Senate and gubernatorial primaries are winding down with only a handful of contests in August and three in September. Our latest Election Watch update (below) looks at settled contests, the ones that remain to be decided, and finally, at how four different organizations rate the races (The Cook Political Report, Real Clear Politics, Nate Gonzales’s Inside Elections, and Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball). Where are we now?
On August 2,
we will learn who Democratic Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and Republican Kansas
Senator Jerry Moran will face in the fall. Missouri Senator Roy Blunt is
retiring, and there is a spirited contest in both parties’ primary contests to
succeed him. All four analysts currently rate Arizona a toss-up, and they put
Missouri in the GOP column with different degrees of confidence. Donald Trump
carried Missouri by 15 points. Ratings could change depending on these August 2
results.
On August 9,
Connecticut, Vermont, and Wisconsin will hold primaries. Biden carried
Connecticut by 15 points and Vermont by 35, and Richard Blumenthal and the
ultimate nominee for the Vermont Senate seat, given Patrick Leahy’s announced
retirement after 48 years in the Senate, appear to be safe in those states. At
this point, two of the groups that rate the contest put Wisconsin in the
toss-up column, two have it leaning slightly to the GOP.
All analysts
put Senator Marco Rubio’s seat in the Republican column, but we will know more
after the August 23 primary. In national contests, Florida is a traditionally
competitive state that has trended slightly on the Republican direction in
recent elections. On the last date that primaries are
held, September 13, the most interesting race is for Maggie Hassan’s Senate
seat. Three of the four analysts have Hassan as a slight favorite. The
analysts downgraded Republicans’ chances after Governor Chris Sununu decided
not to run against Hassan.
Of
the 36 governorships up for election, 20 are currently held by Republicans and
16 by Democrats. Democrats are likely to win back the governorships in two
states in Republican hands: Maryland and Massachusetts. They also hold out
hopes of flipping governorships in Arizona and Georgia. Republicans have
their best chance to win back governorships in Kansas, Wisconsin, and Nevada,
but also may compete to flip governor’s mansions in Oregon, New Mexico, Maine,
Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Of these, the
final contestants in Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, and Wisconsin will be known very
soon. In September, we will also know the shape of the Massachusetts race to
succeed retiring Republican Charlie Baker, and the one in New Hampshire where
incumbent Chris Sununu chose not to run for Senate, but rather to run for
re-election to the governorship instead. Of course, there are always sleepers
in Senate and governor’s races. We would love to hear what yours are.
The results in the House of Representatives are also likely to favor Republicans. An incumbent president with low job approval ratings brings down his party in midterm elections. That tide, while present in the Senate and the governorships, expresses itself even more strongly in House races (and state legislative races), which are more numerous. History has shown that only three times since the 1850s has a president’s party had a net gain of seats at a midterm (1934, 1998, 2002), and those gains were small, and the presidents were overwhelmingly popular (over 60 percent job approval for Clinton and Bush). In most cases, the president’s party loses seats, and if the president has a low job approval number, the losses can be substantial.
AEI summer intern Thomas Gilmore, a rising senior at Ave Maria University, put together the attached handout of the state of the races. We are grateful for his assistance.
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