By: Dan McLaughlin – nationalreview.com – November 21, 2024

Avoidable losses will haunt the GOP for the next six years.

Was it the best of times or the worst of times? Republicans exceeded expectations in the Senate by adding four seats, three of them by defeating incumbent Democrats. They also successfully defended all eleven of their own seats. But they lost four Senate contests in states that Donald Trump carried. All four were by narrow margins; two were by less than a point.

An additional four victories would have given the GOP its largest Senate caucus since the 1920s. Those losses may haunt the party for the next six years, and they may yet cost Republicans control of the upper chamber in 2026 or 2028.

Expectations should have been high, with Class 1 Senate seats and a special election in Nebraska on the ballot. Of the 34 seats, Democrats held 23, but only 16 of those (and none of the Republican seats) were in states Donald Trump had lost twice, while 14 races were in states Trump had carried twice — three of them Democrat-held seats in increasingly red West Virginia, Montana, and Ohio. The 16 “blue” states included Nevada, where Trump led in the polls all year.

Democrats maintained an amazing run of luck in Class 1 elections after 1994. Republicans underperformed in 2000 after Bill Clinton’s impeachment, then faced blue-wave conditions in the 2006 and 2018 midterms and in 2012 as a result of Barack Obama’s coattails.

Nearly all pre-election forecasts had Republicans winning the two seats necessary to get to 51 and control the Senate, with or without the White House. After Joe Manchin’s retirement opened up his West Virginia seat, Jim Justice cruised to victory by a 41-point margin. In Montana, Jon Tester had skated under 50 percent of the vote twice in his three victories, but he fell behind Tim Sheehy by the summer and lost by seven.

Sherrod Brown in Ohio looked a tougher nut to crack. Businessman Bernie Moreno, picked apart by opposition researchers, pulled percentage points ahead of Brown in the RealClearPolitics poll average for the first time only the day before the election, when the last round of polls was released. Brown, long stalled at 46 percent in polls, lost with that percentage to Moreno’s 50 percent.

Moreno had more than just the wind of an eleven-point Trump win in Ohio at his back. He was by far the largest beneficiary of outside spending by Mitch McConnell’s Senate Leadership Fund and the Karl Rove–advised American Crossroads. The two super PACs spent a combined $101.6 million to beat Brown — $40 million more than in any other state. Whatever Moreno’s MAGA branding and Trump coattails, Republican establishment money kept him in the hunt.

Democrats once again spent lavishly to no effect against Ted Cruz in Texas and Rick Scott in Florida. Both won far more comfortably than in 2018. The best Democratic campaign was by nominal independent Dan Osborn, who lost by seven points to Deb Fischer in Nebraska. That says much about the condition of the Democratic brand.

Democrats dodged a bullet in New Jersey, which swung ten points in Trump’s direction in 2024, largely because of Hispanic voters. Scandal-tarred incumbent Bob Menendez teased an independent campaign, dropping out only in mid August, a month after a federal corruption conviction. Congressman Andy Kim beat businessman Curtis Bashaw by nine points, which might have gone differently had Menendez managed another hung jury and stayed in the race.

Five Senate elections were in states intensely contested by the presidential campaigns: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada. Three had incumbent Democratic senators. In the other two, House Democrats (Elissa Slotkin in Michigan and Ruben Gallego in Arizona) bucked for promotion. None were competitive in public polls until the fall, and all ended much closer than the polls projected. Trump swept all five states, but Republicans lost four of the five in the Senate. Only Dave McCormick, unseating Bob Casey in Pennsylvania, came out on top — narrowly enough that Casey demanded a recount.

Between 1992 and 2020, there were 100 battleground Senate races in presidential years, defined as contests either that were decided by fewer than ten points or that flipped party control of the seat. Between 1992 and 2020, the party that won the presidential election in the state won 75 out of 100. The party that won the presidential election nationwide carried the state 64 times out of 100 and won 59 Senate races — more than nine times out of ten.

This year, however, there were twelve battleground Senate races — and the two parties split them six apiece, even though Donald Trump carried ten of the twelve states. If we aggregate those twelve states, we find that Trump defeated Harris 52.1 percent to 46.3 percent, while Republicans edged out Democrats in the Senate only by 49.5 percent to 48 percent.

Put another way, Trump ran a net 4.3 points ahead of Republican battleground Senate candidates. A modest but decisive segment of his voters didn’t pull the lever for the next Republican on the ticket. That badly cost Mike Rogers in Michigan, who lost by 0.36 percentage points in a state where Trump won by 1.4 points, and Eric Hovde in Wisconsin, who lost by nine-tenths of a point in a state where Trump won by the same margin. Sam Brown lost by 1.64 points in Nevada, whereas Trump won by 3.1 points. Kari Lake in Arizona lost by 2.38 points, where Trump won by 5.51 points. McCormick won by 0.26 points, whereas Trump won by 1.75 points. Moreno ran seven points behind Trump. Sheehy ran twelve points behind him.

Trump was not unusual in this fashion. George W. Bush ran 10.5 points ahead of Republican Senate candidates in battleground races in 2004. John McCain ran 6.6 points ahead in 2008. Mitt Romney ran 1.9 points ahead in 2012. But this was reversed in 2016 and 2020, when Republican battleground Senate candidates ran ahead of Trump. In 2016, Trump beat Hillary Clinton 47.7 percent to 47 percent in the ten states with battleground Senate races, but Republican Senate candidates carried those states 48.5 percent to 47.2 percent. In 2020, Trump beat Joe Biden 49.8 percent to 48.5 percent in states with battleground Senate races, but Republican Senate candidates won 50 percent to 47.2 percent — at least, until the runoffs in Georgia.

What explains this? Lake was a hard-core MAGA candidate who self-destructed in the 2022 gubernatorial race. McCormick and Rogers were both originally Bush-era Republicans. Hovde was a businessman running the Ron Johnson playbook. Brown ran heavily on his record as a wounded military veteran. There’s not a simple story, although the failure to repeat 2016 and 2020 suggests that Trump has improved his own brand at the expense of his party.

Brown was severely outspent, with outside groups comparatively late to aid him on the airwaves. Ground operations such as that of Americans for Prosperity Action did a lot to help McCormick, Hovde, and Brown but were late to aid Rogers and sat out Arizona.

Democratic candidates at both levels matter, too. While Kamala Harris was a late entry who couldn’t distance herself from the shambolic Biden administration or her own record, Slotkin had spent years building a brand as a moderate, and Gallego leaned hard all year into posturing as a border hawk. Casey paid for drifting into colorless lockstep progressivism that cast him as part of the Biden blob.

Exit polls suggest common threads. Among Hispanics, Trump ran six points ahead of Rogers and Lake, five ahead of Brown, four ahead of Hovde, and two ahead of McCormick. Trump ran eight points ahead of both Brown and Lake among 18- to 29-year-olds and nine points ahead of Lake among 30- to 44-year-olds. Among white voters lacking college degrees, Trump ran six points ahead of Lake, four ahead of Brown, and three ahead of McCormick.

In the Midwest and Nevada, Trump outran Senate candidates in the hinterlands. Hovde ran four points behind Trump among white Evangelicals, reflecting the fact that he ran strongly in suburban Waukesha and Dane Counties but trailed Trump’s margins in many rural Wisconsin counties. Rogers ran eight points ahead of Trump among black men, and likewise ran closer to Trump in bluer parts of the state but fell short in the smaller red counties. McCormick ran ahead of Trump in Philadelphia and suburban Montgomery and Chester Counties but trailed him across the red rural counties. By contrast, Lake was undone by the state’s most populous urban/suburban county: She ran 111,066 votes behind Trump in Maricopa County and lost her Senate race by about 80,000 votes.

One dog that didn’t bark was the courts. Republican Senate candidates made extensive hay in 2016 and 2020 about judges and fears of Court-packing. In the post-Dobbs environment, few Republican campaigns were willing to go there.

In 2025, having a three-seat majority rather than a seven-seat majority may significantly affect Trump’s capacity to get controversial cabinet picks confirmed. In 2026, Republicans are defending Susan Collins in blue Maine and Thom Tillis in purple North Carolina, plus Iowa, Texas, Kansas, and special elections in Ohio and Florida. Democrats are defending incumbents in Georgia, Michigan, Virginia, New Hampshire, and Minnesota. In 2028, Republicans defend seats in North Carolina, Wisconsin, Iowa, Florida, and Kansas, while Democrats defend Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire. The political climate will matter a lot, but Republicans could easily face those elections wishing that they had not missed so many opportunities in 2024.

To see this article in its entirety and to subscribe to others like it, please choose to read more.

Source: Republicans’ Good Night in the Senate Should Have Been Great | National Review