Battle for the U.S. Senate

Abstract

The battle for control of the U.S. House of Representatives was over before it even started, but the fight for control of the U.S. Senate is proving to be a knock-down, drag-out affair that could easily go either way. Control of the U.S. House is pretty much a settled affair. Republicans occupy 93 percent of the congressional districts that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney carried in 2012, and Democrats hold 96 percent of the districts that Obama won. As a result, there are very few “fish out of water,” or Republicans sitting in Democratic-leaning districts or Democrats in GOP-tilting districts. Yes, there are a large number of open House seats this cycle, but most are in districts which safely belong to one side or the other. It would seem that the next realistic shot Democrats have at winning control of the House would come in 2022, after the next round of redistricting takes place in 2021. The 2018 and 2020 gubernatorial and state legislative elections will determine which party in each state has the dominant hand in the redistricting process. Republicans had it in most states in 2011, and Democrats want it badly in 2021. The U.S. Senate is currently split between 55 Democrats and 45 Republicans, meaning that the GOP needs a net gain of six seats to take the majority. Today, the party’s effort to win those seats is getting some help from an almost perfect storm of factors that are battering Democrats. First, the Senate map and numbers of seats on the ballot both point to an enormously disproportionate exposure to losses for Democrats. Second, this is a mid-term election, making the timing less than ideal for the Democratic Party. In presidential election years, the general election electorate is highly diverse, and largely resembles the make-up of the country as a whole. In mid-term general elections, however, voter turnout is generally older, whiter, more conservative, and more