With Election Day around the corner, 2024 is reaching a fever pitch — not just in the presidential race, but around the country in House and Senate races, and others down the ballot.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris remain effectively tied. Both candidates are charging into the home stretch within reach of the goal, while their respective parties are making last-ditch efforts to determine control of Congress. A final ABC/Ipsos national poll has Harris breaking out a 4-point advantage with likely voters, a possible sign of late-game momentum.
In key Senate races, a familiar trend is emerging. Democrats are hoping for a come-from-behind finish in Montana, seen as the GOP’s most likely chance of unseating an incumbent Democrat, where Republican Tim Sheehy is suddenly facing louder and louder scrutiny over his military record — specifically whether he was really shot in Afghanistan, or in an accident at a state park where a park ranger says the wounding really took place.
That’s right: candidate quality! Mitch McConnell’s favorite campaign-season topic is back, more prescient than ever. A few predictions for next week follow.
Arizona
The first one’s a slam dunk: Kari Lake will lose in Arizona. The poster child for the Republican Party’s problems with finding Trump loyalists who can appeal to independents and moderate Democrats, Lake is once again running, this time for Senate against Ruben Gallego.
She’s going to go down handily, having trailed in every single poll and seemingly failed in her outreach to McCain-esque Republicans and independents.
Wisconsin
Eric Hovde is in trouble in Wisconsin, where he’s only led in one Republican-sponsored survey. Chalk that up to his relentless Trump cheerleading, apparently at the expense of running a local race — he dodged a question during his debate with incumbent Tammy Baldwin over the annual farm bill, about which he said he was not an “expert”.
He’s getting pummeled for that; agriculture workers make up roughly one in ten working Wisconsinites.
Minnesota
Royce White, in Minnesota, is not even a contender. In the end, all his campaign donations bought him were some chicken wings at a strip club.
New Mexico
Martin Heinrich, the Democrat, will win reelection.
Michigan
Michigan’s Senate race is coming down to a very close race, but Democrat Elissa Slotkin is probably going to beat Mike Rogers. She has outperformed Kamala Harris in several surveys, which is a positive sign for her.
Turnout among loyal Democratic voters is going to be very key in her pushing past Rogers, particularly around Detroit and Dearborn.
Nevada
Sam Brown is probably going to lose in Nevada. Just one survey has put that race tied, and it was sponsored by a Senate Republican PAC.
The rest have shown incumbent Senator Jacky Rosen ahead, while Brown has been attacked over his shifting stance on abortion ban exceptions in the wake of the Dobbs decision.
Pennsylvania
Bob Casey will probably win reelection over Republican challenger Dave McCormick, who is running his second Senate race after losing the 2022 primary to TV personality Dr Oz. Just one poll has shown the Republican ahead, by one percentage point. The rest trend in Casey’s favor. It will be close, but absent a GOP surge that the polls missed entirely, the senator’s seat is staying blue.
Maryland
Larry Hogan is down bad in Maryland. The question is how bad — are the polls really wrong? It seems doubtful; a final survey from The Washington Post and the University of Maryland put him back 12 points behind Democrat Angela Alsobrooks. Oof.
Presuming that his support is being widely undersampled, the former governor could pull off a surprise, but he’ll have to prove everybody in the state wrong to do so.
Florida
Finally, Republican Rick Scott is going to squeak by in Florida. He’s not in any real danger of losing his seat to Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, according to polling, but what he is almost certain to do is underperform Ron DeSantis, who smashed his way to victory by a 20-point margin in 2022 after winning his own tight race four years earlier.
The margin by which Scott wins will likely affect both his bid to lead the Senate GOP caucus as well as the overall power dynamics among Florida’s elected Republicans.
The four big questions: Montana, Texas, Nebraska and Ohio
Montana is the Democrats’ white whale. The party is spending big to save Jon Tester, with the race pushing into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Tester has run consistently behind challenger Tim Sheehy for months, though a recent survey saw the Republican’s lead dropping into the margin of error — or close to it. Tester’s campaign is hoping that surveys of the very rural state are undercounting the Senator’s supporters, and that conversations about discrepancies in Sheehy’s military record will hamstring the GOP in the final hours.
Nebraska is a gigantic landmine for Republicans. Could this really happen? Could the GOP pick up a Senate seat in Montana, only to see a clear majority slip away thanks to one of their own losing re-election to, of all people, an independent who won’t caucus with either party? Ask Senator Deb Fischer; while her challenger is on an energetic public event schedule, she’s sticking to largely private gigs.
What about Texas? Look, it could happen. The “candidate quality” argument doesn’t typically apply to incumbents, but when it comes to someone who so obviously wants a podcaster career as Ted Cruz…
This is Cruz’s first time at the ballot box since January 6, the day that the GOP effort (which Cruz was part of) to undermine the election results culminated in an assault on the Capitol. It’s also his first election since the Cancun scandal — when he abandoned the state in the aftermath of a deadly blizzard.
Finally, there’s Ohio. This is the real toss-up of the night, with Trump-endorsed Bernie Moreno leading in a Senate GOP-sponsored survey and trailing in another recent poll. Sherrod Brown, if he survives Tuesday night, will be owed a few drinks from Chuck Schumer.