfully running for reelection, some of the biggest overperformers in the Senate were actually losers. In Hawaii, Republicans ran their strongest candidate, former Gov. Linda Lingle. The Senate contest turned into a rematch of sorts: Rep. Mazie Hirono (D, HI-2) emerged from the Democratic primary — she had lost the 2002 gubernatorial race to Lingle 52%-47%. But the difference in the outcome was a prime illustration of the differences between state-level and federal races. Obama carried his native state by over 40 points for a second time, helping Hirono to a 25-point win. In Massachusetts, Sen. Scott Brown won a come-from-behind special election victory in 2010 to replace the late Ted Kennedy — his Democratic opponent ran a lazy campaign and Brown’s image as pickup truck-driving everyman fit the moment. In 2012, Brown was initially ahead in polls and cast himself as an independent Republican. But Democrats consolidated behind law professor Elizabeth Warren, who fundraised well. Warren pulled ahead by the end of the campaign to beat Brown 54%-46%. Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker would have won easily in most circumstances anyway, but he faced a controversial Democrat who the Washington Post mused could have been “2012’s worst candidate.” (we may add that there was ample competition for that title)
The biggest overperformer, from either side, in 2012 was actually Joe Manchin. In 2010, he was initially expected to waltz into Byrd’s old seat in a special election but got something of a scare from businessman John Raese, who pulled ahead in some polls. But Manchin took advantage of Raese’s gaffes and won by a larger-than-expected 10 points. Raese filed for a rematch against Manchin, but after his 2010 loss, he attracted little outside help. Though voters did not have much of an appetite for a Raese candidacy, West Virginia continued its rightward lurch at the presidential level: Mitt Romney became the first Republican presidential nominee in history to sweep all the state’s counties — something Donald Trump replicated in 2016 and 2020, but the state’s totally-red map came as at least a slight surprise at the time. Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who made a strong debut in 2006, kept strong approval ratings and did not draw a top-tier opponent. She carried all but 2 counties in her state, and as a presidential candidate in 2020, had good reason to stress her “electability.” Finally, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill seemed to have a tough race for a second term in her red-trending state. In September, a poll from SurveyUSA showed her trailing the newly-minted GOP nominee, Todd Akin, by a 51%-40% margin. But shortly afterwards, Akin made his infamous “legitimate rape” comment when he was asked about abortion — Akin’s comment was roundly denounced and he became something of a pariah.
When political analysts discuss the types of gains that Donald Trump made in 2016 over Mitt Romney’s 2012 showing, much of the attention, rightfully, goes to several marginal states bordering the Great Lakes. But the state that swung hardest to Trump that year was actually just west of that region: North Dakota. Indeed, things were so tough for North Dakota Democrats in 2016 that, in some of the races for lower statewide offices, Libertarians performed better than Democrats. After being elected three times as governor, Republican John Hoeven won Dorgan’s open Senate seat in 2010. From 2000 to 2010, Hoeven expanded his margin all four times he was on the ballot: he continued that pattern in 2016. The presidential race in Utah was an odd situation: Trump, with his in-your-face attitude and less than pious personal record, was not a natural fit for Utah’s Mormon community. As Trump carried the state with 45% in a 3-way race, Sen. Mike Lee performed more like a “normal” Republican in the state. Going back to the Great Plains, though Democrats initially tried to mount a serious effort against Grassley, his local brand remained popular — although his still-strong 60%-36% margin was closer than his past reelection races.
In New York, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D), who was known for his media savvy and the special attention he gave to the Upstate region, was a chronic overperformer. He was reelected with over 70% of the vote for the second time in his career. In Hawaii, Hillary Clinton’s margin was several points lower than Barack Obama’s but Sen. Brian Schatz (D), who replaced Inouye, continued the trend of incumbent overperformance there. Sen. Rand Paul, a libertarian-ish Republican, always seemed like an unorthodox fit for his demographically-Trumpian state. As Trump carried the state by 30 points, Paul’s opponent, Lexington Mayor Jim Gray, ran over 50 points better than Clinton in parts of the traditionally Democratic east (although Paul still won overall by about 15 points).
As an aside, 3 of 2016’s top overperformers — Hoeven, Grassley, and Schumer — were up last year, and all posted less impressive performances. In fact, each took just about 56% of the vote. Schumer’s role as Democratic leader likely would have hurt his crossover appeal anyway, and his weak margin was part of an underwhelming showing for New York Democrats overall. Grassley, who was reelected at age 89, may have paid an “age penalty” and got a decently-funded Democratic challenger. Hoeven’s margin was hurt by the independent candidacy of Rick Becker, a state legislator who ran to his right. Becker took close to 20% of the vote. But even if all of Becker’s votes were transferred to Hoeven, Hoeven’s margin would have still been slightly down from 2016. So these examples show that some senators are electoral juggernauts until they aren’t.
The most recent cycle saw the Senate outcomes closely linked to presidential results. In Maine, Collins made a return appearance on the list of top overperformers, although she was in a much more competitive race. As is apparent in the table, the top overperformances on both sides are just a lot smaller than they were in previous cycles. By 2020, Maine had transitioned to a ranked-choice system of voting — a fact that, for the Senate race, wasn’t very relevant because Collins, impressively, won an outright majority. On paper, Collins beat her Democratic opponent, state House Speaker Sara Gideon, by a 51%-42% spread. However, it is worth pointing out that a liberal third party candidate, Lisa Savage, took 5%. She encouraged her voters to rank Gideon second — in Savage’s absence, it is easy to see Gideon doing a few points better. In Nebraska, Sen. Ben Sasse (R) kept strong approval ratings in his own right, but faced a scandal-plagued Democrat who received no party backing. Louisiana, with its jungle primary, reelected Sen. Bill Cassidy (R) outright — he took 59% but had several opponents from both parties. Republican candidates in the jungle primary outvoted Democratic candidates by 27 points, or about 8 points better than Trump’s 2-party margin in the state.
On the Democratic side, veteran Sen. Jack Reed, who has represented Rhode Island in the Senate since the 1996 elections and currently chairs the Armed Services Committee, ran furthest ahead of Biden. Still, there were signs presidential realignment was catching up to Reed: his margin was down 8 points from his 2014 spread, and 2020 was his first reelection result where he failed to carry all the state’s towns. Staying in New England, as Biden was expected to carry New Hampshire, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen led her Trump-endorsed opponent, Corky Messner, in every poll of the race. Republicans made a serious effort to unseat Shaheen in 2014, but by 2020, she did not have a top-tier race. Finally, Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, who was reelected in 2016 even as Republicans won all other statewide offices in Montana, challenged first-term Sen. Steve Daines. Bullock ran 7 points ahead of Biden, but had the same issue as Linda Lingle: he was a governor seeking a Senate seat in a state that leaned the other way in federal races.
One commonality among many of these overperformances is that there were established incumbent senators facing weak, underfunded opponents. While the eventual strength of the challengers to Manchin, Brown, and Tester remains to be seen, Republicans surely will be focused on defeating all 3 of them and will be working to recruit the strongest possible candidates and provide substantial outside spending support.
If Manchin and Tester run for reelection, something that may help them is that small-state senators tend to be more likely to overperform. Of the 36 Senate elections we featured in the tables from 2000 to 2020, 27 of them were in states with fewer than 10 electoral votes.
Beyond that, the trend in the relationship between presidential and Senate results in recent elections is clear: The differences between the 2 races on the ballot are generally getting smaller, and even in just the last couple of decades, there has been a huge decline in the amount of ticket-splitting we see in these races. That does not automatically mean Manchin, Tester, and Brown are going to lose, but the challenge each faces is clear.
— Crystal Ball interns Victoria Mollmann and Evelyn Duross assisted in the research for this article.
FreshRSS 