Can Democrats Hold The Senate?
It's no longer a crazy notion ... plus Joe Biden is still killing it with white voters and getting killed with minority voters.
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So, last week, I did a post looking at the weird disconnect between Joe Biden’s polling results among white voters and minority voters. We have two additional data points this week to add to the debate.
First, there is this tidbit from the recent Marist poll (which has the race tied 49-49).
Annoyingly, Marist doesn’t break down the non-white category with Black, Hispanic, and Asian voters, but in 2020, Trump got 8% of the Black vote, 38% of the Hispanic vote, and 28% of the Asian vote, so getting 40% with all three this year would be a significant improvement.
These results are broadly consistent with poll results, writ large. Biden is holding his own among white voters (he received 43% of the white vote in 2020, the same as in the Marist poll), but struggling with minority voters.
Next, we have this result from a USAToday/Suffolk poll of only Black voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania.
In both states, Biden sees his support decline from 2020. In Pennsylvania, 56.2 percent of surveyed Black voters say they would vote for Biden today, down 20 percentage points from those who say they voted for him in 2020. In Michigan, 54.4 percent of surveyed Black voters say they support Biden, down 22 percentage points from those who say they voted for him in 2020.
This is a really bad poll result that undercuts the theory that Biden’s poor performance is due to survey error. There are no complaints here about sample size—Suffolk spoke to 500 Black voters in both PA and MI.
Still, I go back to what I wrote last week. It seems very hard to believe that the Democrat nominee for president would lose close to 20 percent of the Black vote. There is no historical precedent for such a significant drop-off for a Democratic presidential candidate. As I noted the other day, no Democrat has won less than 80% of the Black vote since 1960. It’s tough to see why that would happen this year.
However, we can glean one explanation from the poll results.
Trump’s support ticks up slightly from 2020, with 10.8 percent backing him in Pennsylvania, compared to about 8 percent in 2020, and with 15.2 percent backing him in Michigan, compared to 9 percent in 2020.
Biden’s weakness among Black voters is not translating into more support for Trump. Going from 9 to 15 percent in Michigan would be surprising, but we’re seeing in the numbers that the lion’s share of Black voters abandoning Biden are either a) signaling support for a third-party candidate or b) saying they are undecided.
We know that support for third-party candidates tends to decline as we approach election day, and it’s unlikely this election will be any different. Moreover, past voting patterns suggest that most of these undecided Black voters will eventually come around and vote for Biden.
I don’t want to minimize the challenge for the Biden camp. They clearly have a problem with Black voters … and Hispanic voters … and young people. But it is still June, and the president’s campaign has plenty of time to turn these numbers around. It’s fair to presume that Trump might do better among Black voters in 2024. In several swing states, that’s precisely what happened in 2020. But if Biden doesn’t win north of 85% of the Black vote on Election Day in November, it would be a shock.
However, if that does happen … start looking for real estate in Manitoba.
Can Democrats Hold The Senate?
Six months ago, I would have said there’s not a snowball chance in hell that Democrats would hold the Senate in 2024. Now, I’m not so sure.
Check out these recent polling results in Ohio
It’s not just that Democrat Sherrod Brown is leading—it’s that he’s above 50 percent, which is a crucial number for any incumbent to hit in a reelection fight. Brown is probably the most endangered Democratic incumbent in the country. If he can hold this seat, Democrats would have a real shot at keeping the majority in the Senate.
In Montana, Jon Tester is the second most endangered Senate Democrat. The only recent poll we have is from March, and he’s trailing Republican nominee Tim Sheehy by three points. Republicans got a break in this race in that Rep. Matt Rosendale, an ultra-MAGA wingnut, bowed out of the race. Sheehy is a better candidate; however, Tester has won three competitive Senate races in a fairly red state.
Finally, in Nevada, Jacky Rosen will be challenged by Republican Sam Brown, who won the GOP primary earlier this month. We don’t have any post-primary polling, but Rosen was beating Brown by double digits in several polls in May.
In most other potentially competitive Senate races — Arizona, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, Democrats have sizable polling leads (Michigan could be competitive, but we don’t have much head-to-head polling, and the primary, which could be competitive on the GOP side, has not yet been held).
(In West Virginia, incumbent Joe Manchin is retiring, and the chances of Democrats holding the seat are about equal to me being elected Pope).
Republicans’ only potentially vulnerable incumbents are Ted Cruz in Texas and Rick Scott in Florida. While a recent poll had Scott’s opponent, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, within two points of Scott, I’d be stunned if this race is competitive.
Polls this far out usually don’t mean much, though anytime an incumbent is above 50 percent, that’s a good sign (and if they’re below 50, a bad one).
But here’s what I find really interesting about the state of the Senate races — Democrats are destroying Republicans in fundraising.
In Ohio, Brown has raised more than $39 million as of the last reporting period at the end of March and has $15 million on hand. Moreno has raised around $11 million with $2 million on hand. Rosen has a nearly 5-1 cash advantage over Brown. Tester has a more than 5-1 advantage in Montana. A few of the GOP candidates are independently wealthy — in particular, Eric Hovde in Wisconsin and Dave McCormick in Pennsylvania — so that will narrow the disadvantage for Republicans. But while a few others are deep-pocketed (Sheehy and Moreno), it’s unlikely they will have the financial reserves to outweigh the Democrats’ current fundraising advantage.
To be sure, money does not guarantee victory in political races … but it surely doesn’t hurt either. The Democrats’ wide financial edge means that incumbent Senators can run millions in ads negatively defining their opponents for the electorate (which is already happening in the Ohio race). When you’re dealing with relatively unknown statewide candidates, the ability of Senate Democrats to define their opponents early, before they can get on the air, could be decisive.
Moreover, I suspect this is slightly good news for Joe Biden. If America were gripped by anti-incumbent fever, you’d expect Senate Democrats to be paying a price as well, but the opposite is happening. Traditional Democratic voters are not abandoning the party; they’re upset with Biden. In the near term, that’s leading to lousy poll results (see above), but it also suggests that these voters are not out of reach for the president’s campaign. If a Democrat or left-leaning independent is on board with Democrat Jacky Rosen in Nevada or Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, it might not take much coaching to get them back on board for Biden.
Here’s why all this matters: if Democrats hold the Senate and do so without Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, they will have a 50-seat caucus of members who will likely be onboard for jettisoning the filibuster (maybe not on every issue, but certainly some). Plus, if Biden holds the White House and Democrats flip four seats in the House (both reasonable possibilities), Democrats would have a federal branch trifecta. Combine that with a Senate Democratic majority willing to scrap the filibuster, and we could be looking at an orgy of progressive legislation becoming law in 2025-26.
What’s Going On
RIP Say Hey Kid
Musical Interlude
In San Francisco we should have another "the catch". The original is Dwight Clark's catch against the Cowboys at the start of the 49's dynasty. #24's catch should be the 2nd. I saw that catch on TV. What isn't shown these days is that after "the catch" (why Willie falls down) is that he planted one foot, wheeled and threw a "strike" to the catcher that "cut down" the Indian runner trying to score from 3rd. That throw was probably somewhere in the vicinity of 400 feet. That's a memorable feat (no pun intended) in itself.
Won’t help moving to Manitoba, Trump will absorb Canada on matters of “National Security “.